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Canon 1Ds Mark III vs. Nikon D3 in High ISO
August 22, 2008
Several recent reviews of the 1Ds Mark III have compared images directly to the D3. A direct pixel to pixel comparison of the images taken with these two cameras is relatively meaningless since the 1Ds3 has about 75% more pixels crammed into the same area. Naturally a much more fair comparison would be judge the two cameras at some final output size, ideally a print. There is a thread on the online photography forum FredMiranda.com that discusses some of this. I wanted to do a comparison myself. I should note that I am not comparing the many other features of these two cameras so this should not be taken as a thorough review of either camera. As far as I'm concerned these two cameras satisfy two very different needs and the both do a great job of satisfying their targeted markets.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 400, entire scene |
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| Nikon D3, ISO 400, entire scene |
Some notes of about how these images were taken. The Canon images were taken with the 70-200 f/2.8 lens, the Nikon images with a 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens. A tripod was used with mirror lockup. Autofocus was used to focus on the 'Tivo' logo in the upper right. Images were taken with manual exposure and the histogram was purposefully pushed to the right to get maximum shadow detail. All images were processed in Lightroom 2.0. The color profile was set to Adobe Standard Beta 1. All NR and sharpening settings were set to 0 and the black clipping was also set to 0. Any images with noise reduction had it applied in Photoshop with Noiseware Professional. The default setting of 'Stronger Color Noise' was used with some tweaking of detail protection sliders depending on the image. Of course if closer attention were paid to the NR settings, one could probably get an image more tweaked to their tastes.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 3200, 100% crop, no NR |
Nikon D3, ISO 3200, 100% crop, no NR |
Lets start off with full size images with no noise reduction. The 1Ds3 does a decent job of keeping noise down at its highest ISO setting, and though it has a lot more resolution than the D3, it appears its stronger AA filter is blurring some of the detail. The biggest difference here, which is a theme you'll see in the rest of this review is how little detail the 1Ds3 retains in the deep shadows, where as the D3 seems to hold onto to more information in these regions.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 3200, 100% crop, downsampled to 12mp |
Nikon D3, ISO 3200, 100% crop, no NR |
Now lets take a look at what happens if you downrez the 1Ds3 image to the size of the D3 image. This would be similar to making a small (i.e. 12x16) print with both images and examining them. The 1Ds3 looks better than above with the D3 having the slightest advantage in the deep shadow.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 3200, 100% crop, Noiseware NR applied at full size then downsampled to 12mp |
Nikon D3, ISO 3200, 100% crop, Noiseware NR applied |
Now we see what happens when we turn run the images from both cameras through noise reduction. This is probably more noise reduction than I would use on my images (I don't mind a little bit of luminance noise in many of my images). However we can see that files from both cameras take noise reduction well. The D3's shadows are now virtually noise free and there is just a hint of color blotches in the deep shadows of the 1Ds3. Its important to keep in mind that these images weren't capture sharpened and the sharpening settings in Noiseware were set to zero, so they do definitely need some sharpening.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 3200, 100% crop, no NR |
Nikon D3, ISO 3200, 100% crop, Upsampled to 21mp, no NR |
Now lets change things around and upsample the D3 image to be the same size as the This would be analogous to making a large print and viewing from the same distance. In this case, the 1Ds3's higher resolution definitely becomes apparent and seems to hold onto more detail.
