Tag Archives: ISOful

Information Science, IQ, Sensors

Information Transfer: Non ISO-Invariant Case

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We’ve seen how information about a photographic scene is collected in the ISOless/invariant range of a digital camera sensor, amplified, converted to digital data and stored in a raw file.  For a given Exposure the best information quality (IQ) about the scene is available right at the photosites, only possibly degrading from there – but a properly designed** fully ISO invariant imaging system is able to store it in its entirety in the raw data.  It is able to do so because the information carrying capacity (photographers would call it the dynamic range) of each subsequent stage is equal to or larger than the previous one.   Cameras that are considered to be (almost) ISOless from base ISO include the Nikon D7000, D7200 and the Pentax K5.  All digital cameras become ISO invariant above a certain ISO, the exact value determined by design compromises.

ToneTransferISOless100
Figure 1: Simplified Scene Information Transfer in an ISO Invariant Imaging System at base ISO

In this article we’ll look at a class of imagers that are not able to store the whole information available at the photosites in one go in the raw file for a substantial portion of their working ISOs.  The photographer can in such a case choose out of the full information available at the photosites what smaller subset of it to store in the raw data by the selection of different in-camera ISOs.  Such cameras are sometimes improperly referred to as ISOful. Most Canon DSLRs fall into this category today.  As do kings of darkness such as the Sony a7S or Nikon D5.

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Banding, Information Science, IQ, Perceptual, Processing, Quantization, Sensors, Sharpening, USM

Image Quality: Raising ISO vs Pushing in Conversion

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In the last few posts I have made the case that Image Quality in a digital camera is entirely dependent on the light Information collected at a sensor’s photosites during Exposure.  Any subsequent processing – whether analog amplification and conversion to digital in-camera and/or further processing in-computer – effectively applies a set of Information Transfer Functions to the signal  that when multiplied together result in the data from which the final photograph is produced.  Each step of the way can at best maintain the original Information Quality (IQ) but in most cases it will degrade it somewhat.

IQ: Only as Good as at Photosites’ Output

This point is key: in a well designed imaging system** the final image IQ is only as good as the scene information collected at the sensor’s photosites, independently of how this information is stored in the working data along the processing chain, on its way to being transformed into a pleasing photograph.  As long as scene information is properly encoded by the system early on, before being written to the raw file – and information transfer is maintained in the data throughout the imaging and processing chain – final photograph IQ will be virtually the same independently of how its data’s histogram looks along the way.

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Exposure, Information Science, IQ, Sensors

Exposure and ISO

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The in-camera ISO dial is a ballpark milkshake of an indicator to help choose parameters that will result in a ‘good’ perceived picture. Key ingredients to obtain a ‘good’ perceived picture are 1) ‘good’ Exposure and 2) ‘good’ in-camera or in-computer processing. It’s easier to think about them as independent processes and that comes naturally to you because you shoot raw in manual mode and you like to PP, right? Continue reading Exposure and ISO →