OK
Here is why Cliff Mautners results are IMO the best high iso examples we have seen yet.....
First of all he is showing us an iso progression so we can see the difference between 800, 3200, and 6400.
Second they are edited professionally. This is HELLA important because (at least for me) I edit all my pictures before anyone sees them so part of ISO performance happens in the computer.
Third and MOST important.... THEY ARE WELL EXPOSED SHOTS!!!!!
This is paramount. I can shoot my D3 at iso 12800 and if I have a good exposure I get virtually NO noise. It is grainy but TOTALLY acceptable. The problem with a lot of high iso shots that people take and show is that they have really terrible exposures that lead to more problems with noise. If you under or over expose a high iso shot you are going to have a bad picture no matter the camera.
Cliff could have shot that shot of the bride at 25600 and it would have looked FINE because he had a great exposure.
Kudos to him for actually knowing what is going on.
He claims ISO is on par with the D700 and D3....That makes it a Canon killer if that is how it truly shakes out.
I cannot imagine what the D4 will be like.
ISO. In my opinion, from the results I achieved, the ISO performance is about equal to a D3. It is in no way a D4, and wasn’t intended to be. It’s not a D3S either. You should expect it to perform close to the D700 and D3 with respect to ISO
Ok, ISO performance. I was really surprised that it performed just about as well as a D3 with regard to ISO. This seems to be one of the biggest concerns. It's not a concern to me. Now, I won't be using the D800 in the most extreme low light conditions. That's where the D4 will be utilized. But as you can see, it's not much of an issue. ...Show more →
Those are two comments from Cliff Mautner, who is reviewing the D800, and blogging about it, for Nikon. He spends more time extolling features, especially improved autofocus.
Given the remark about "extreme low light conditions" I am more inclined than previously to assume that the D800 will not prove to be a great camera for natural light—hence not a great landscape camera.
Yesterday I downloaded a few 800e high iso samples and ran them through dfine (the nr program I happen to use - I'm sure others are just as good).
Results look great to me. These were jpegs though - would be fun to find some raw files (nefs converted to dng at this point I guess as I'm not sure if my nx2 will see these files yet).
Anyway, 36mp with these iso's is very promising I think.
splathrop wrote:
Those are two comments from Cliff Mautner, who is reviewing the D800, and blogging about it, for Nikon. He spends more time extolling features, especially improved autofocus.
Given the remark about "extreme low light conditions" I am more inclined than previously to assume that the D800 will not prove to be a great camera for natural light—hence not a great landscape camera.
@ hardlyboring, Mautner is now omitting shutter speeds from his example data. So there is no way to even guess at EV. That means the examples might not be at all representative of noise in real world use, where EVs tend to be low at high ISO—but perhaps you would call such shots poorly exposed. Note also that in his remarks Mautner says he plans to use the D800 as a portrait specialist, preferring the D4 for his other wedding work.
I am going to go out on a limb about your Canon killer remark, and tentatively (because data are still thin) predict that the current Canon 5D II will continue as a better landscape camera than the D800. It will be interesting if Canon brings out a 5D III to see if they choose a different route down megapixel road, or instead chase after Nikon. If it's the latter, then I suspect the Nikon D700 and the Canon 5D II will continue as the landscape cameras of choice pending further announcements. But it would not surprise me to discover that the yet-to-be-released Canon 1DX, at only 18mp, might outperform them both—as it ought to for the (incredibly high) price.
splathrop wrote:
@ hardlyboring, Mautner is now omitting shutter speeds from his example data. So there is no way to even guess at EV. That means the examples might not be at all representative of noise in real world use,
Image noise is not dependent on the amount of light. It depends on the exposure, ie how much of that light is allowed to enter the camera.
splathrop wrote:
I am going to go out on a limb about your Canon killer remark, and tentatively (because data are still thin) predict that the current Canon 5D II will continue as a better landscape camera than the D800.It will be interesting if Canon brings out a 5D III to see if they choose a different route down megapixel road, or instead chase after Nikon. If it's the latter, then I suspect the Nikon D700 and the Canon 5D II will continue as the landscape cameras of choice pending further announcements.
So the 5DM2 beats the D800 for landscape because it has fewer megapixels? By that logic the 5DM2 is beaten by the 5D/D700 because they have even fewer megapixels, even though the former has less noise, and the D800 has less noise still.
@ drdrew, it's Mautner who wrote the stuff in color, not me. The way you have it is going to confuse readers.
As to "wha?" Care to expand on that?
Anticipating that you are surprised that I am skeptical of the D800 as a landscape camera, note that Mautner also said he plans to use the D800 as a portrait specialist at weddings—meaning studio flash. If I plan to go out and shoot a pre-sunrise seascape, I don't know what to do with a camera that can't—without a flash—keep the noise down, the shutter speed up, and the aperture at least middling. No camera now on the market does that as well as I would like, so I am definitely looking. But it seems like the D800 is being purposed in another direction entirely.
