HIgh ISO D800 vs D7000 question

[Sootchucker]

The following question popped into my head recently, but as of yet I haven't had a chance to trial it for myself.

I like many, have been very pleasantly surprised at the relatively low high ISO noise the D800 generates. Certainly, when down sampled to 12mp (like my old D3 and D700), it's much better.

However what happens when you shoot in DX mode (15mp), and compare it to a shot from a D7000. Now I know that other factors come into play such as DR, better focus etc. being better on the D800, but from the point of this discussion, I am just talking about high ISO noise (ISO3200 up). Obviously when shooting in DX crop mode, we don't have the benefit of down sampling to "hide" the effects of noise, so the image has to stand on it's own merits side by side with the D7000 image.

Are we looking at very similar noise levels or is there still a slight advantage to the D800, or indeed is the D800 slightly worse ?

I do have both cameras, and plan on conducting tests myself, but having just accidentally partially severed my thumb, I'm finding it difficult to hold a camera let alone take shots at the moment, so my testing will have to wait and I was therefore wondering if anyone had actually conducted the tests and had any conclusions.

 

[khollister]

I think the D800 is better than the D7000 even at the pixel level. The noise is slightly lower, but more importantly, the color and contrast holds up quite a bit better as the ISO rises (which is independent of whether you are shooting FX or DX on the 800) . I have taken shots at ISO 3200 with my D800's and aside from a very fine-grained luminance noise, the images look excellent as far as IQ. You do lose quite a bit of the crazy-good dynamic range at high ISO's, but it still has DR better than most other cameras at those ISO's. I think the tests I saw would put you at about 6-7 stops at 3200 on the D800, which is almost as good as many previous gen cameras did at base ISO.

 

[kirbinster]

Why would you buy a D800 to shoot DX? I never get why people set these cameras at small jpeg or lower quality jpeg either. If you buy something of this quality why not capture at full quality, and if for some reason you don't need it all down sample at post processing time. The only exception I see is if you are a photo journalist and shooting for a newspaper at times.

 

[mawyatt]

I believe the fundamental sensor in the D800 is superior to the sensor in the D7000 from an intrinsic noise and dynamic range (DR) standpoint. Keith brings up a interesting point. The sensor behaves like any electronic system where DR is the level between the noise floor (bottom) and signal saturation (roof). The signal of interest sits between these levels, so anything that can push the noise floor down without affecting the "roof" improves the DR as does anything that pushs the saturation level up without raising the noise floor. Cooler temperatures usually push the noise floor down without lowering the saturation level, so DR is improved at cooler temperatures as is the fundamental sensor induced noise. CCD (CMOS as well) based sensors respond well to cooler temperatures, this is why most high preformance astro sensors are cooled, some to liquid helium at 4K...very near absolute zero!!

Higher ISO means higher noise levels from the amplifier outputs, but the saturation level doesn't move upwards. So DR suffers as ISO increases because the noise floor has risen but the saturation level is the same. Starting off with a lower noise, or/and higher DR sensor allows the use of higher ISO for a given effective output DR. This is where the D800 outperforms the D7000, and most other cameras.

Anyway, this is a constant battle we electrical engineers deal with; noise and DR are part of every system tradeoff as is power consumption. As the semiconductor processes improve (basically have smaller feature sizes) the trend is with lower supply voltages (lower power consumption), this effects the circuits (amplifiers, electronic filters, AD conversion) that must deal with the sensor output. If they saturate then the DR of the sensor is degraded (not good), and lower supply voltages basically lower the headroom for the signal so the trend is to hurt the post sensor DR.

Much research work (I am involved in some) is taking place in squeezing more DR with a smaller supply voltage semiconductor process. Even the digital folks are feeling the lower supply voltage crunch, this affects their "noise margin", which essentially reduces the ability to deteremine a digital "1" or "0" with acceptable fidelity (usually somewhere in 1 error in 1,000,000,000,000 decisions!!)

