ISO Performance at low ISOs (ISO 100-800)
Let’s take a look at how the Sony A7R performs at low ISOs. Here are some 100% crops at ISO 100, 200, 400 and 800:
As expected, images look very clean and low ISOs – there is very little difference between ISO 100 and 800.
High ISO Performance (ISO 1600-25600)
Let’s see what happens when ISO is boosted to much higher levels:
As expected, ISO 1600 adds some noise, particularly in the shadow areas. ISO 3200 doubles that noise. Detail is still quite good though and colors are not lost.
As ISO is pushed further up to 6400, there is now plenty of noise in the image. There is some loss of details and colors throughout the image. At ISO 12800 lots of detail is lost and the colors are not looking good either. This is already beyond my comfort level, even if I have to down-sample.
Lastly, ISO 25600 is just unusable mess. Small details are completely gone, lots of colors are lost and everything looks too mushy and noisy.
It is hard to say how good the performance is without direct comparisons. Let’s see how it fares against other cameras. Select the next page below.
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