I have mentioned before that I have several samples taken with the upcoming Nikon D800 camera. The TIFF files produced by the Nikon D800 are around 103 MB:
Unfortunately I cannot publish the entire images online but I can show you few JPG crops taken at different ISO settings. It's not much, but at least you can get some idea about the ISO performance. I already mentioned that with the D4 and D800 Nikon will make a clear separation in the target audience for those cameras. With its high resolution, the D800 will be for the landscape/studio photographers, where the D4 will have the speed and low light performance for photo journalists/sports shooters. This is a clear differentiation from the previous D3/D700 models that shared the same sensor/technology.
Here are five 100% crops taken at ISO 500, 1400, 3200, 6400 and Hi-1 (I do not have samples taken at other ISO settings). Keep in mind that those were probably taken with a pre-production D800 camera:
Nikon D800 100% jpg crop @ ISO 500
Nikon D800 100% jpg crop @ ISO 1400
Nikon D800 100% jpg crop @ ISO 3200
Nikon D800 100% jpg crop @ ISO 6400
Nikon D800 jpg 100% crop @ ISO Hi-1 (12,800)
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369 Comments
Would you mind stopping this Mac/PC dicussion war? This is Nikon rumour site
and buddies pls. stop this mac/pc talk!
Seems quite useless above ISO 3200 to me…
agree – but the sample image is probably less relevant – some street images early evening with spot lights will tell the story.
Interesting how you can see that in a crop without any details at all, and only one color.
well spotted – the sample images show exactly nothing really interesting nor anthing to be analyzed visually – it is a 1st indication – nothing more.
to me, ISO800 seems to be already useless.
but I dont really use anything above ISO800. so, if possible , would you please post some nice low ISO (base ISO file) shadow noise samples of this camera?
Nice to hear someone comment on low ISO. Everyone seems to be obsessed with ISO 1 million performance. Personally I would like to see it go the other way and be able to shoot at ISO 25 or lower.
you guys have obviously never pointed your cameras at the stars.
Hehe how right you are.Besides, high ISO is important for various reasons.Firstly for Astrophotographers, club photographers, photographers that like to use ambient light to create etc, thus this obsession might be a bit more than a nonsense as you might believe.For me, the higher ISO with acceptable quality, the better.Same for lower ISO.I would love my D7k to be able to shoot lower that 100ISO so i don’t need NR filters with me for example.
just get a good tripod.
It just goes to show that you can’t please everyone. Some people want more resolution, others don’t. Some people want low ISO’s. I bet landscape shooters would love to have ISO 6 so they could get silky smooth waterfalls without 8 stop ND filters. At the same time poeple who shoot high school sports would love clean ISO 12,800.
I think the wildly different specs of the D800 and D4 show an attempt to try to work both sides. If the specs prove true, that is.
I’m one of those. I have 19 stops worth of stackable ND filters and still sometimes I find myself wanting just a little bit more, even when the camera is set to ISO-100 (lo-1 on a D3S). It’s a tiny niche market, I know, but just last week I had an EV16/17-ish setting, so all my ND filters stacked gave me a 15-second exposure at f/1.4. I wanted a longer exposure – more like 5 minutes – so I needed an extra four-and-a-bit stops of either a reduction in ISO or ND filters.
Anyway, I can and will get more ND with no problem at all, but the prospect of a D800 with 36 megapixels, triple that of my current camera, has me knowing I will soon be able to make shots nobody else would bother trying, and I’m very excited about it.
p.s. – Those high ISO samples look fine to me. Nothing a good dose of Topaz DeNoise can’t handle, provided one knows how to use it properly.
You are not the only one trying to make long exposure shots at f/1.4
why anyone would shoot landscapes on anything but 4×5 is mind boggling. stop being a pussy and build some back muscles.
I agree with Chris. Unless you’re shooting infrared, use a damn view camera. You have no idea what you’re limiting yourself to by shooting 35mm format
I am just getting bored following the Mac vs PC debate…
Anybody is free to choose the equipment. So if somebody wants to use a PC it is fine, also if you like to use Apple its is fine too. With both you can work fast enough in the 21st century. By the way I have to use apps from both worlds simultanously on the same computer and it was never a problem too.
And if you are worried about 100MB datas I just can’t follow you… I used to work with slides scanned at 4000ppi. The data you get from this are a little bit more than 100MB and I never had to worry about speed, also years ago with my older and now retired equipment.
