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Nikon D800 noise same as D7100 - D600 closer to D4.

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Debankur Mukherjee

Debankur Mukherjee

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Dear All,

I have been comparing the chroma / grey and black noise profile of D800 , D600,D7100 and D4 at the following URL.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d600/13

and found the noise profile of 800 and 7100 to be very close to each other but the D600 is close to the D4 which is way better then D800.Therefore if one is looking for low light photography which one is better - D800 or D600 when both the files are viewed at 100% ?

Kindly provide your input and comments.

Thanks in advance.
 
Per pixel noise (viewed at 100%) in the D800 is definitely more but when the image is resized to 24MP to match the D600 resolution they are about even. The D7100 is about a stop behind (which is always going to be the case with a DX sensor using the same technology as a comparable FX sensor, since the area of a DX sensor is a little less than half the area of FX). In regards to comparing to the D4 there is not much between a D800, D600, and D4, up to about ISO 3200 and then the D4 starts to pull ahead at 6400. Of course at base ISO the D600 and D800 have more dynamic and tonal range. The D600 and D800 (and D7100) use a sensor technology that maximizes performance at base ISO (Sony Exmor), while D4 uses a Nikon sensor that maximizes high ISO capability.
 
That is pretty much useless. The only usable comparison is at the same image size. Either upscale the D600 or downscale the D800. Otherwise you could find several cameras many years older that would do just as good or better...
 
Debankur Mukherjee said:
Debankur Mukherjee wrote:

Dear All,

I have been comparing the chroma / grey and black noise profile of D800 , D600,D7100 and D4 at the following URL.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d600/13

and found the noise profile of 800 and 7100 to be very close to each other but the D600 is close to the D4 which is way better then D800.Therefore if one is looking for low light photography which one is better - D800 or D600 when both the files are viewed at 100% ?

Kindly provide your input and comments.

Thanks in advance.

--
D.Mukherjee
Click to expand...
Hi D.Mukherjee,

I think it 's not much use to compare them all at their own resolution. Correctly resizing the images of the D800 to that of D4 or D600 will give you a more logic approach.

I had that same useless debate with a colleague of me who uses his 5D Mark III a lot and we did some comparisons. Noting that his files looked so much cleaner, till I resized mine out of the D800 to that of 5700 pixels widest length. Not only did it hold more detail, but the files were cleaner too. but again no use to compare 2 camera's aimed at different usage and of different brands which are not interchangeable in any way...it's like comparing testicles of ants and elephants.


Have to say, I do not own a D4 but still use my D3S a lot. What I do notice is that the D800 files at that of the resolution of the D3S gives similar sometimes (depending on the situation) better results at very high iso's like 6400 and 12800.

The D800 is specifically designed to be used under controlled conditions, it's not the king if high ISO. That is at full sized images. Reducing the file sizes to that of the D600 or D4 might surprise you.

Michel

--
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Last edited:
Debankur Mukherjee said:
Dear All,

I have been comparing the chroma / grey and black noise profile of D800 , D600,D7100 and D4 at the following URL.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d600/13

and found the noise profile of 800 and 7100 to be very close to each other but the D600 is close to the D4 which is way better then D800.Therefore if one is looking for low light photography which one is better - D800 or D600 when both the files are viewed at 100% ?

Kindly provide your input and comments.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
 
but if the D600 files has less noise then D800 at 100% view then will the D600 have less noise when both the files are scaled to same size.......
 
no text
 
Glen78 said:
Glen78 wrote:

The D7100 is about a stop behind (which is always going to be the case with a DX sensor using the same technology as a comparable FX sensor, since the area of a DX sensor is a little less than half the area of FX).
Click to expand...
Until you get DOF in the equation, which you should, then DX and FX are about equal regarding noise.
 
Debankur Mukherjee said:
Debankur Mukherjee wrote:

but if the D600 files has less noise then D800 at 100% view then will the D600 have less noise when both the files are scaled to same size.......
Click to expand...
No.

.
 
Debankur Mukherjee said:
Debankur Mukherjee wrote:

Dear All,

I have been comparing the chroma / grey and black noise profile of D800 , D600,D7100 and D4 at the following URL.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d600/13

and found the noise profile of 800 and 7100 to be very close to each other but the D600 is close to the D4 which is way better then D800.Therefore if one is looking for low light photography which one is better - D800 or D600 when both the files are viewed at 100% ?

Kindly provide your input and comments.

Thanks in advance.

--
D.Mukherjee
Click to expand...
When downsized to the D600 size, the downsizing process eliminates a lot of the noise leaving it marginally cleaner at the highest ISO and with better sharpness.

If you run slight NR on the D800 before downsizing, you get better results then when just running NR on the D600, because of the extra detail.

So for equivalent prints I prefer the D800.
 
Thanks for the reply. Then can it be said that in future we may see even more pixels packed into a FF sensor so that when its downsized it will give even clearer photographs...may be a 100 MP FF sensor having better resolution then a D800 at present....
 
There will definitely be diminishing benefit at resolutions higher than 36MP, however the nature of the Bayer sensor will still benefit from more sampling, especially regarding accurate color rendition, even if it does not necessarily produce more useable detail.
 
Glen78 said:
Glen78 wrote:

There will definitely be diminishing benefit at resolutions higher than 36MP, however the nature of the Bayer sensor will still benefit from more sampling, especially regarding accurate color rendition, even if it does not necessarily produce more useable detail.
Click to expand...
This is true of course, but the diminishing returns will also start to kick in at some point. I would say small digicams hit the sensible limit around 12 MP, but they were not using DSLR lenses.

I guess however you could "group" pixels to increase the colour accuracy and create a 25 MP image from a 100MP sensor, but with less noise and better DR.
 
I could definitely see this happening but I think you would also likely be able to use the sensor at full resolution with a traditional demosaicing algorithm and at 1/4 resolution with each pixel having full color information from its four combined pixels (1R, 1B, 2G). Demosaicing may still be preferable to avoid an oversharpened look and moire issues.
 
I don't think storage concerns are going to stop camera makers from pushing pixel counts to the limits of what can be manufactured in a cost effective way. I do think they will introduce the option to shoot in lower resolution RAW files though in the same way you can shoot lower resolution JPGs now. This will allow you to use the resolution when you need it but also have the option to shooter smaller sized images that can still be saved in RAW format.
 
Glen78 said:
Glen78 wrote:

I don't think storage concerns are going to stop camera makers from pushing pixel counts to the limits of what can be manufactured in a cost effective way. I do think they will introduce the option to shoot in lower resolution RAW files though in the same way you can shoot lower resolution JPGs now. This will allow you to use the resolution when you need it but also have the option to shooter smaller sized images that can still be saved in RAW format.
Click to expand...
Possibly, but I think it's more likely we'll see some more exotic algorithms applied to the image processing - graphics cards are becoming pretty powerful and memory is cheap.

It all depends where in the image pipeline the bottleneck is. With current lenses I still reckon 50MP (effective) is "good enough" even if it is from a 200MP back-lit sensor with 4 site sampling.

No moire either.

But if camera makers really wanted to they could produce algorithms for demosaicing which could be "plugged in" to generic RAW converters if your PC or MAC had the horsepower.

This is near enough what Fuji are doing for Xtrans and Sigma for the Foveon.

I think image processing still has a long way to go.
 
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