This Video Was Shot at ISO 4,000,000+ With Canon’s New $30,000 Camera
It captured some zebras in pitch black
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A while back, Canon announced that their ultra-high ISO camera was going to be officially coming to market. Then, last week at the Canon Expo in NYC, we got our first chance to see the ME-20F in action. Now, they have put some footage shot with the camera online, and it’s pretty amazing if you consider the context.
The video shows the camera operating in a variety of situations, including a scene of some zebras that was shot in basically pitch black. As a result, they crank the ISO up over four million. Of course, the results are extremely noisy. But, you can make out the zebras and see what they’re up to, which would be completely impossible without traditional night vision in many cases.
A while back, Canon announced that their ultra-high ISO camera was going to be officially coming to market. Then, last week at the Canon Expo in NYC, we got our first chance to see the ME-20F in action. Now, they have put some footage shot with the camera online, and it’s pretty amazing if you consider the context.
The video shows the camera operating in a variety of situations, including a scene of some zebras that was shot in basically pitch black. As a result, they crank the ISO up over four million. Of course, the results are extremely noisy. But, you can make out the zebras and see what they’re up to, which would be completely impossible without traditional night vision in many cases.
I find it very entertaining that comments on some other sites complain that it’s too noisy or question, “Why would you want to do that?” The simple fact of the matter is that this camera tech allows you to capture images that might otherwise be possible. They may not be beautiful, but this is one of the fist commercially available cameras to push the limits of low-light capture this far, so you can’t expect it to be perfect.
If you’re one of those people who isn’t impressed by it, take your DSLR into the darkest area you can find tonight, then crank the ISO to its max. With a good DSLR, let’s say that gets you to roughly ISO 50,000. This thing gives you more than five extra stops. It can literally see in the dark and it can be hard to really get a feel for how impressive it is unless you see it in person. Canon was presenting it in the context of a security camera and that makes a lot of sense. But, I’m hoping the low-light performance just keeps getting better so it can creep down into the consumer cameras.
