Generic Placebo. The name of my new garage band. Or... a bold, new marketing initiative?

 It was the heat. I blame it on the heat. That's why I forgot to include some much needed information about this image when I posted it a few days ago on another blog post. This is an example of what some photographers take pictures of when they go through their days always keeping a camera over the shoulder, or in close reach. Nothing astounding or earth-shattering. Just an arrangement of roses. But revelatory for me because of what the exif told me later. 

The image was taken with a Leica SL2, a camera that was considered to have very high resolution when it was first introduced. And, as most of us believe, the trade-off of a camera with high resolution (and correspondingly smaller pixels) is that the images generated become noisier as the ISO goes up. Some pundits, having reviewed the SL2 for a day or so before rushing to make YouTube "review" suggested that the camera "tops out" at around 1600 ISO and that above that the noise is so repulsive as to render the files unusable. I question just how proficient some "reviewers" are at establishing a correct exposure...

This ho-hum image was taken handheld at ISO 6400. The aperture was f4.0 and the shutter speed was 1/50th of a second. I imported the .DNG file into Lightroom and tweaked a few settings before outputting it here as a Jpeg. I examined the image in Lightroom at 100% (and that's a big file!) and could just start to see some monochromatic (luminance) noise at that magnification. Five seconds with the luminance slider in the LR noise reduction panel rendered it mostly invisible. And that's at 100% magnification.

There are few current APS-C or full frame (35mm) cameras that I can fault for their high ISO performance; unless we start the conversation with the premise that 12,000 or 25,000 ISO are the thresholds for "high ISO." If we stick with normal, very usable ISOs of 1600, 3200 and 6400 I would say that any current, full frame camera does a better than decent job at holding its head above water in that range. 

I have read repeatedly that the Leica SL2-S, because of its lower resolution (24M) and its BSI sensor construction is a much superior low light performer. That may be but coming from earlier generations of digital cameras; and especially those APS-C cameras brought to market in the early 2000s (looking at you, Nikon D2X) I'm so happy not to have to deal with the noise we saw there at ISO 400 that I'm content to cruise along with this level of 6400 ISO noise for a while. Maybe a long while.

Drop down the resolution either in post or when shooting Jpegs and the noise also seems to vanish. 

I'll be offering workshops to YouTube reviewers on "The Power of Not Underexposing." I hope plenty of them sign up. Maybe the first topic will be "Why Underexposing by Two Stops Isn't Bright." (get it?).

As to the headline of this particular post--- it's just nonsense. A fellow swimmer who is also a psychiatrist, was telling a funny story in the locker room after practice about a five gallon jar filled with colored pills that one hospital pharmacy kept behind the counter. A woman came in demanding a refill. Her medicine bottle was clearly marked as "placebo." A young intern checked with the pharmacist who checked records and then "refilled" the prescription with pills from the big jar. (All placebos). 

The woman complained that these pills were a different color than the last batch. The pharmacist quickly replied that these matched the prescription but these were "generic placebos."

In the moment, and told by a witty psychiatrist, I thought the story and the phrase were hilarious. I'm considering launching a P.R. company with the same name. Giving the clients what they deserve...