Backyard Series #54 (ISO 3200)

Michigan Michael · Post by **Michigan Michael** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 9:30 am

I recently got my hands on a Nikon D3 and wanted to test the claims that it produces low noise at high ISO's.

Here are two photos taken at ISO 3200 with minimal noise reduction set on the camera. Not bad!

augusthouse · Post by **augusthouse** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 4:34 pm

Not bad at all Michael!

Do you still have the D3? Could you take a long exposure (1-3 secs) under low light?

Craig

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:20 am

Could we also have a little 100% crop of one of those shots at ISO1600? (Not that I could think about a D3 for quite a while but just out of interest!!)

Looks pretty ##### good at web resolution.. I wouldn't dream of shooting ISO1600 on any of my cameras!

rovebeetle · Post by **rovebeetle** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 8:31 am

The D3 is an awesome camera. I have one since 2 weeks and I am still astonished at what this camera produces. So far I detected only 2 disadvantages: 1) the shutter noise is very loud, 2) I cannot remove a battery grip to make it lighter

.

The high ISO capability is what is most talked about, and the camera holds up to its expectations. But what I appreciate even more is the enourmous capability to hold highlights. Even when highlights "seem" to be blown - a thing that happens much less than with a D200 - you can retrieve a lot in NX2. Right now, I think only the Fuji sensor has even more dynamic range.

The high ISO behaviour has another advantage. It is much easier to handhold macro shots in bad light or to freeze movements in bad light without a flash.
I have used my D200 up to ISO 1600 when necessary, especially when I was shooting theater performances, and got quite good results (correct WB and correct exposure are the watch words). But with the D3 I do not even think that a pic might get noisy at 1600. I recently shot some ambient light pics backstage at ISO 3200 in very poor light. After downloading the images I could not believe my eyes. I had to zoom in to 100% to see the little bit of noise.

This is very important for a lazy tripod carrier as I am

.

Have not done any macro shots yet, but they will follow as summer wears on.

Cheers

Argusray · Post by **Argusray** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:06 am

The shots are amazing for ISO 1600. As requested above, it would be nice to have a full frame view to better understand how much of a crop we're seeing.

Argusray

Michigan Michael · Post by **Michigan Michael** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:16 am

Perhaps I should have posted this topic under the "Equipment" section?

Well, I'm not sure about my technique but here's what I did.
I shot this photo in Raw and converted to Jpg and applied a little unsharp mask.
The first photo is full frame ISO 1600.
The second photo is a crop of the photo at 100%.
The third photo is the same as #2, but with a small reduction in noise using Imagenomic Noiseware. I didn't think that it needed noise-reduction, but I thought that I'd show what it would look like.

Tomorrow I'll post what a long exposure (2 seconds) looks like.

Michigan Michael · Post by **Michigan Michael** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 4:42 am

These next two photos demonstrate what effect "long" exposures might have on the D3's performance.

The first photo is another 100% crop taken with an exposure of 2 seconds and at an ISO of 200.

I thought that I'd push the limits a bit in the 2nd photo and include two noise-producing elements: long exposure and high ISO. The bottom one was shot at 2 seconds and ISO 1600.

rovebeetle · Post by **rovebeetle** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 5:27 am

The first of the ISO 1600 shots looks unusually noisy, while the 2sec exposure ISO 1600 shot looks like what I usually get at that sensitivity.

BTW - Noiseware Pro is probably the best NR software at the moment - efficient, fast and preserves detail very well.

Cheers