PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG

Honestly, I am glad I don’t have to choose. I’ve got a blonde and a brunette…err…a Canon and Nikon.

For large commercial jobs, where I am thinking I want a higher native resolution, it’ll be the Canon I reach for. For low light situations, which are all too common, it will, without a doubt, be Nikon. In fact, with the noise issue out of the way, and most client deliverables needing to be down-rezzed anyway, I can see that the Nikon not only would be a better solution to speeding up my post-production process, but moreover, storing the RAW/DNG files will save me significant hard-drive space in my archives over the larger Canon files.

Will the Mark III have issues it’s earlier Mark III siblings had? I hope not. Will Nikon have an as-yet-unknown issue? Who knows. We’re all their guinea pigs, shelling out thousands to fuel their R&D, with the consumers being the beneficiaries.

Advantage? Photo Finish - Nikon by a nose, for what I do. How about you?

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Thursday of last week, November 29th, I picked up my 1Ds Mark III. The shop only received one body and as so it was treated like a treasure. I drove home with a lighter wallet and the 1Ds Mark III next to me, eager to charge up the batteries, and get to some shooting. Shortly after I arrived home the phone calls and emails started to roll in. I was one of the first to get the 1Ds Mark III in California apparently.

Here’s a bit of information about me and what I need and want out of a camera. I’m a pretty demanding person when it comes to equipment and I look for a camera system that is flexible and can shoot in any situation or condition. The fields I work in are entertainment, gallery fine art, landscapes, portraiture, motion picture still photography, product, fashion, and event work. I don’t shoot weddings, but I do shoot extremely low light events. At this point in my career almost every photograph I take is for print or has the potential to be printed. And even then still, the potential to be printed very large. I keep this in mind while working so my shooting technique doesn’t slip. So I need a camera that is reliable and produces high quality/high resolution images in fairly demanding scenerios. Low light, bad weather, etc….

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I visited the Digiexpo fair in Helsinki today, and had a chance to try out the D3 and compare it to my own 1Ds mk2 that I had with me. I would have liked to add the 1D mk3 as a third camera, but Canon didn’t let people insert their CF cards into the cameras (not even the 1D mk3 although it’s already on the market…!). What a shame - because at the Nikon stand people were actually encouraged to insert their own cards into the D3 and shoot away. Also the 1Ds mk3 would have been a nice addition, but I had already expected that I wouldn’t be allowed to insert my card into that one.

I know the 1Ds and the D3 cameras are intended for somewhat different purposes and shouldn’t be directly compared - but I own the 1Ds mk2 and therefore it was a desired point of reference for me.

I specifically wanted to test high-ISO noise, nothing else. Before you draw any conclusions from these images, let me first say:

- Do NOT judge sharpness or focusing or white balance or overall colour balance from these samples. They weren’t controlled in the manner required for such tests.

- Judge ONLY noise. The noise seen in these samples is the noise in the in-camera JPGs (depending on sharpness setting too, of course, but I used 0 for the Canon images, and I assume the D3 didn’t have any excessive sharpening either).

See the full article Nikon D3 vs Canon 1Ds Mark II.