The recent talk about pictures kicked me in the butt to finish something I
started a month or two ago.  I took some pictures with my new camera at
different ISO settings to get a feeling for what is usable under what
conditions.  If anyone has a Nikon D3S or is considering getting one, the
results would likely be worth a look at http://www.embedinc.com/d3s.

It would be interesting to see the same tests on other cameras, especially
over time as I expect this is a area where improvement will be steady and
substantial.

Some companies seem to focus on "megapixel madness" versus low light or low
noise.  Nikon clearly was thinking the latter when they designed the D3S.

However, the D3X goes the opposite route, perhaps showing how even high end
camera designers disagree, or maybe that marketing felt they had to make a
showing with many megapixels or be perceived to be behind.  If anyone has
access to a D3X, I'd love to see equivalent tests done, including shrinking
and filtering the high resolution D3X image to the same resolution at the
D3S so that noise and sensitivity can be compared apples to apples.  More
noise is acceptable at higher resolution, but it's not clear whether the
extra resolution of the D3X, and other megapixel madness cameras from other
vendors, is enough to compensate for the extra noise.  I suspect not for th=
e
current crop of cameras, but real data would be interesting to see.


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