High ISO hability, myth?

[prakhardeep]

This is because Nikon sensors have improved more in ISO ability than Canon.

Sony sensors?

Does Sony use the same set of sensors in their DSLRs as the ones they supply Nikon with? If so, why is it that there's so much praise for Nikon D3 and D700 yet nothing much about Sony cameras?

Yes Nikon gets it's sensors made by sony but i think they are proprietary and sony uses a version of them and that is what there is not that much praise for sony cameras

 

[KmH]

Hardware has improved in a number of ways.

Because CMOS uses less power than CCD's do, CMOS does not heat up as much so there is less thermal noise.

The microlenses between pixels have gotten better, so each pixel can gather a bit more signal for a slightly better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

There have been improvements in amplifier design that reduce amplifier induced noise.

Lastly, more image sensors have 14-bit analog-to-digital (A/D) converters today rather than the 12-bit A/D converters of yesterday.

 

[KmH]

Sony and Nikon have long had a B2B relationship. Sony manufactures image sensors for Nikon while using Nikon manufactured steppers in their chip making photolithography processes.

In the past Nikon did their own image sensor design and Sony made Nikon's image sensors to those designs.

It is my understanding that Sony has taken over the designing of Nikon's image sensor chips in recent years, such that the image sensor used in the D3100/D5100/D7000 are Sony designed/manufactured image sensors.

 

[zcar21]

Now if you want to compare old to new pro models showing you the advancement in iso capabilities, compare a d1 vs d3. The d1 iso stopped at iso800 before it went into "boosted" or "hi" mode at 1600 and 3200. Where as the d3s goes to 25,600 before you can use it's "boosted" mode at iso51,200 and 102,400.

boosted? isn't all that means that it's hidden in the menu. Anyways, I took your advice. I looked at pictures from top of the line nikon cameras at iso settings 1600 and 3200. Same result, the difference is close to none with no noise reduction. The newest nikon has 4 setting of noise reduction: off, low, normal and high. Then I compare the difference between noise reduction off and normal. Now that's a nice improvement, picture looks nice and there is only a little bit of detail loss.
But I started this thread thinking about entry level dslr, and so far I can't see a difference.

 

[2WheelPhoto]

check out the d700, it is shocking what I get from that in very low light and high ISO

very happy with mine as well