by larchy on Mon Oct 26, 2009 8:43 am
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larchy
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Actually the 5D, while good, isn't really all that. None of the Canons are compared to the new Nikons.
The D3 and the cheaper D700 in particular are awesome. Not only do they have full frame sensors which help (the physically larger pixels catch light over a larger area and thereby reduce the impact of random noise), but the sensors they use have an extremely high level of photonic sensitivity, allowing Nikon to use stronger color filters on the bayer array which produces stronger, cleaner colours in the RAW image without as much post-processing... provides far less chroma noise than the Canons.
The artificial sensitivity tests you see on various review sites don't show too much of a lead by Nikon, but in practice at anything above around 400 ISO the D700 completely destroys anything Canon has in it's range, and the margin increases the higher the ISO. The difference is totally amazing - even the highest native ISO of 6400 is like using a Canon at about 200-400, and even the forced modes are very good. I've seen the results first hand, and really I'd say the D700 is by far one of the best buys out there right now.... although it's hardly cheap. Jessops are doing it together with a £500 25-120mm VX lens for 2 grand, body alone is around 1800 usually.
My m8 just got one on Saturday to replace his D300 which had similar noise issues, although not so bad as the Canon 400/450 models.
The only downside to the Nikons now is that, as Tonster says, they aren't competing in the MP race. The D700/D3 are both 12MP IIRC, whereas the equivalent Canons are all well over the 20MP mark. That obviously gives you less cropability on the Nikon, but tbh the images are so much cleaner to begin with you don't need to downsize & crop in the first place, and smaller files are easier to handle in terms of storage space/processing too. Canon are also way ahead on video... Nikon charge a lot of extra cash for models with video support, and unlike Canon's x264 1080p it's only 720p MJPEG, which is crap. Having said that, if you're not shooting some semi-professional movie then the Canon video is overkill. Most videos I'd wager will end up on youtube/vimeo at low resolution and overly compressed anyway... and the quality is still more than good enough for personal vids etc
Still, the D700 doesn't have video anyway.... although you can hack the liveview stream to record it if you want, but the quality is crap.
You can firefight noise to an extent - the NoiseNinja plugin for Photoshop is your friend, nothing else holds a candle to it.
Doing HDR images will also cut noise a little bit, provided you're using AEB and three separate RAW captures.