Nikon, Sony and Canon are improving their sensor technology, not only in pixel count, but in noise floor and DR as well. Being a intergated circuit designer my hat's off to their engineers and scientists for dealing with all these tradeoffs and giving us better cameras at a reasonable price point.

 

[davidzvi]

Why would you buy a D800 to shoot DX? I never get why people set these cameras at small jpeg or lower quality jpeg either. If you buy something of this quality why not capture at full quality, and if for some reason you don't need it all down sample at post processing time. The only exception I see is if you are a photo journalist and shooting for a newspaper at times.

While I don't have a D7000 or D800 I can answer this. It's one of the reason I don't have a D800.

Ever shoot 1200-2000 images at a wedding? :wink: I normally shoot 16-24gb's worth of images at an event. 48-96gb on a D800 would not be fun.

 

[kirbinster]

If that is the case then you should buy a D7000 not a D800. Again why buy a sports car to drive the kids to the school bus?

 

[davidzvi]

If that is the case then you should buy a D7000 not a D800. Again why buy a sports car to drive the kids to the school bus?

No thanks, I'll keep my D700's, just pointing out a reason. Another is that many are looking for a D300s replacement, Nikon has yet to release one. The D800 in DX is at least something, other than the limiting fps/buffer.

There are also many that are starting to shoot their D800 in FX mode but then converting the images to Lossy DNGs on import to create smaller files.

 

[kirbinster]

Huh? DNG is lossy? I always thought it was a lossless format similar to NEF. Can someone please chime in on that.

Again if you want DX the D7000 is a much better and cheaper way to go.

 

[davidzvi]

The newest DNG (4.x and above I believe) has Lossless and Lossy.

http://lightroomsecrets.com/2012/03/lightroom-4-tip-new-dng-options/

Andrew sorry for taking this a little off topic.

 

[trenchmonkey]

Again if you want DX the D7000 is a much better and cheaper way to go.

Uh, not really. I shoot low light rodeo with 2 D7K's. Brought the D800 one night just for grins
and used 1.2 & DX modes. Much better AF and ~1 stop cleaner High ISO's.
Let's review: 'cheaper' yes, better...that's a NO. :biggrin:

 

[kirbinster]

Will, yes you are correct, I really meant to say a better value for most people. There are always exception, but most people that want to shoot jpeg or DX will find a D7000 a better value. I agree the D800 is a much better camera, that is why I have one

David, that is interesting that there is now a lossy version of DNG, previously it was always lossless.

Is that lossy thing just for export? I don't see a dialog box that lets me choose that on import in LR4.1

 

[khollister]

Why would you buy a D800 to shoot DX? I never get why people set these cameras at small jpeg or lower quality jpeg either. If you buy something of this quality why not capture at full quality, and if for some reason you don't need it all down sample at post processing time. The only exception I see is if you are a photo journalist and shooting for a newspaper at times.

First, when I talk about DX, I am talking about the final cropped size. Unlike Randy and a few others, I do not set the camera to crop mode since I don't have an issue wrangling 200-300 45MB files. You seem to be confusing DX with lower quality. The issue isn't I only want/need 16MP, it is I want the smaller FOV to gain effective focal length. That just happens to come with fewer MP of course.

Secondly, the D800 is a better DX camera than the D7000 except for frame rate - Will covered that. Expensive, yes, but better.

Third, instead of dealing with FX and DX bodies (DX for birds/wildlife, FX for everything else), I can shoot with one pair of D800's and just crop down the bird shots if necessary in post. It also means that in some situations, I only need to carry one camera. In a number of locations my practice was to carry 2 DX bodies - one at 500mm on a tripod (300 + 1.7TC) and a second with 70-200 on my shoulder. Now I can often just take the tripod rig with the 300 + TC and get the same framing/FOV as the DX + 200mm by using the full FX image. That doesn't work all the time, but it comes in handy (digital zoom, so to speak, because I have MP to sacrifice if necessary).