So just relax and spend the sunday with your families instead to discussing longer senseless topics in internet forums
Hi everyone,
I would like to start with two questions for admin: 1. Can you please clarify what we are looking at? Is it a red carton piece, textile or what? Don’t want to know about picture, just the material the crop shows, so we can understand its initial texture, especially as we have no low ISO reference. 2. Do we know the in camera hi ISO Noise Reduction setting (Off? Low? Normal? High?)?
Thanks in advance and thanks for the great work
I’m just anxious to see how these look side by side comparison to a D700 pic the same size. More noise might not matter as a mammoth 100% view once you size it down to a reasonable print. I’d also like to see DR of this new sensor. I’m still leaning towards a D3s because I KNOW that I would be very happy with it. I don’t really need a million ISO but very clean ISO 3200 would come in real handy on occasion. I can live with a lower shutter speed since I have my D300s. My biggest concerns are the physical size if the camera being too small, the ISO range, and dynamic range of the camera. I’ll hold judgement until the thing is actually released. Nikon makes very good cameras and I’m sure that they didn’t go stupid overnight. This may be my next camera. If not then the D3s won’t disappoint either.
I bet they will be better from tests I did D3s x D7000 (same density as D800) using DPR’s raws.
ADMIN, do you find ISO quality of D800 similar or better compared to D700 at same ISO values ?
Oh! I meant to log onto Nikon rumours but I logged onto pc v mac website by mistake. Borring.
More fakes to add fuel to controversies. Meanwhile Nikon co. Shut up. I don’t know where have you recieved from those images but smell rat. I don’t believe nothing. REmember when Nikon D7000 were on sale in Amazon and you hadn’t a single rumor of that camera. Speculations are free.
More fakes to add fuel to controversies. Meanwhile Nikon co. Shut up. I don’t know where have you recieved from those images but smell rat. I don’t believe nothing. REmember when Nikon D7000 were on sale in Amazon and you hadn’t a single rumor of that camera. Speculations are free.
Read more on NikonRumors.com: http://nikonrumors.com/2011/12/17/cropped-nikon-d800-samples-at-high-iso.aspx/#ixzz1gtATnnqk
REmember engrish crass?
IMHO not much can be said/analyzed from these one-color whatever structure crops. Useless info, also as it’s from a pre-production camera, as you mention. Interesting though is the very expected strategy Nikon (& most likely also Canon) goes for by differentiating camera markets (D3/D700 vs. D4/D800 or EOS 1Dx/EOS 5DMkIII).
i wonder what lens did they use on those images. hmmm..
I’ve been waiting for this camera around a year and a half and can’t believe the rumored price tag. I doubt I’ll be getting one after all. It’s disappointing that they would price it so high.
Is the anyway for the ADMIN to put these samples next to a d700 sample set for comparison?
I do not have access to a D800 camera, cannot do any real comparison.
Seems like the 700′s iso!
Great news!
These images are totally pointless except for proving that the D800 exsists. Trying to see how good the iso perfomance is from these is kinda impossible., so please dont take these images to serious….
I prefer Nikon vs. Canon to Mac vs. PC, though both rate fairly high on my personal “why the hell are people even getting into this stupid argument” scale.
Actually, the Mac vs PC conversation is much more interesting than the samples provided. I get zilch info from these samples. They mean nothing and I mean NOTHING. As a pro photographer I need to see real photos to made any educated opinion on the quality of an image.
So keep the Mac vs PC dialogue going. The photos are one big boring BORE….. Show me something I can make sense of. Otherwise, why even bother showing us anything…..
PS – I have been in the professional photography business for more than 30 years…..
D800
D800 
D800 
D800 
Please get back to the subject matter here
Really looking forward to seeing a NEF file from the assumed D800 thats coming
and hope that Nikon will have a 64 bit vers of NX software to accompany it.
Anything new or leaks of a new 64 bit Capture NX as well yet ???
Especially with the larger file sizes.
By taking a first look of the images they look very good, definitely a very good improvement over my D300. My first impressions is that this camera doubles the usable ISO of my D300. But at this point a question is raised in my head, since the D800 is expected to have 3 times the resolution of my D300, doesn’t this mean that even if they both did have the same ISO performance, the D800 with 3 times the resolution would have about 3 times the ISO performance, as reducing the image size to the 12MP resolution would mean the noise would not be as noticeable (100% crop of D300 = 33% crop of D800)?
