Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Fuji X10 – Review Part 27 – The last word on ORBs

I just thought it might be useful to clarify the ORBs one little bit more. Two questions:

  • Does higher ISO account for ORB reduction?
  • Do they show up in movie mode?

The answers are no, and no.

High ISO helps with ORBs, but only because it allows you to have less light falling on the sensor. This is proven by the simple test below. An animated GIF that shows a 5 second exposure at 100 ISO, where the ORBs are breathtakingly huge, followed by changing only the shutter to 1.5 seconds, about 1.66 stops down, where the ORBs shrink noticeably, and finally changing only ISO to 1600, where the ORBs stay the same, despite a spectacular increase in ambient light.

So it is strictly a function of the amount of light reaching the sensor. Just to be clear.

Click through to see it at 800px … it is a bit more obvious what is happening.

Now, about movies. Well, Fuji still have really poor ambient lighting in dark situations like this, which is unfortunate. But at least the ORBs are not a bit issue. Of course, this will be because of how little light actually falls on the frame. I suspect they are shooting at far too low an ISO …

Anyway …