Nikon D800 "Real world" High ISO

[kobuspotgieter]

Had the chance to see what the D800 would really look like at high ISO's over the weekend

1. ISO 900


2. ISO 1250


3. ISO 2500


4. ISO 6400

[DanieBenade]

Looks great, is this straight out of the camera or did you do some NR?

[kobuspotgieter]

Danie, the images went through my normal processing which include Nik Dfine.

[Mark Dumbleton]

Kobus, are you able to post 100% crops straight from camera? Ie, no processing...

[Morkel Erasmus]

looks good Kobus - downsizing for web obviously also taken into consideration.
would you mind posting a 100% crop from RAW without any PP applied??

[Forgiss - Sean Nel]

Just a note here on Kobus' workflow:

It's all good and well to look at the noise without PP and RAW (although I understand that Nikon already applies NR to RAW files?) but I think a better test is how well an image cleans up when it goes through a standard NR process from your RAW files.

The new cameras and sensors seems to handle the "cleanup" process much better than the older sensors. What I mean is that one the older sensors, the noise became blotchy in many instances while cleaning up. The new sensors handles that much better and the cleaned up image looks a lot more natural.

In the end, isn't it about the final image?

By the way, the D800 is spectacular, pretty much everybody agrees on that. And if you stay within it's optimum use parameters (get your exposure right in camera, etc) you will not be disappointed.

[Grant Atkinson]

Thanks for posting these Kobus, so it would appear you definitely have a camera that allows you to make use of iso 6400 for web use with no problem. Impressive results and good news for the wildlife photographers out there...
cheers
Grant

[kobuspotgieter]

What part of the image you want the 100% crop from (in focus/out of focus) ?

I am also willing to mail anyone interested a RAW file to play with. PM me with your email address if you are interested.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Just a note here on Kobus' workflow:

It's all good and well to look at the noise without PP and RAW (although I understand that Nikon already applies NR to RAW files?) but I think a better test is how well an image cleans up when it goes through a standard NR process from your RAW files.

The new cameras and sensors seems to handle the "cleanup" process much better than the older sensors. What I mean is that one the older sensors, the noise became blotchy in many instances while cleaning up. The new sensors handles that much better and the cleaned up image looks a lot more natural.

In the end, isn't it about the final image?

By the way, the D800 is spectacular, pretty much everybody agrees on that. And if you stay within it's optimum use parameters (get your exposure right in camera, etc) you will not be disappointed.

Good points, Sean.

What I meant was - show me a 100% crop from a RAW file after you've opened it in PS - in other words, apply your standard RAW conversion which may include the slight NR we all do in LR or Adobe Camera Raw, but then show the image without any further PS PP applied. Make more sense?


Kobus - the face of the pig would do fine in the ISO6400 example.

Cheers...

[kobuspotgieter]

1. 100% crop of the iso 6400, 36mp file. CS5 default. I always use Capture NX2, but Capture do apply the noise reduction setting you choose in-camera. Believe the Adobe file is without NR?



2. 100% crop of file downsized to +-12mp. CS5 default



3. 100% crop of +-12mp file after processing

[FrancoisCloete]

Hats off, these results are impressive...

[Morkel Erasmus]

Looks more or less like I expected Kobus. It looks good for the sensor and pixel pitch applied...really good. The first crop looks pretty much how my 7D used to look at that ISO at full res.

The in-camera crop factor is also a bonus. I read that EJ Peiker is using his almost exclusively in the 1.2x crop mode, this improves corner sharpness with most lenses.