ISO 25,600 seems to be a little over kill but I was determined to find a reason to use it!
For those of you that don’t really know what ISO is, it’s the rating for light sensitivity and film grain (the same as ASA/DIN in film). The higher the ISO, the more light sensitive and grainer it becomes. You will see this in practice in the photos below. As a comparison, most compact cameras shoot between ISO 50 and 400. Whist many entry level digital SLR’s shoot at ISO 100-3200. Some now shoot upto ISO 12,800.
These two photographs were taken at around 1/5 second at f4, ISO 25,600 at 19:00 in the middle of winter. It was cold, dark and we had the most amazing birthday picnic on top of a hill!
It was completely dark and I couldn’t see the faces of the people around. Incredibly, the camera managed to capture more detail than I could with my eyes.
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26 600 ASA is quite impressive – with a stabilised lens, it must be getting on for a substitute for far-infra-red in some circumstances. I imagine you could probably process away some of the banding too (wonder what causes it…).
By the way, ISO pre-dates digital cameras and is supposed to be a combination of the old US and German standards. Strictly, 100 ASA is 100/21º ISO (which makes it a rather un-unified standard; the DIN part is increasingly ignored though): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_speed#Current_ISO_system