These tests have been interesting, but one of the strong points of the D3 is its ability to shoot at ISO 6400 and beyond. The 1Ds3 only goes to ISO 3200 (and even that is with a custom function where the camera essentially shoots at 1600, underexposing by a stop and the exposure is then boosted in the camera). However by shooting at ISO 3200 and underexposing by up to 3 stops we can then boost the exposure in Lightroom to get image equivalent to ISO 6400, 12800, and 25600 respectively. Naturally the 1Ds3 images taken with these settings won't be able to compete with the D3 if we view both of them at 100%, rather we compare the 1Ds3 images downsampled and see what role NR can play.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 6400 (ISO 3200 -1 EC), 100% crop, down sampled to 12mp, no NR |
Nikon D3, ISO 6400, 100% crop, no NR |
Again we see the resolution advantage of the 1Ds3 provide more detail, however the D3 still holds the advantage in shadow noise. Now lets go up to ISO 12800.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 12800 (ISO 3200 -2 EC), 100% crop, down sampled to 12mp, no NR |
Nikon D3, ISO 12800, 100% crop, no NR |
We can definitely see here that the color noise even in well lit areas in the 1Ds3 image is getting intolerable. The D3 still manages to keep color noise down in highlight and midtone areas. The noise is also starting to take a toll on the detail in the 1Ds3 image. Now lets see what happens if we apply NR to the 1Ds3 image before downsampling and compare to a D3 image also with NR applied.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 12800 (ISO 3200 -2 EC), 100% crop, down sampled to 12mp, Noiseware applied before down sampling. |
Nikon D3, ISO 12800, 100% crop, Noiseware applied |
Noiseware does a very effective job in removing the chroma noise in the highlight areas of the 1Ds3 image and apart from the deep shadow areas the 1Ds3 to me looks comparable to the D3 image. Just out of curiosity lets see what things look like at ISO 25600.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 25600 (ISO 3200 -3 EC), 100% crop, down sampled to 12mp, Noiseware applied before down sampling. |
Nikon D3, ISO 25600, 100% crop, Noiseware applied |
The D3 is clearly better in this cause, but the 1Ds3 image is certainly usable for smaller web-sized images.
One of the other things I noticed is the consistency of color on the Nikon D3 vs. the inconsistent color on the 1Ds3. Here is the a side by side of a large portion of the scene on the Nikon at two different ISOs.
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| Nikon D3, ISO 400, partial crop, no NR. |
Nikon D3, ISO 25600, partial crop, no NR. |
Note that in the ISO 25600 image, apart from the added noise, the colors remain fairly consistent. Its also worth noting that the deep shadows are clipped to black and the amount of detail in the shadows is lost. Now lets take a look at the 1Ds3.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 400, partial crop, no NR. |
Canon 1Ds3, ISO 25600 (ISO 3200 -3 EC), partial crop, no NR. |
Comparing the 1Ds3 images however, the difference is more pronounced. Not only are the reds diminished but shadows have gotten much darker with no detail in them. Now since the high ISO 1Ds3 images were made by boosting the exposure in the RAW converter, its very likely that the tone curve of the RAW converter will influence the final look. Just to be sure lets do a similar comparison with images exported out of Canon's DPP software.
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| Canon 1Ds3, ISO 400, partial crop, no NR, DPP, no sharpening, neutral picture style. |
Canon 1Ds3, ISO 12800 (ISO 3200 -2 EC), partial crop, no NR, no sharpening, neutral picture style. |
Though the differences in color aren't quite as pronounced in DPP, it is still noticeable. Also even with DPP the loss of detail in the deep shadows is still there. Note that for this comparison I used an ISO 12800 image since DPP is only capable of pushing exposures by 2 stops.
So what have I learned in doing all of this? First that the 1Ds3 is capable to producing usable images at extremely high ISOs if you apply noise reduction and down sample for a smaller output size. Its also important to note that if color fidelity is important to you, you'll probably want to do the exposure pushing in Canon's DPP software. Next, this sort of exposure pushing with the 1Ds3 is most useful in situations where shadow detail isn't important. I.e. if you are shooting a performer on a stage lit up by stage lights, this will probably work quite well, however I suspect if you were to do some night street shooting, things may not work out as well.
So which camera is the king of high ISO? At ISO 1600 and below, I'd say the edge goes to the 1Ds3. At ISO 3200, I think the 1Ds3 can hold its own with careful noise reduction against the D3, so I'd call it more or less a tie. However beyond that the D3 is definitely the champ. Though noise reduction can clean up the 1Ds3 images quite a bit, the D3 manages to retain better color information and shadow detail than the 1Ds3 at these extreme ISOs.
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