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Nikon D800 and Canon 5D Mark III comparisons
  • 4 Replies sorted by
  • The D800 low light perfornence really is behind in these comparisons however i've seen it perform quite better in other samples. In PB's comments section he says that the D800 ISO is about the same as the AF100. Anybody here have any personal experience?

  • Generally the D800E far exceeds anything I have seen before. It has so much detail and DR that I suspect you could match or surpass the final result of the Canon after applying your own processing, but the Canon is cleaner in a straight high ISO out of the camera comparison. Video detail is about identical to the GH2 but lots of moire on the 800E. About 2 stops better noise, but the patched GH2 noise is not a problem. Generally I would not choose it over the GH2 for video, except that AFS while shooting is very fast.

  • A much better test here from nofilmschool. I applaud the tester who went back and did some comparison between the two in low light. The biggest gripe was that the Iso setting between the cameras are completely different. At same ISO the Nikon is clearly at least 2/3 stop brighter (In the latest test I would say 1 stop at least below 6400 iso) than the Canon 5d3. So you have to compare Nikon ISO 1600 to Canon 2500 to 3200 and that what he redid. The second thing is dynamic range, you can clearly see much more in the shadows than the Canon which crushes the shadows and thus hides more of the noise.

    The last thing is detail. The D800 has much better resolution than the 5d3 which look out of focus when you put them side by side. So if you trade off a little of this rez with noise reduction like he did in the last part with neat image you get much closer to the 5d3. Some would say that the ISO 5000 d800 test at 200% is still brighter (I think he should have use a 3200 to 4000 ISO sample) and more resolute that the 5d3 at 6400 (In the 200% test). The funny thing is that the 5d2 seems higher rez than the 5dmark 3.

    So in the end they are much closer than what you would think because many so called test done as above just assume things like the ISO rating are the same from each manufacturer while they are so far from it. So now the d800 is getting the reputation that it is not a great low light camera because Canon has overestimated its ISO by nearly a good stop and use much more aggressive in camera NR.

    Unfortunately we don't have a system like DXOmark in the video world because the same could be said of the hacked gh2. You have to compare at same resolution for noise comparison. As the 5dmark 3 looks barely 720p by equalizing resolution or detail level using software like neat video would even the things a bit more.

  • @danyyyel

    I agree, D800 is getting a bad rep here in the ISO department but seems like a lot of the damage has already been done. Its great that the NFS guy had the balls to actually go back and test it right. In the comments section of PB's review someone pointed out the ISO disparity and this was his response:

    'Not really seen that. I did seem to under expose all the mk3 stuff in this test compared to the D800 that was probably it. The Mk3 is leagues better than the mk2 and d800 in low light. Not the D4 though.'

    Gotta be blind (blinded by Canon :p ) not to see that.