Can anybody confirm or comment on that?
What about the huge gap in price from the D7000 ($1200) to the D800 (possibly $4000)? Something has to fill the gap, as suggested by Nikon’s current line-up, as well as arguments made by Thom Hogan. I think we should all still be expecting something resembling a D300 (for ~$2000) and maybe even something resembling a D700 (which the D800 does NOT, for ~$3000). Am I expecting too much?
There will be 3 SONY FF cameras to fill this gap, using the same or similar sensors as Nikon.
Hopefully Nikon notices that too!
who the heck is tom hogan?
The Mac vs Pc debate is much more interesting than the samples.
They show me nothing, nada and they are basically worthless. I always analyze my equipment by taking photographs of real things – buildings, shelves of books, people in different light, landscapes. Show me something I can really digest and sink my teeth into. Otherwise the samples are a big BORE.
When the cameras eventually come to market, we will see what the quality really is. I am sure it will be nothing like the quality of the so-called samples just posted on this thread. Why even publish such samples??? This is why this discussion has turned into a silly Mac vs PC debate. Because the samples truly give us little to talk about.
I start to think that you are paid by Nikon
if he was, he would never let us know how terrible is D800′s ISO performance
Hey ADMIN, Peter, please give your opinion does D800 is same or better,worse than D700 ISO performance ? Thanks in advance.
12mp will always win over 36mp in 100% crop. Downsampled 36 to 12 mp will be whole different story.
Hi Guys (and gals) can anyone point me to the thread about Nikon D800 samples, I thought this was it , but it turned out to be a MAC fanboy thread.
It is impossible to assess these crops because the subject (just a guess, a piece of brownish paper?!!) is not identifiable at all on these crops!
The 36 MP FX sensor has equal pixel density as the 16.2 MP DX sensor of the D5100/D7000. So why do you think that the (high iso) performance per pixel will be different from those cameras?
(16.2 MP x1.5^2 = 36.45 MP)
Is that supposed to be a good thing?
Might have as well left the lens cap on for those samples…
NikonRumors its a nikon site…
It’s all about the marketing of the futur produtcs
12 800 is impressive. I have a strong suspicion that the crops are taken from a part of the image that falls outside of the set exposure. I am assuming that it is a couple stops under exposed. If this is so then I think “all” the samples look really great.
The reason I think the above is because the samples look worse than the D700′s current iq otherwise and I don’t believe that is going to happen.
Also, not too contradict my previous point… if you look at all the samples above 500 too much smoothing is going on. I can’t believe how much detail is lost in the texture and the addition of grain almost makes the higher ones look better (excluding 500 iso). The 1400 iso one looks like plastic without the grain. It almost reveals the smoothing used to create clean iso images. I think it is too clean.
Having said all that just a few random thoughts based on the limited information. I am not a scientist but am very familiar with processing images and am aware of how they handle.
With its high ISO and somilar body, the D4 seem to be a D3s replacement but if the D800 targets studio and landscape, does it make it a D3x replacement?
The D3x price being so much higher than the D3s, it would be odd to see a D3s replacement at much higher price than the D3x replacement.
If the ISO/image quality of the D800 is similar to that of the D7000, I cannot see it as a high-end studio and landscape alternative to the D3x.
bummer … starting at ISO 1400 it looks pretty lame…
Just buy some tricked out $6,679 Sager Notebook NP8180 and it should last you for a while. Some of them get up to close to $7,400 on custom builds.
Dual video cards. 12GB RAM. Blu-Ray 6x burner. USB 3.0. 3 solid-state 600GB drives in RAID array. 3-4 cooling fans. HDMI. Blah. Blah. Blah.
Makes both generic PC’s and Macs look sick.
From the small portion and quick heads up seems like it is comparible to the D7000 @ same iso up to iso 3200 will be ok if me and 6400 at a very real pinch.
Why do they produce a heavy D4 to be the “photojournalist’s” camera? That should be the small, light weight camera, i.e. the D700 follow-up. Also the photojournalist’s camera should have few megapixels and high iso, in order to take pics at fast shutter speeds. Then for magazine pics and such you don’t need high megapixels. I absolutely don’t understand this move by Nikon… do they want to lose buyers? I am almost a Nikon fanboy, since I’ve been using their DSLRs for years, so far DX, but I’ve been waiting for the D800 to upgrade my system to FX. For me, the D800 specs are nowhere better than the 5D2′s and I suppose the D800 will be more expensive… I said I’m almost a fanboy, first of all I’m sensible. What are you doing, Nikon?
