Dave Hartley Photography » ISO http://www.davehartleyphoto.com Nature and Travel Photography Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:55:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Nikon D3/D2x ISO Statistics http://www.davehartleyphoto.com/2008/07/04/photography/nikon-d3-iso-statistics/ http://www.davehartleyphoto.com/2008/07/04/photography/nikon-d3-iso-statistics/#comments Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:05:29 +0000 Dave http://www.davehartleyphoto.com/?p=34 Nikon D3 ISO StatisticsOn our recent January trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia Island and the Antarctic Peninsula, I was able to give the Nikon D3 a good shakeout, with my trusty D2x as a backup. I was looking forward to seeing how the quality was at higher ISO’s. This is important when traveling to places such as the Falkland Islands and South Georgia as the weather is typically overcast, resulting in plummeting shutter speeds; not so good for shooting wildlife. The camera did not disappoint; in fact it was stunning. Take a look at the table which shows the ISO speed and the number of photos that were taken (actually the number of s I still have on my disk). Most s were shot at ISO 800, with the next two ranges being ISO 500 and 640. I only have 135 s with the ISO at it’s base value of 200. The quality was so good that I was treating ISO 800 as a starting point. You will see that I shot a few s at ISO 100 (LO 1); I was trying to get the slowest shutter to blur a glacial stream which had a King penguin standing on a rock.

Compare this to an identical trip that we took in February 2006. In this case, the Nikon D2x was my main camera. The following table shows the ISO speed and associated number of pictures that are sitting on a backup portion of one of my drives. Notice that most of the s where shot at ISO 200. Only a small number of pictures where taken at ISO 800. Was the weather better? Good light? Not really, pretty much the same. What the D3 allowed me to do was to utilize faster shutter speeds and/or add more depth of field. This is a huge benefit to wildlife photographers! Animals are always moving around and the light is not always optimal, so being able to utilize higher ISO is a huge gain!

ISO statistics for the Nikon D2xConsidering these statistics, if my D3 was my main camera and my D2x was my backup, how many pictures did you think I took on the trip with my D2x? Less than twenty and I only kept three! I’ll discuss that more in another post.

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