D3 shoots black cat in coal cellar

Well, almost.

The interweb is clearly lacking in pictures of people's pets shot with their expensive new camera gear *. So when Jasper climbed into the cat igloo we bought him 18 months ago for the first time ever today, there was only one thing for me to do. Grab thousands of pounds' worth of D3 and wide zoom, stick the lens through the small opening in the igloo, and attempt to cajole the sensor into giving me a usable image from the available gloom inside.

There was so little light the meter wasn't working properly, so I hazarded a guess. Here's the result:

Nikon D3, 14-24mm f/2.8, 1/20sec f/2.8 @ ISO12800

No that's not a typo - that really is ISO twelve thousand eight hundred. Five stops more sensitive than ISO400.

Yeah, it's kinda noisy in the shadows (of which there are a lot in this picture). I can see a couple of stuck pixels. But hey, it's a usable image in a situation that would've required an exposure of 2 seconds at f/2.8 with ISO400. Blimey, strewth and all that.

Practical applications? I don't know, yet. But it's reassuring to know that I could take pictures of a black cat in a coal cellar at night, if I really wanted to. I think...

* Er, not...

Comments

[Roo]

haha, that's exactly what I did when I got my D3, although my cat is black and white, so a good test of dynamic range... which it passes well if you have a tweak with the raw files.
roo

[andy]

That's incredible. Does the D300 have the same high ISO?

[Seb Rogers]

Hi Andy,

No, the D300 runs out of puff at HI1 (ISO 6400 equivalent), which is noisier than the D3 at 12800 (!). Not surprising, really - same number of pixels in a smaller area = higher signal/noise ratio.

That said, the D300's very good. I'm happy shooting at ISO800, ISO1600 is usable with care and ISO3200 isn't nearly as bad as you'd expect. It's easily a stop 'better' than the D200 and D2X; the D3 is more like 2 1/2 stops better.