Quoted By:
I'm OP and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I just btfo'd myself.
I tried using the same aperture/SS settings, for a dark scene in the night. A cityscape. What you see is a 100% crop.
I tried ISO 100 and ISO 2000 on a full frame Canon with an f/2.8 lens.
If I push the ISO 100 photo to match the EV of the ISO 2000, I get all kinds of ugly banding noise. Specially in the shadows.
The ISO 2000 is usable, the banding noise is present but doesn't take over. On the ISO 100, the magenta bands take over fogging up the entire picture. I can push the ISO 2000 1.5 EV before it starts being visible. But the ISO 100 needs over 2.5 stops to see anything in it, and by the time the brightness matches the ISO 2000 shot pushed +1.5 EV (+4.65 EV on the ISO 100 shot), it's all banding. Looks as if someone put a slide of a Burberry pattern over the photo. In areas other than the sky I can push the ISO 2000 up to +5 EV (maxed out on Lr) and the banding isn't noticeable. And although noticeable in the sky, it's not nearly as bad as in the ISO 100 shot, where you can't even see the sky is blue
And when it comes to the
