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Nikon D3: the new high ISO king

Until one year ago, the noise has been the Achille's heel of Nikon cameras. The new Nikon D3, announced in September 2007, has been a revolutionary improvement for Nikon: its 35mm fullframe sensor may be the very best on the SLR market, in terms of ISO performance. I have had the possibility to test the Nikon D3 for few hours (thanks Simone Tossani!) and I have taken various sample shots at high ISO, from 3200 to 25600...the results are fantastic! I am used to the high quality, low noise Canon sensors, but the Nikon D3 is even better - I'd say that it is about 1.5-2 stops better than Canon 1DsIII, and 1 stop better than Canon 1DIII!

A quick comparison between Nikon D3 and Canon 1DIII

	Canon EOS 1D Mark III	Nikon D3
Resolution	10.10 megapixels	12.10 megapixels
Sensor Size	APS-H (1.3x)	FF (1.0x)
Autofocus	19 AF sensors	51 AF sensors
ISO sensitivities	50 - 6400	ISO 100–25,600
Shutter speeds	30" - 1/8000 + B	30" - 1/8000 + B
Continuous shooting speed	10 FPS for 30 RAW	9 FPS for 17 RAW
LCD screen	3.0", 230.000 pixels TFT screen	3.0", 920.000 pixels TFT screen
Live view	Yes	Yes
Weather sealing	Yes	Yes
Dimensions (W) x (H) x (D)	156 x 156.6 x 79.9mm	160 x 157 x 88mm
Weight (Body only)	1,155g	1,240g
Price	$ 4,050	$ 4,500 + $ 500 buffer upgrade
Announced	2007	2007

Even though the D3 and the 1DIII are similar cameras (both are aimed at sport and wildlife photographers), there are some important differences. The Canon camera has only the advantage of lower price, while the Nikon D3 has a larger, fullframe sensor, that is a great choice even for landscape photographers; in spite of the higher resolution, it has larger photosites, that heps to achieve its extraordinary high ISO performance. I have not done side-by-side comparisons, but I'd say that there is about one stop of difference between these two cameras, at the hightest ISO setting (i.e. ISO 6400 on Nikon D3 looks like ISO 3200 on Canon 1DIII).

In the field: sample photos and 100% crops

These photo are tests shots (they are not meant to be artistic in any way ;-) ) that I have taken to evaluate the high ISO performances of Nikon D3. For every photo, I have showed both an unprocessed 100 % (converted from the RAW file with ACR on neutral setting and with no noise reduction) and a crop from the post-processed photo.

Nikon D3, ISO 3200 - entire photo, resized to 720px:

100% (not processed) crop:

100% (processed) crop:

ISO 3200 on Nikon D3 is absolutely impressive - if the subject is quite bright, as in this photo, it is almost noiseless, and even with dark subjects it shows very low noise. You should not be worried to use this sensitivity - image quality is great!

Nikon D3, ISO 6400 - entire photo, resized to 720px:

100% (not processed) crop:

100% (processed) crop:

At ISO 6400, the image quality is still impressively good - it is possible to get excellent 30x45 centimeters prints with this quality! When necessary, I wouldn't hesitate to use ISO 6400 on Nikon D3.

Nikon D3, ISO 12800 - entire photo, resized to 720px:

100% (not processed) crop:

100% (processed) crop:

ISO 12800 (twelve thousand!!!) is even more impressive...even though the noise is clearly visible, in particular in the shadows, the quality is still perfectly usable, if you expose well (it is essential to avoid underexposure) and with a good post processing.

Nikon D3, ISO 25600 - entire photo, resized to 720px:

100% (not processed) crop:

100% (processed) crop:

ISO 25600 sounds alomst unbelievable, and indeed it really pushes the limits of the excellent D3 sensor - the image quality is clearly worse than 12800; it is ok for web sized photos, and for small prints, but I would not recommend to use it unless there are no other ways to get the photo. However, when the subject is more important than image quality - e.g. photojournalism - this setting can still be considered useable.