Canon 5D III RAW @12800 w/ NR in LR4

[jrista]

Someone in the photo.stackexchange.com chatroom posted this link to a 5D Mark III High ISO test: http://johncarnessali.com/lens-tests/3201.

For being ISO 12800, the non-NR versions look pretty darn good. Much better than I've ever seen out of my 7D @ ISO 3200, and in many cases better than I've seen with my 7D @ ISO 1600.

[nightbreath]

Please remove the ending dot from your URL

[jrista]

Please remove the ending dot from your URL

HAH! Sorry, fixed. (Damnable periods... )

[JR]

Wow these are really nice indeed.  ISO 6400 is so clean in that example.  Great shot composition to make such comparison.  ISO 12,800 is very nice too!

Ok, now where can I find a body only mkIII!  Darn!

[shizam1]

Yeah, I did some tests last night, and there is plenty of noise @ ISO 3200, but noise reduction can make it look better.  It did look better than the 5DII though, though not sure about sharpness.  I also used LR4

[vWings]

Very nice.  What version dog? 

[Daniel Flather]

How did he get that dog to sit still?

[KKCFamilyman]

They look good but my intent is to migrate to this camera fro. The 60d and maybe the technology is just not there yet because there was still noise at iso 3200 on a camera rated for 25600 boosting to 102,400. I'm beginning to wonder if i should wait for a new sensor design or something because for that amount of money in 2012 you would think they woukd be noiseless thru 102,400 on aps-c by now.

[Invertalon]

Here is an image I took this past week... ISO 25,600... Processed the RAW in LR4 just now. Just my standard sharpening/NR... Which is something like 50/0.9 for sharpening and 20 for NR. Very light NR. Click below to view full resolution. Great detail for such high ISO.


6M3C1385 by invertalon, on Flickr

[jrista]

Here is an image I took this past week... ISO 25,600... Processed the RAW in LR4 just now. Just my standard sharpening/NR... Which is something like 50/0.9 for sharpening and 20 for NR. Very light NR. Click below to view full resolution. Great detail for such high ISO.

... img clipped ...

Nice! The improved SNR can really be seen at these high ISO's. While the dimmer parts of the scene does show noise (very nice "grainy" noise, almost like film grain if you ask me!), the brighter tones are very clean. Personally, I find that far more valuable than increased maximum DR at ISO 100 and 200.

[V8Beast]

People love my bird shots...and most of them see mere PRINTS, which probably have about 6 stops of DR at most!

Who cares about prints? It's all about blowing your images up to 100%, and popping wood over all the detail you can see

[Invertalon]

Nice! The improved SNR can really be seen at these high ISO's. While the dimmer parts of the scene does show noise (very nice "grainy" noise, almost like film grain if you ask me!), the brighter tones are very clean. Personally, I find that far more valuable than increased maximum DR at ISO 100 and 200.

I agree... I tend to shoot a lot of high ISO stuff (3200-12,800) in the fall for Halloween events and the improvement at the high end is great. Like you said, the noise is there for sure, but the quality of noise is the big draw here.

People seem to forget that these insanely high ISO's are also good for achieving greater DOF in poor lighting. There are sometimes where although you have f/1.4 at your disposal, you want f/2 or f/2.8, but already at ISO 6400... The 5D3 allows you to crank it up to 25,600 and still have a relatively nice looking image...

I will even use 51,200 no problem with the 5D3... It is my upper limit on this camera, although I prefer to stay with the native ones, if at all possible.

[jrista]

People love my bird shots...and most of them see mere PRINTS, which probably have about 6 stops of DR at most!

Who cares about prints? It's all about blowing your images up to 100%, and popping wood over all the detail you can see

A good night in is turning the tevision off and pixel peeping a 36mp landscape 

Now Landscapes are an area where I honestly believe the D800 will really shine. I would love to have 36mp at my disposal for my landscape work...that would be amazing.

[poias]

People love my bird shots...and most of them see mere PRINTS, which probably have about 6 stops of DR at most!

Who cares about prints? It's all about blowing your images up to 100%, and popping wood over all the detail you can see

A good night in is turning the tevision off and pixel peeping a 36mp landscape 

Now Landscapes are an area where I honestly believe the D800 will really shine. I would love to have 36mp at my disposal for my landscape work...that would be amazing.

But, but, prints only have DR of 6 and I who is going to have time to scan through the picture for unnecessary "details"? My facebook album can show enough detail on my iphone!

[jrista]

People love my bird shots...and most of them see mere PRINTS, which probably have about 6 stops of DR at most!

Who cares about prints? It's all about blowing your images up to 100%, and popping wood over all the detail you can see

A good night in is turning the tevision off and pixel peeping a 36mp landscape 

Now Landscapes are an area where I honestly believe the D800 will really shine. I would love to have 36mp at my disposal for my landscape work...that would be amazing.

But, but, prints only have DR of 6 and I who is going to have time to scan through the picture for unnecessary "details"? My facebook album can show enough detail on my iphone!

When it comes to landscapes, it IS about the shadow recovery. You ETTR as much as you can to capture as much DR as possible. Highlights will look clipped on screen, but they should be recoverable so long as you didn't actually clip them in-camera. With the low read noise of Sony sensors, you can still recover additional shadow detail, and compress it into a narrower dynamic range (i.e. 5-7 stops for print.) I do this with my Canon 450D and 7D, and it works quite well (Canon cameras have greater highlight headroom in most cases than Nikon cameras do), however shadow recovery is definitely more limited than with a Nikon camera.

I would indeed expect the D800 to excel as a landscape camera, and even if Canon released a 40mp+ competitor, unless they reduce read noise to lower levels, I would still expect the D800 to be a superior landscape photography camera.