The Phoblographer

Photography: Think Simpler

Freeze Your Camera, Get Better High ISO?

with 12 comments

Freezing your camera apparently gives you better high ISO. That’s what one user is claiming to say on 4Chan’s /p/ thread. Apparently the user stuck his Sony A350 in the freezer and got better results at ISO 3200. More on this after the jump.

This is the thread I’m talking about (WARNING SLIGHTLY NSFW)

This is the user’s EXIF Data.

And here are his results.

Pretty crazy now, isn’t it? ISO 3200 is the highest the A350 can go. For the pixel peepers to reference, here is DPReview’s charts on ISO 3200 with the A350. By all means though, freeze your camera at your own risk. It would be interesting to see the results with one of the tough point and shoot cameras made though.

This could possibly be just a troll, however not many people have seemingly tried this.

Feel free to weigh in on this in the comments below.

Update: It seems legit!! See photo below.


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Written by Chris Gampat

January 22nd, 2010 at 12:51 pm

Posted in Cameras

Tagged with , , ,

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  • olliegapper

    well it is on 4chan so im thinking a bit of noise ninja could be used to persuade innocent people to freeze their cameras. lol

    • http://thephoblographer.wordpress.com Chris Gampat

      I’m actually wondering about how this could possibly work with something like a Pentax W80.

  • http://craftingphotographs.com Richard Seiling

    Dedicated CCD cameras used for astronomical photography have chillers built in to achieve this effect.

  • http://www.ylovephoto.com/ Yves Roumazeilles

    This is basic physics with a little kitchen-approach to solutions. The noise in the digital sensor is a direct product of stray particles (mostly electrons) in the sensor. Freezing the sensor (like is routinely done in pro astronomy as mentionned by Richard Seiling) is a good way to reduce the sensor noise.

    However, the first obstacle you’ll find when freezing a whole camera is that some of the electronics (and the LCD) may stop working until the temperature goes up again. So, don’t go too low.

    And beware of frozen fingers when holding such a cold object.

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  • Kevin

    I falsely assumed this was already common knowledge among photography ‘experts’.

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  • http://www.sonydigitalcamera.info Sony Digital Camera

    Best SLR Digital For 2010

    Digital SLR comes from digital single lens reflex, which is named this way because of the mirror that sits behind the lens of the camera and sends the light to the viewfinder.

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