This isn’t art, though it may look like it. Instead, it’s a striking look at 17 years of progress in snapping digital photos in low light. How times have changed.
San Francisco based photographer Jim Goldstein took the first professional Canon DSLR camera, the Canon D2000 from 1998, and the Japanese company’s latest product, the Canon 5DS R from 2015, and compared their abilities in a new video.
Comparing a 17-year-old, 2-megapixel digital camera with a modern 50-megapixel-monster may sound a bit unfair. But the results show that, actually, daytime shooting provided similar(ish) images from both cameras.
However, when night fell, the older camera began to fall. The D2000 (images left and right) simply could not stand up against the 5-month-old 5DS R (centre), producing little more than digital noise compared to its counterpart’s lush nighttime images. Here’s the full comparison video where you can see all the results.