Hype dispelled.

What with everyone going on about the spectacular low light performance of the Sony sensor in the Nikon D700, I thought I would find out for myself, rather than read test charts. With the idea of using higher ISOs I set out on San Francisco’s streets an hour before sunset and messed with ISO 1600 and up a bit. While I had a lot of fun taking snaps I can happily dispel all the hype about the awesome noiselessness of the D700’s sensor. Yes, it’s fine at 1600 and no, it’s not as good as at 800. You can even tell the difference in an 18″ x 24″ print. Anything higher and luminance noise skyrockets. You can tweak it out in LR3 but at the expense of definition.

Comparing the results to those from my old Canon 5D, there’s little in it, quite frankly. Both have very large sensors and you would expect good noise performance from such relatively low pixel densities. But it’s not night and day compared with the excellent 16mp Panny sensor in the G3, as an example. Sure, it’s better, but not ‘blow you away’ better. The D700 had better be superior – it costs five times as much and has four times the sensor area.

If you must have full frame and are on a budget, a good used 5D body goes for $800. A D700 for $2,000. Unless you are heavily invested in Nikon lenses, the Canon would be the best price-performance choice by a country mile for all but those suffering from brand loyalty or some other strange hang-ups.

Enough noise about …. noise. Here are some snaps.

Because 3200 is too grainy to retain micro-detail, the ones below are all at 1250-1600 ISO, taken with the 16-35 lens at f/4. Yes you can get decent snaps at 3200, 6400 or even higher, but they sure will not look too pretty when printed large. Let’s be real here.

Still, 1600 ISO is pretty decent and not a lot to complain about, except that it does not come cheap. While hosing a big DSLR around on the street tends to invite attention, San Francisco’s famously liberal culture makes that a low risk matter. Come to think of it, a couple of whacks around the head and ears with a D700 would likely do the recipient more damage than it would the camera.