I'm toying with the idea of switching to Nikon as well. I had used a friends D200 a few months ago for a part of a wedding and the noise at anything over 400 was pretty bad, certainly no match for Canon.
Mike Mahoney wrote:
...I had used a friends D200 a few months ago for a part of a wedding and the noise at anything over 400 was pretty bad....
This lil statement right here proves that people see things differently, so anyone answering your question will have a different view. You are okay with up to 800, while he is not.
In any case, my question would be are both of you basing your opinions on actual prints or the screen? I ALWAYS find that looking at the screen (especially pixel peeping) doesn't not give you a true respect for the low noise in any camera.....but that's me, the non-pixel peeper.
cordellwillis wrote:
In any case, my question would be are both of you basing your opinions on actual prints or the screen? I ALWAYS find that looking at the screen (especially pixel peeping) doesn't not give you a true respect for the low noise in any camera.....but that's me, the non-pixel peeper.
Peace,
Cordell
I'd looked at both prints & the digital files on-screen. And have found that on larger prints the noise looks about the same as it does on screen. I do pixel-peep, often at 2-300% on screen for CA, etc.
I just visited the Nikonians site (for the first time in three or four years) and the consensus there seems to be that the D300 has a stop and a half advantage in noise compared to the D200, which would still make it unusable for me based on my short experience with the D200.
I'd like to give it a throw for weddings as their 17-55 seems a great lens but I can't work with 1600 as my max usable ISO.
Can you post high ISO pics at 100%. How sharp are the eyes compared to the noise reduction algorithm in the D300? I always shoot NEF and use Lightroom. And no, I will not use Capture NX.
I have found that with any in camera sharpening, the jpegs get noticable noise at all ISO's... turning off in camera sharpening eliminates noise up to 3200 IMHO.
I tried the D3 for a while, it was not for me. I wanted the smaller form.
I have 2 5d's so I thought I would continue with these. Then after a lot of playing with the 300 for a couple weeks, I quickly found they were all but as good in the noise dept. as the 5d's.
Results: Kept the 5D's for certain situations and to use with certain lenses (wide fast ones), but added two more 300's and am now using them for most of what I do.
This is D300 @ ISO 1600. This was the first night I had the D300 and I wanted to test the colors & noise from the D300 at ISO 1600. I wanted to get some colors as well as a lot of dark areas in the test photo. These are straight out of the camera + USM after the resize. Also note that these are shot in the standard color profile (picture control). The D2X Mode picture controls are supposed to have even less noise.
Thanks for those .. the Ken Rockwell link I provided above has the D300 looking pretty poor compared to the Canon offerings.
But I've since searched out several other sources and they show the D300 to be much better than the Rockwell samples .. not as noise free as Canon but not terribly bad as Rockwell showed.
Have you tried any noise reduction in post-precessing with the Nikon files? .. I'm wondering how they respond to Noise Ninja, etc.
I use two D300s for all my pro work, including weddings.
The cameras are capable in the focus department and handle well. I find that I must shoot RAW to get a decent skin tone. I process in Lightroom.
The high ISO noise is an issue. I don't trust them above 1600. I use auto ISO on one of the bodies, which works very well for candid shooting. The noise is comparable to the D2H noise.
The real issue with the D300 is reliability. The body I purchased in November has 4K on it and no problems. In January I purchased a second body. It failed in the first week of use; AF died. I took it back and got another body from the shop. It was dead out of the box. The clerk opened another one and fired it up. It would not focus, either. We opened another one, it didn't focus. Then we tried the demo. It didn't work either.
Finally, he found one from a different serial number. It worked and I took it home.
That body failed at a wedding Saturday, just as the B&G were making their processional into the hall. AF died. 1,400 clicks on the body.
These problems remind me of the D2H body I had. It failed five times -- meter, shutter, AF. It was a nightmare. Nikon finally recognized it was a lemon and replaced it.
If you don't mind buying at least THREE D300 bodies, you might be able to get away with using them for weddings. I am down to one and thinking Canon 5D.
Nikon's QC on the D300, in my experience, has been totally pathetic.
Carl Feather wrote:
I use two D300s for all my pro work, including weddings.
The cameras are capable in the focus department and handle well. I find that I must shoot RAW to get a decent skin tone. I process in Lightroom.
The high ISO noise is an issue. I don't trust them above 1600. I use auto ISO on one of the bodies, which works very well for candid shooting. The noise is comparable to the D2H noise.
The real issue with the D300 is reliability. The body I purchased in November has 4K on it and no problems. In January I purchased a second body. It failed in the first week of use; AF died. I took it back and got another body from the shop. It was dead out of the box. The clerk opened another one and fired it up. It would not focus, either. We opened another one, it didn't focus. Then we tried the demo. It didn't work either.
Finally, he found one from a different serial number. It worked and I took it home.
That body failed at a wedding Saturday, just as the B&G were making their processional into the hall. AF died. 1,400 clicks on the body.
These problems remind me of the D2H body I had. It failed five times -- meter, shutter, AF. It was a nightmare. Nikon finally recognized it was a lemon and replaced it.
If you don't mind buying at least THREE D300 bodies, you might be able to get away with using them for weddings. I am down to one and thinking Canon 5D.
Nikon's QC on the D300, in my experience, has been totally pathetic....Show more →
WOW .. that's bad luck, my experience with Nikon was excellent but that was four years ago.
Mike Mahoney wrote:
Thanks for those .. the Ken Rockwell link I provided above has the D300 looking pretty poor compared to the Canon offerings.
But I've since searched out several other sources and they show the D300 to be much better than the Rockwell samples .. not as noise free as Canon but not terribly bad as Rockwell showed.
Have you tried any noise reduction in post-precessing with the Nikon files? .. I'm wondering how they respond to Noise Ninja, etc.
I'm not a fan of Ken Rockwell much. Can you link his ISO tests with the camera? I know a lot of people say megapixels are a myth, but I COMPLETELY DISAGREE. More megapixels mean more compression mean less ISO noise. Obviously my posts above are compressed a lot, but I already deleted the originals, so I can't post 100% crops.
Anyway, I have only had the D300 going on 4 days now and have yet to mess with noise reduction methods. I loaded the D2X Mode picture controls on Saturday and I'm wanting to sit down and do a comparison between the 3 modes (and standard, vivid, etc). Supposedly the D2X Mode has much better skin tones, dynamic range and even better high ISO noise performance. I did shoot D2X Mode "3" on Saturday for some little league baseball and found a definite improvement of skin tones.
KrautFed wrote:
Can you link his ISO tests with the camera?
An earlier post of mine in this thread has the Rockwell link, and I found several more by googling "D300 high iso samples".
Seems Rockwell set his in-camera NR to the point where it obliterated detail. I've never been a big fan of in-camera NR and would like to see some files with a good NN profile.