Hey Marty,
Stop dissing on Nikon. The existing camera line rocks! If you can’t take any good shots with the Nikon cameras and glass that is currently out there, then you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. Unless you’re just a gear fanboy…
Exif can be pretty easily faked; all you need is a hex editor.
Why would I do that?
Um.. Perhaps to drive traffic?
+1
Already from ISO 500 to ISO 1400 the texture (of maybe textile) is gone. Not very impressive!
In many discussions here in NR we have weighed the tiniest bit of quality and now that the “super-duper” 36 MP cam is on the horizon hardly anyone seem to care about quality but discuss Mac vs PC issues.
However, as for me I’d not even start looking for hundreds of thousands of ISO as long as the makers can’t get even ISO 3200 really clean. So unless one is doing press photography, where any photo is better than no photo I still can’t quite understand where the D3s should have a real quality advantage over my D700 until, say, ISO 3200.
And also with that one, like the D300s as well, you’ll see luminance noise and color spots on a plain color areas as soon as you leave base ISO.
IMHO that should be solved first before trying to implement any “rocket science”
http://i40.tinypic.com/fz69t3.jpg
when you look at the LR dialog on nikon rumors you will see that the text “NIKON D800″ does not line up with the “NIKON” text above it (it´s shifted about 2 PIXELS). that´s fake if you ask me…
when you look at the LR dialog on nikon rumors you will see that the text “NIKON D800″ does not line up with the “NIKON” text above it (it´s shifted about 2 PIXELS). that´s fake if you ask me…
I call SHENANIGANS. The EXIF data is coded in Nikon Transfer ver 2.2 – that version is NOT coded to read any of the new Nikons after the V/J 1 series. A newer version will be offered for the d800 and whatever other cameras are introduced in the future. I HOPE it’s PHOHY ’cause if it’s not, it looks like anything above 1600 is worthless…
when you look at the LR dialog on nikon rumors you will see that the text “NIKON D800″ does not line up with the “NIKON” text above it (it´s shifted about 2 PIXELS). that´s fake if you ask me… photoshoped.
with my cameras and LR 3.6 the text from make/model is lined up perfectly in LR.
i would bet 100 euros it is faked.
[img]http://i40.tinypic.com/fz69t3.jpg[/img]
[img width=700 height=502]http://i.imgur.com/jlAwD.jpg[/img]
my LR:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/NmxGJ.jpg[/img]
i could be wrong.. sure… but i think im not.
You are kinding mister Admin
a post like this to send such pitty cropped pictures this is a joke !!!
You can make this crop with any camera around and also there is nothing to see at all
A shame
Peter they are after you lol http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php/topic,2496.0/prev_next,prev.html#new
seems to me that u guys never photographed with film and mentioned that film-crain can be very beautiful.
Hobos please! stop fighting over who has the best pretend PC or the best pretend Mac, because you only have cardboard boxes with stickers of windows 7 or the Mac’s apple logo… Now please resume your hobo life without this dumbie arguments…
You cannot really tell anything with these samples. Keep in mind that this is 100% of a huge image. If you do not shoot ISO 800, then I assume you shoot landscape and studio. News flash… Nikon has a market base that you are not in. I am with Nikon because they care about my ability to get the shot, no matter what. It might be a little noisy at times, but it will be in focus and metered correctly. And when my client/s realize that all the point and shoots, cell phone cameras, etc were so blurry that you could not tell what was going on… I can confidently say, “it will print fine up to 11×14, and look great on you facebook”. How you pay? Now, if I was shooting landscapes, sets for commercial campaigns, or super high quality portraits, then I would be using a medium format… and not whining that my workhorse can’t win a beauty pageant.
Admin, did you see that Digital Rev has posted these images and is taking credit for the crops?
They do this all the time.
I guess it’s to be expected since they are in China…. we’re they like to profit from copying other people’s work/products! Scumbags.
It’s been removed since. The bloggers still reference you, it’s just the new department “DigitalRevSpy”
Everyone didn’t like it at all. All they had to do was give proper credit to NR but they want as far as to claim that THEY were the ones who uncovered the crops. As a media outlet… they should know better than to pull something like THAT.
