How good is ISO 1600 on the 350D XT ? and the ISO 3200 on the 20D ?

[ibarbar]

I'm interested if I can take photos at night in the city without flash at ISO 1600. And if the ISO 3200 on the 20D is much better.
Can you take night photos without the tripod ? Spontaineous shots of people and other things that happen in low light conditions, like evening, heavy clouded sky, before or after storm, indoors, in a pub or a museum, etc.

If anyone can show some examples it would be great.
Thank you.

[timmciglobal]

Depends on lens and what lighting is actually there.

ISO 1600 on the 20D is cleaner then the XT but not by much. ISO 3200 on the 20D isn't that great unless you REALLY need it.

Buy a 50MM 1.8 lens and use ISO 1600 it'll give you great shutter speeds. I've gotten 1/160th of a second indoors with poor lightning.

Tim

[ibarbar]

If I buy the 350d I'm sure I won't get any lens without zoom becouse it's too expensive to have a lot of lenses and change them when you can get a good zoom lens, so I'm interested how the camera would go with a 17-85 mm lens for example.

[jamison55]

The problem with high ISO at night is that night scenes tend to contain a lot of dark, shadowy areas, which show noise far more than lighter scenes. I second the recommendation for fast glass. Buy a $70/50 f1.8 and shoot it wide open at ISO 400. You will be amazed at the results!

[TheObiJuan]

I shoot at ISO 3200 regularly with my 20D. If I expose the image properly all I get is a little color noise that doesn't affect details. The noise can be removed easily. I use photoshop to remove it by adding median noise, then fading to color. BAM! it's gone. ;)

Here is one example. It was also shot with the 50mm f/1.8.
The image is untouched, just labeled and resized. The left corner is a 100% crop, again, untouched. The right corner has my PS fix.

http://img98.echo.cx/img98/496/img6084iso3200h6su.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)