Now that a few people have been using their D800's for awhile, I am just curious what your ISO limit is? What is the highest ISO that you are comfortable using with that camera? I just got my D800 yesterday, and naturally plan to do my own testing for my own standards, but I am curious what others have found; especially you EJ, as I know you and I have about the same tolerance for noise in our shooting

Thanks

It all depends, at 36MP you can downrez a lot for most uses of your photos which masks the noise quite a bit. I don't think I'd wrry too much at 800 at all, 1600 would be OK with some noise reduction applied to just the solid areas. Put it this way, it is less noisy at every ISO than a D300 but more noisy at every ISO than a D3/D700 but then again, as I wrote in my review, once you downrez the D800 to 12MP like a D3 then it is on par. Here's the DPReview Noise data:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d800-d800e/18

Thanks EJ

I read all the talk/articles about noise levels when downres'd, but I am really more interested in the noise levels at 100% or when cropped and kept at 100%. Since I have to upres all of my D300/D700 files to 5100 pixels on the long side, which can makes things very tough if you want to crop an image before submitting, my hopes with the D800 are that I can crop a bit and still meet the 5100 pixel requirement for submissions. If I get a full frame shot, then I can downres to 5100 pixels. I pretty much never shoot my D700 above ISO 1250, so based on what you say, I'll probably start with the idea that 800 to 1250 will be my max with the D800. If it wasn't so crappy out here today, I would have gone out and done a bunch of test shots. Figures the day I get the new toy, the weather sucks.

D800 files are around 104MB for a 8Bit Tiff so to meet an agencies 50MB you can literally chop it in half, I try to keep the ISO on my D800 to ISO 800 or less although as EJ states 1600 is ok with a small amount of NR, Of course i am talking about agency use, For personal use you could easily shoot higher and add extra NR, When i shot with the D300 i didnt go over ISO 400 to give you an idea

Dave

I do not understand this iso thing with the D800. I routinely shoot my D300s at iso 800, have very little noise and get published. So, I guess the D800 would not be much of an improvement under what I have read. Or maybe I am not understanding. I also enlarge my D300s images up to 46x32 canvas, iso 800, and sell them regularly.

Re noise, count me as another person who does not quite understand what you guys talk about sometimes. Some of you won't even shoot at ISO 1600 with a D3s

I've seen term like "unusable" being used to describe the noise issue with some of your files/images? What exactly does it mean, if you don't mind me asking? I mean, unusable for what?

Any kind soul wouldn't mind enlightening the few of us mortals here ?

Thank you very much !!

Noise is a very personal thing, Whats acceptable for one is not for somebody else, I would say that the D800 is a good stop better than the D300 and a stop under the D3s and thats viewing a full size image not downsizing, Considering the D800 has 3x the pixels its an amazing feat

Dave

I agree with Dave; i.e that noise is a subjective issue. I would never shoot my D300 over ISO 400 as the files would most often not be accepted for submission by image agencies. The person I was shooting with in the blind today uses the D300s and we talked a bit about ISO. He says his limit is ISO 400 with the D300s, but will push it to ISO 500 if required. I suspect the D300s may be slightly better than the D300? I do not sell many prints privately, so I cannot comment on that part, but I suspect that if it is a great "shot" then the person(s) buying the print probably don't care about the amount of noise. All I can say is I can see the detriment to the image IQ and the loss of detail in the subject, when the noise is beyond my acceptable level. For the D300 that was ISO 400, for the D700 it is ISO 1600 and I can't say for the D800 yet, but it appears to be darn good at ISO 800 from what I shot today. I will be pushing it further over the next week to see what my limit will be. I think each person needs to determine what their own personal limit is and work within that. I asked the original question, because I knew I would get a response from EJ that would fit within my own personal standard. What I can say though is if you are happy with the D300s at ISO 800, then you would probably be happy with the D700/D3 at ISO 3200, and the D3s above that, which I am sure you would love to have that ability to shoot with such a high ISO.

I'm able to make 12" X 18" prints with my D800 at ISO 5000 that can't be distinguished noise-wise from same-sized prints at IS0 3200 from my D700. I honestly don't understand how Nikon accomplished this feat. The detail in the shadow areas is remarkable IMO. The images must be properly exposed (exposing important highlight detail at the right edge of the histogram) and noise reduction and detail recovery/sharpening accomplished. I've tried down-sampling the D800 files to 12 MP, but I personally get better results without downsampling. I use Topaz DeNoise 5 and Topaz Detail and InFocus. With my D300, I would not shoot above ISO 800. For more balanced assessments on cameras, don't rely on just a few opinions. Read multiple reviews. Two particularly good reviews on the D800 are Luminous Landscape's review and Fred Miranda's D800 comparison to the 5DMarkIII. Michael Reichmann of luminous Landscape, is highly regarded and he is of the opinion that the D800 is quite usable at ISO 6400.

Everybody is different on their sensitivity to noise. I think ISO 800 on a D300 is just a bit noisier than i like and anything over that is unusable but different eyes perceive things differently.

Like everyone has said it depends
I recently did a indoor assignment for a very picky client and had to use iso over 2k to get the ss required
The client loved the results and will be using atleaast one two page layout.
I think if you had ever looked at a 4x5 velva drum scan compared to a decent 12 meg file
Many concerns about noise would be forgotten.
That said no noise is best which is why I am ordering a D4

With my D200 I shot at ISO 800 for a long time, but after truly looking at my images critically I scaled it back to 320/400 but with a mind towards staying at 200.

With my D700 I grew anxious at 3200 but I sold images at that ISO so wouldn't avoid it but would always look for opportunities to drop it down. I thought nothing of going to ISO 1600.

With my D800 I'm nervous at ISO 1250/1600 but will shoot it. I find I'm comfortable shooting ISO 800/1000. However, like others on here I'm evaluating out of camera image resolution and haven't tried to downscale them.