 

[kirbinster]

Keith, cropping after the fact is a very different animal than not using the full capabilities of the camera in the field.

 

[avyoung]

Interesting discussion...I figured by DX0 sensor charts, the D800 sensor was very close to a larger version of the D7000 sensor. But I trust your field use reports!

 

[InTheMist]

I have both.

At the pixel level, the D800 has a slight edge.

But there are just so many pixels that you don't see the noise because it averages out so well on export or print.

 

[ausemmao]

The DX crop is virtually identical to a D7000, though it has a slight edge (as it should, being a year and a bit newer, the manufacturing process will be somewhat refined). at 100% view the D800 gets a bit more from being 15 rather than 16MP (so you see ever so slightly more of the frame).

If it were a stop better at DX crop, a full frame shot would be 3 stops better i.e. 25600 on the D800 would look like 3200 on the D7000...While I'd like that kind of improvement, it just isn't there.

 

[Maestrodawg1]

If that is the case then you should buy a D7000 not a D800. Again why buy a sports car to drive the kids to the school bus?

Or you could be like me and already owned a D7000 and bought a D800 and are wanting to know the information to do something like say consider selling the D7k to fund a lens. Or can I leave the D7k home. There are a whole host of evaluations that can be made from answering the question.

What I'm considering is whether or not to keep the D7k or sell it to say get another D800. I'm leaning towards keeping it because the quality of the product still seems very up to date and relevant. D7k with a 70-200 and the D800 with moderate wide to wide angle seems like a good duo.

 

[khollister]

If it were a stop better at DX crop, a full frame shot would be 3 stops better i.e. 25600 on the D800 would look like 3200 on the D7000...While I'd like that kind of improvement, it just isn't there.

Huh? I'm not following your logic here

 

[khollister]

Or you could be like me and already owned a D7000 and bought a D800 and are wanting to know the information to do something like say consider selling the D7k to fund a lens. Or can I leave the D7k home. There are a whole host of evaluations that can be made from answering the question.

What I'm considering is whether or not to keep the D7k or sell it to say get another D800. I'm leaning towards keeping it because the quality of the product still seems very up to date and relevant. D7k with a 70-200 and the D800 with moderate wide to wide angle seems like a good duo.

Setting aside price for the moment, A D800 has better IQ (sharpness, DR, ISO performance), much better AF and the flexibility of being FX that can be cropped down to DX FOV. The only downside is FPS, 4 vs 6.

Personally, I sold my D700, D300s and D7000 to buy 2 D800's (also sold a 24-70 and 85/1.4D). It was all up-side for me and cost neutral as well given I wasn't using the 24-70 or the 85 (which I replaced with a cheaper 85/1.8G).

In your case, you are looking at having to kick in over $2000 to swap bodies, so the decision is much more difficult, I imagine.

 

[Maestrodawg1]

In your case, you are looking at having to kick in over $2000 to swap bodies, so the decision is much more difficult, I imagine.

When I was younger I loved film photography. Given my standing though pursing photography became way to cost prohibitive and left it for a long time. I jumped on the digital revolution when I met a reporter with one of those Nikon D1s (plural not model). It was a mid sized newspaper that had no problem transitioning to new technologies. I ended up purchasing a kodak point and shoot. It worked well for a good good long time until I got driven mad by it's lack of manual control. I ended up coughing up the money for a D70 kit. That was a genuine eye opener for me but it never really produced what I had in my mind. I then got the D200 when available and it was a serious step in the right direction but still not quite where I wanted my camera to be. I skipped the D700, D3(s), and D300(s) series for financial reasons. When the D7k came out, it was a combination of high value for the product. Mind, I dislike a lot of the controls of the D7k but worked though them and it produces images that I like. BTW the D800 is a step up in many many many ways. But I still stare at the D7k and wonder why on earth I should even consider fixing something that ain't broke. That's my biggest problem. Not the money.