Nikon D300 vs D80 high ISO noise comparison | Go Back
Check out these results. What a difference, simply stunning!
Used Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens for this test. Camera default settings, exposure: 2 sec, aperture: f/5.6.
Original picture:
D80 ISO 800 - 100% crop:
D300 ISO 800 - 100% crop:
D80 ISO 1600 - 100% crop:
D300 ISO 1600 - 100% crop:
The full review of the D300 can be found here.
December 20th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Wow, what a difference, I never would of thought it would be that big of a difference between the D80 and D300, I can just imagine the D70/D300 difference.
December 21st, 2007 at 1:25 am
Great comparison, looks like the D300 can finally play in the league of the Canons. Looks like you can select ISO800 and not even worry about noise. 1600 looking great too although the noise will start to show on large prints.
I am curious, however, whether or not these are really true 100% crops as the D300 has 12MP and the D80 only 10MP. The difference in MP (but same sensor dimensions) should produce a small difference in image size when viewing both at 100% (the DVDs in the D300 shots should appear slightly larger). Especially since you used a prime lens. Why are the images all the same size?
Would love to have seen the D3 added into this test so a 3-way comparison could be made!
Norman
December 21st, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Norman, thanks for your feedback.
Regarding whether these are really true 100% crops - YES, they are. It was very hard to make this work and I had to move the camera + tripod back and forth, taking LOTS of pictures before a 1:1 comparison could be achieved. If you look close enough you will find that the D300 crops are slightly larger. Simply put, it was impossible to find the perfect spot where both cameras would produce same size pictures.
I used the same tripod for both cameras. D80 was used with ML-L3 remote and D300 was set to a timer (I don’t have the remote for D300 yet) to prevent camera shake on both. A lot of people think that the D80 shot is out of focus, but it’s not true as I focused both cameras on the same spot and used the same 50mm f/1.4 lens. The results are accurate, unless my D80 was bad, which is highly unlikely :)
I would love to test the D3, but it’s too expensive and I don’t have any friends that own it.
December 23rd, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Hi Nasim - this is a simple but very effective test demonstrating the differences between the ISO performance of both cameras. I’m also happy to report that there is a HUGE difference in image noise performance between my D70 and D300 … in the D300’s favor of course. I now have no qualms shooting ISO 1600 (even 3200 or 6400 if necessary), provided I know beforehand how large I’m going to print those shots at.
I used to have noise reduction at Low, now I just leave it off and deal with it in Nikon Capture NX to only reduce chroma noise and leave the luminosity channel totally untouched - I absolutely love the results!
Regarding the remote, yeah, I miss the ML-L3 functionality on the D300, but have found a USD$14.50 solution that works very well, although quite a bit more bulky than the ML-L3 :> http://www.dpnotes.com/phottix-n1-wireless-remote-control-set-nikon-d300-review/
December 31st, 2007 at 7:50 am
yeah, unfocused D80 picture really improve D300 noise
April 29th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I won both cameras. Horrid comparison. D80 shots are obviously and most certainly out of focus.
To reiterate: The samples from the D80 are out of focus.
Thanks for listening.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Jon,
No need to spam my blog with your out of focus comments. Even if the above images are out of focus (which would mean my D80 was faulty, because I pointed at the same spot and focused multiple times before taking the pictures), the idea was to show high ISO noise comparison between the two cameras. In short, D300 is much better than D80 in terms of noise in ISOs 800 and 1600. The importance of this test was to show ISO performance of the cameras. Where in the title did you read that it’s a sharpness test?
May 28th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Although I agree that this is not a sharpening test and might expose a back focus issue on your D80 the more OOF the image is the more noise will show, anyone disagree ?