50D : What is the high ISO safe limit?

Thinking of getting one of the 50D s before they disappear from the market...

There have been concerns about the high ISO noise from this camera, so i assume I'd have to be careful not to underexpose, expose well to the right etc.

So with careful exposing and processing, how far do you push your 50D with regard to ISOs?

So currently, our long term plan is something like a fast standard zoom on D5000 for near end, and 100-400 IS on a canon body for the 'far end'. Obviously the 100-400 must wait for long, until then it's 70-300 VR on D5000, and a basic standard zoom on the canon body.

Subhrashis,

I'm not sure there is a rigid answer to your question. I think people will have different tolerances for what is acceptable. Also, how apparent the noise is will ddepend on the detail in the scene. For example, blue sky will show noise mores than a grass field. Look at figure 10 on this page: http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/...mance.summary/ where the 50D shows a very good signal level for the sensor.

Roger

Thanks Roger, that is true.

What I meant was, on BPN here, I can see the quality benchmark set by people in their posted shots, and I trust their experience and pp skills from those results. So I thought I could form an idea based on the response here.

Thanks too for your amazingly informative article, I think it'd take some time to sort out though!

Based on past few days searches reviews and results, I think the camera won't be the limiting factor here, it'd be my techniques. Maybe the IQ will be similar to my D5000 (D300S sensor) , but my advantages would be in a better AF performance. Am I correct?

As an owner of a 50D that I recently sold, consideration of noise is an issue. As I had that camera primarily for bird photography and always practiced strict exposure control, I did not find noise to be a limiting factor. However I would not normally go over ISO 800 and ISO 400 was my lower safe limit. Routinely I would have to correct for luminance noise in blue skies.

I agree with Robert. ISO 400 is fine and ISO 800 was the max that I would go with the 50D. Your exposure has to be bang on.