Is the 5D MKlll better at high ISO than the D800

[hjoseph7]

<p>@Rishi, the 5D III is clearly the winner after down-sizing the D800 images. Do you have any comparisons made without the downsizing this is what people really want to see ?</p>

[rishij]

<p>People keep saying the 5DIII is the winner here & I'm sorry, I just don't see it. In fact, the D800 image looks slightly <em>less noisy</em> to my eye. But since eye/brains are subjective, I thought I'd quantitate a portion of the two images. </p>

<p>I quantitated the bottom of the black bottle between the two files & calculated a mean & standard deviation.</p>

<p>Here are white lines through the regions I quantitated for the 5DIII (top) & D800 (bottom):<br>

 

<br /><br>

Here are the results plotted in Excel (quantified in IRIS):<br>

<img src="http://cl.ly/1q0G1C0J393X2k1L2C2M/DarkBottleQuantitated.jpg" alt="" width="800" /><br>

Make of it what you will... but in these two quantitated areas, the pixel variation is <em>lower</em> for the D800 (<strong>19 </strong>for 5DIII, <strong>16</strong> for D800). Albeit by a very small number (<strong>3</strong> on a <strong>255</strong> scale).<br /><br />I quantitated another area within this same region of the bottom of the bottle & the means came out to 16 for both 5DIII & D800, but a STDEV of <strong>18 </strong>for the 5DIII & <strong>15 </strong>for the D800, again giving credence to the slightly lower noise of the D800.<br /><br />Again, we're splitting hairs here. ISO performance looks virtually equivalent<em> in this scenario</em>.<br>

The advantage of the Nikon here (in terms of standard deviation of dark area) might be due to its lower read noise (Nikon sensors typically get rated as having lower read noise than Canon sensors), so maybe I should quantify a gray area as well (haha, pun intended).</p>

<p>-Rishi</p>

[kellymjones]

<p>When I down-sized the 5d3 and d800 raws, there was no clear winner in my opinion. I'm anxious to see the 5d3 raws from Dpreview to see if my observations stand or not.</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>Do not post inline images which you have not taken yourself. Any such images posted here will be removed.</p>

[rishij]

<p>Oops! I'm sorry Bob. I didn't know of that rule... although in retrospect, I really should have! Will definitely be careful in the future. I even forgot to credit the source... poor form. My apologies again!</p>

<p>But links are OK? </p>

<p>If so, then here are the lines showing the quantitated regions (5DIII on top | D800 on bottom) so there's a reference for that Excel plot:</p>

<p>http://cl.ly/3C2M2c3X1Q3y3h441Z0M/QuantitatedAreas.jpg</p>

<p>All images are from Imaging Resource (http://www.imaging-resource.com/).</p>

<p>Cheers,<br>

Rishi</p>

[pierrearnaud]

<p>Rishi, I am quite impressed with the thoroughness of your analysis. If people seem to diverge as to which camera delivers the smallest amount of noise, it is, as you say, because we have a subjective perception of it. Which area of the image we give more attention to, how we react to the shape and distribution of the noise strongly impacts the conclusion we draw.</p>

<p>What your graph shows is how small the objective difference is between the D800 and the 5DIII. As objective differences decrease, subjective perception will takeover, hence the diverging opinions.</p>

<p>In the end, I'll repeat what I already said. For practically everyone of us, from 100 iso to 25600, the difference between the to cameras are irrelevant from the perspective of real world photographic achievement. For someone starting a new system, factors other than sheer sensor quality should be given priority.</p>

<p>Thanks again for you detailed analysis which must have been quite time consuming. The technical data you offer seems to corroborate the feeling I had when visually comparing the files in "realistic" conditions (40x50cm enlargement). This is great to know.</p>

[tudor_apmadoc]

<p>Putting physics aside for a moment....... I've been using digital cameras since 1999 starting with the Kodak DC210 (1 Meg Pix), what I've seen along the way is that as you cram more and more pixels into same size area, the noise level increases. Finally someone decides they need to do something about the noise level and invest in R&D to improve things. The DC210 had ONE ISO - 140. My next camera was a DC-260 (1.5 Meg Pix) to keep the noise level down they dropped the ISO to 100.</p>

<p>I had a Sony F-717 (5 meg pix), noise levels were good, ISO had a real range of 100-800, moved the F-828 (8 meg pix), same ISO range noise levels were much more pronounced. (both had the same size sensor)</p>

<p>Canon actually dropped the number of pixels going from the G10 (14 meg pix) to the G11 (10 meg pix) in part due to noise issues. They kept the G12 at 10 meg pix for the same reason. Only with the G1X did they go back to 14 meg pix, but did so with a MUCH larger sized sensor</p>

<p>I've seen the same kind of thing with the 5D and 5D Mark II - more noise as you cram more pixels into the same area. Did it stop me upgrading from a 5D to 5D Mark II? Absolutely not. The increase was there but not significant enough to make me change my mind. To me it's just a factor to be aware of when I'm shooting. Knowing my tool and working to accommodate it.</p>

<p>Now with the 5D Mark III, it appears they have done a lot of work to improve noise levels</p>

<p>Just my 2 cents based on observations over</p>

[rishij]

<p>You have to be careful when you talk of noise increases due to higher pixel counts. While pixel-level noise increases (technically: the signal to noise ratio, SNR, is lower per pixel in a higher resolution sensor than a lower resolution sensor of equal size), it's not <strong>necessarily</strong> true that SNR is lower when the higher resolution image is downsized to the lower resolution size. Downsizing the higher resolution images increases pixel-level SNR.</p>

<p>DXO's D4 vs D800 SNR comparison shows exactly this if you look at the normalized SNR curves (<a href="http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Nikon-D800-Review/Sensor-performance">http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Nikon-D800-Review/Sensor-performance</a>).</p>

<p>-Rishi</p>

[kai_reinertsen]

<p>i have already taken 2x 5d3 back to the shop . despite using 2 metods to get sharper images out of it, my 5d2 takes way sharper pictures from iso 100 ++ i done ewrything i can think off but nothing helps . was hoping the 5d3 could replace both the 5d2 and my 7d .. anyone know wy this so awsome new model cant deliver sharp images ( i love ewerything else whit it) and as my 7D on a 1,6 crop it assembles the D800 on pixel density .so i dont think the d800 outperforms 5d2 or 5d3 on high iso .<br>

if Canon dont fix this asap, </p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Statistically, the chances of having two defective bodies in a row with the same "problem" point very strongly to user error.</p>