Digital Home Thoughts: Dpreview: High ISO Article

"Until a couple of years ago compact digital camera manufacturers were happy to admit that small, high resolution sensors lacked the sensitivity to offer high ISO modes - anything over ISO 400 was very rare indeed. This is unfortunate because there are many times when the ability to shoot in low light without flash is either essential or at the very least highly desirable. From low-light landscapes to atmospheric portraits to high speed sports there are endless situations where a higher sensitivity setting offers huge benefits (something SLR users take for granted). The issue of high ISO performance on compacts first raised its head with the launch in 2005 of the Fujifilm FinePix F10, which was the first camera to offer anything close to usable ISO 800 and ISO 1600 performance (later refined in the FinePix F30 and FinePix F31fd) - a unique selling point in a market full of barely discernible models from a wide range of manufacturers."

More and more point-and-shoot cameras come with those high sensitivity modes/high ISO capabilities, and we have discussed here on DMT about how these high ISO settings don't take very good pictures (tending more to the grainy images). And this article here disccuses exactly this issue. The article on Dpreview believes that consumers are often being misled by the manufacturers when it comes to the actual performance of most cameras at higher ISO settings and in low light. Nice read.