D300 Noise

[Peppe]

Hi all

I've seen shots taken with D700 @ 6400 and up that look terrific
so I'm more curious than anything else as to how the D300 fairs

What is about the highest you'd set the iso on a D300 for low light shooting?
And how do you find the D300 handles low light high iso shooting?

Pep

[campo]

Hi all

I've seen shots taken with D700 @ 6400 and up that look terrific
so I'm more curious than anything else as to how the D300 fairs

What is about the highest you'd set the iso on a D300 for low light shooting?
And how do you find the D300 handles low light high iso shooting?

Pep

I happily use my d300 at weddings up to 1600 without worrying too much. I have used up to 3200 on occasion. One of my recent "cracker shots" (which i can't display here due to copyright/ownership etc) was taken at iso2000 and needed minimal noise reduction because the exposure was spot on and dynamic range not big.

[kiwi]

The D300 I found was Ok up to 2000 or even higher if the exposure and WB was nailed.

I found 400 a weak spot, then it gets better, and starts going downhill rapidly at 2500

[campo]

I found 400 a weak spot, then it gets better, and starts going downhill rapidly at 2500

I believe that's where the built in noise reduction kicks in hence the better performance for a little bit before it drops off again

[kiwi]

that's right, 400 is noiser than 800

anyhow, at high noise you should turn the NR off in camera and do it in post

[arthurking83]

I set my Auto ISO up to 3200 without any reservations about the quality of the resultant images, although the biggest hit to IQ is in colour reproduction(where just adding saturation doesn't really help.

if the lens is up to it, the detail in images up to ISO3200 is still very good to excellent, and minimal noise reduction with appropriate software still allows excellent images for print.

The reason you'll see fantastic images with the D700(and higher end bodies) is because they basically have a 2 - 3 stop ISO advantage over the D300 series.

A well exposed and sharply captured ISO3200 shot from a D300 with appropriate noise reduction applied should be basically noise free, bust as said before you will get some dullness in colour(if you directly compare it to a lower ISO version of the same image.

For walking around capturing random and insignificant images, I have no problem setting Auto ISO up to Hi1(ISO6400).. but in those cases I don't expect fine art quality images.