ISO Sensitivity / Noise levels (contd.)

In-camera High ISO noise reduction

The D3 has four different levels of high ISO noise reduction (which are only applied at ISO 2000 or higher); Off, Low, Normal and High (with Normal as the default). The good news is that the Normal setting offers a good balance between the desire to keep visible noise to a minimum without sacrificing fine detail, and the four settings provide a good range of options from very low to high enough to keep noise at bay right up into the highest reaches of the ISO range.

At the highest settings (ISO 9000+) fine luminance detail is taking a more obvious hit due to the strength of the default noise reduction and you may want to switch down to 'Low' or even 'Off' (though if you really want to do your own noise reduction you may as well shoot RAW). Note that even in the 'Off' position some NR is still applied to the JPEGs.

Indicated ISO sensitivity is on the horizontal axis of this graph, standard deviation of luminosity on the vertical axis (note that the standard deviation scale here has been extended 3x compared to the graphs on the previous page).

Noise reduction crop comparisons (ISO 3200 - 25,600)

ISO 3200 NR Off	ISO 3200 NR Low	ISO 3200 NR Normal	ISO 3200 NR High
ISO 6400 NR Off	ISO 6400 NR Low	ISO 6400 NR Normal	ISO 6400 NR High
ISO 12,800 NR Off	ISO 12,800 NR Low	ISO 12,800 NR Normal	ISO 12,800 NR High
ISO 25,600 NR Off	ISO 25,600 NR Low	ISO 25,600 NR Normal	ISO 25,600 NR High