A few facts:
- The reason Apple is able to sustain a higher resell or sell price is simply because of its appeal, that’s it.
- Apple has designed Macs with 3 selling points, it’s simplicity (few cables to operate), age niche (wider age based both younger and older) and design
- The general population who purchase Macs are generally not computer enthusiast/nerds/wizzes and hence cannot tell the difference between a 32bit Windows 7 and a 64bit OSX other then its makers Apple and Microsoft.
- Most studios and some companies prefer Mac not because they think it’s better but because they require Final Cut (for professional standards) or wish to not deal with cable management as say an average PC.
- There is no way to prove that one is more stable then the other. (unless you include servers in which case Microsoft wins because well.. Apple has no alternative)
- Windows is an extremely complex operating system, they’ve progressively removed things over the years (while most people do not care, i am one of those affected)
But lets finish this, a computer is judge on how many needs it can satisfy per user, so yes “windows” is superior, you can hate all you like but numbers do not lie.
SO PLEASE BEHAVE AND LETS GET BACK TO THE TOPIC KIDS
back to the D800 story, like i said in a few post earlier(?) the price of the D800 will either make of brake it’s success.
If the price of Nikon’s D800 is too unreasonable I’m just going to pickup a D7000 and D700.
I agree that price is goint to be a major issue here.
There are conflicting views on the D800/D4 distinction. Nikon Rumors: “With its high resolution, the D800 will be for the landscape/studio photographers, where the D4 will have the speed and low light performance for photo journalists/sports shooters”, whereas Thom Hogan on 11th Dec states “Nikon and Canon came to a similar conclusion: Amateurs need more pixels, pros probably don’t.”
So is the distinction between type of use (journalism/landscape) or between type of user (pro/am)? If the price of the D800 is greatly in excess of that of the D700, I think the attraction to the amateur user will be signficantly reduced.
As an IT-specialist supporting a huge company with very major tools under windows, and living with Mac for my personal video & photo projects, I experience the difference every day. It still feel like a joke: a lot of serious 64bit-apps are still behaving very, very crappy under what some call ‘the major operating system’, to my surprise a lot of applications don’t even support full multi-processing in a decent way. OS X is already FOR YEARS full native 64 bits with balanced multi-processing and stability has never been an issue even with the most resource-hungry applications. That is not so much due to Apple, but because of its Unix-kernel. The immediate reason why multimedia professionals use Mac, nothing else. To enjoy and manage massive libraries of 36MB D800-pictures I know what can handle this in a decent way and what will be again a hassle, one you can ofcourse fix with upgrading hardware, installing fixes, looking at al kinds of tips and tricks and again ending up in the PC-shop around the corner to buy an entire new processor-box. Five years ago I did do exactly the same. And yes, it would also be nice that Nikon would support OS X in their apps a bit better than they do now – it can’t be that hard for decent programmers.
Maybe they should support Linux as well as Windows and OSX – then we could use all the money we’d save to buy more Nikon cameras and glass.
so when will the D5 be out?
wow! Let me tell you that those specs weren’t what i was thinking about when I was expecting the new D800. 36MP??? Seriously? I’m a wedding photographer, I would need now at least the double amount of cards for this camera only. D700 was 12. why they can’t put a 16 in there? More MP more ISO noise to be noticed :-/
ISO= -6,400-> 25,600 same as D700??
I was dreaming about this camera for a long time. I’m not that happy now
I fit 2000-3000 raw images on a 32gb card with the d700. I usually carry 1x 32gb, 1x 16gb, and 3x 8gb. I rarely get to the 16gb and haven’t resorted to any of the 8gb cards in over a year. If I purchase one or two more 32gb cards for use with a D800, I’d probably feel comfy and never use them. 1000 images on a card doesn’t sound so bad. And 64gb cards are out there for reasonable prices now.
And who worries about storage space anymore? Permanent storage pays for itself and temporary is cheap.
Buy a D4
Hey Admin, these are jpges straight from the camera, ya?
If so, sharpness and NR settings could make a big difference. And raw will be another story too.
These look promising, but only in the context of a familiarity with how much better things get from default settings.
yes, jpg straight out of the camera – those were probably taken with a pre-production version and probably with a beta firmware, they don’t mean much except the fact that the D800 will be 36MP and will have lower ISO than the D3s/D4
Sweet! Thanks for sharing these!