Incredible noise performance on Nikon D90

[Primoz]

Hi!

Today I went through my holiday pictures and two shots caught my attention. They are just snapshots of a cat in my opinion regarding composition and theme. But I was impressed by the little noise amount in them, as they were taken at ISO 5000 with a Nikon D90!
I knew my D90 could handle noise well, but I never knew you could get such image at ISO 5000.

What do you guys think? Is it just my eyes or is the noise really unbeliveably well controled for a hobby camera?

Here are Jpegs without any noise reduction done to them. (Just RAW files exported at full res Jpegs and Flickr resized them as I notice now)

1) 20110720_213018 by PrimozKovacic, on Flickr

2) 20110720_213046 by PrimozKovacic, on Flickr

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[bigbadmike]

Looks pretty good, especially compared to my d40 which is absolute crap at 1600 and up

[Destin]

Looks good, but it's hard to tell on such a small sample. Post a 100% crop of a dark area (Tv screen) and me thinks we will see good amounts of noise.

I've also gotta ask, did you perform any noise reduction or exposure adjustments to the images before posting them?


Regardless, it's better than my D80 by a LONG shot. My D80 is almost not acceptable at 800...

[nickzou]

Looks good, but it's hard to tell on such a small sample. Post a 100% crop of a dark area (Tv screen) and me thinks we will see good amounts of noise.

I've also gotta ask, did you perform any noise reduction or exposure adjustments to the images before posting them?


Regardless, it's better than my D80 by a LONG shot. My D80 is almost not acceptable at 800...

Agreed. I had my D80 for about 2 months before I got rid of it. It's true, anything about ISO500 was just unusable on the D80. I loved everything else about it. Too bad that was the determining factor for me the upgrade to the D7000.

Although I shot some stuff at ISO4000 yesterday at my friend's place. Frankly, the D90's noise performance seems better. I'm going to have to go over those pics in more detail though.

[sierramister]

Looks good, but it's hard to tell on such a small sample. Post a 100% crop of a dark area (Tv screen) and me thinks we will see good amounts of noise.

I've also gotta ask, did you perform any noise reduction or exposure adjustments to the images before posting them?


Regardless, it's better than my D80 by a LONG shot. My D80 is almost not acceptable at 800...

Agreed. I had my D80 for about 2 months before I got rid of it. It's true, anything about ISO500 was just unusable on the D80. I loved everything else about it. Too bad that was the determining factor for me the upgrade to the D7000.

Although I shot some stuff at ISO4000 yesterday at my friend's place. Frankly, the D90's noise performance seems better. I'm going to have to go over those pics in more detail though.

Did either your D90 or D7000 have in-camera noise reduction on? That may make a difference in your perception. I'm not afraid to shoot anything at 5000 on my D7000, and the performance consistently beats out the D90 for me.

[Primoz]

Looks good, but it's hard to tell on such a small sample. Post a 100% crop of a dark area (Tv screen) and me thinks we will see good amounts of noise.

I've also gotta ask, did you perform any noise reduction or exposure adjustments to the images before posting them?


Regardless, it's better than my D80 by a LONG shot. My D80 is almost not acceptable at 800...

Agreed. I had my D80 for about 2 months before I got rid of it. It's true, anything about ISO500 was just unusable on the D80. I loved everything else about it. Too bad that was the determining factor for me the upgrade to the D7000.

Although I shot some stuff at ISO4000 yesterday at my friend's place. Frankly, the D90's noise performance seems better. I'm going to have to go over those pics in more detail though.

Did either your D90 or D7000 have in-camera noise reduction on? That may make a difference in your perception. I'm not afraid to shoot anything at 5000 on my D7000, and the performance consistently beats out the D90 for me.

Hmm... I shoot RAW so I gues the camera should't be doing anything to the file... am I wrong?
Anyway here are the crops with noise reduction set to 0!


20110720_213018 by PrimozKovacic, on Flickr


20110720_213046 by PrimozKovacic, on Flickr