I had around two hours to shoot with a pre-production model of the tank-like D3s at New York’s Big Apple Circus, hence all of the scary clowns and very flexible folks. Since low-light performance is what you’re probably most interested in, I’ve broken down the sample shots into galleries by ISO speed. Overall, shots at ISO 6400 are the cleanest I’ve ever seen at that ISO rating—just think about that for a second—and ISO 12,800 photos are unquestionably usable for even large web photos (like 1000×1000 pixels). Of course, the pictures at ISO 102,400 have ridiculous grain and you’d never use them for anything but novelty, but consider that we really are talking light sensitivity on the order of night vision. It’s a remarkable achievement for achievement’s sake.
All of the photos here are from JPEGs straight out of a pre-production D3s, with no retouches. They were resized, but I’ve included shots of 100 percent zoom close-ups above the galleries.
Nikon D3s Below ISO 3200
These two series are shot at the exact same shutter speed, adjusting only the ISO, so you can get a sense of how much extra light the cranked ISO absorbs.
Nikon D3s Direct Compare: ISO 12,800; 1/800
I’ve also cut together some of the 720p video I shot. The video mode’s a little confusing to use at first, since the “shutter speed” is how adjust exposure in video mode, but the results are nice, even if they’re not in 1080p. The clip was always shot at an ISO rating of at least 3200 (I was fiddling with the ISO throughout), and the second half makes use of a boom mic for stereo.
bob
Friday, April 2, 2010 at 10:47 AMThese pictures aren’t very sharp.
Cleuza
Sunday, April 1, 2012 at 10:17 AMHaving eked a living in stock photo for years, let me tell ya this is not a way to get rich. iocstk, shutterstock and other micro sites have depressed the market and on those sites you need at least 10,000 saleable pix to make a few hundred bucks a year (quarters take a while to add up.) If you want to do direct sale stock get the highest MP camera you can at least 12, preferably 15, or higher. I don’t know the nikons so I can’t tell you about these particular cameras, but go through nikon’s site and find the highest you can get. This takes years to pay for itself. The agencies take 50% so you might not want to do that.