Nikon D3 vs. Nikon D2X vs. Canon 5D vs. Nikon D200 vs. Canon Mark III

Ok, here's another little game we played! We all love to compare the noise levels at different ISO ratings. So, I've already compared the D2X to the new D3... and, well, there really is no comparison there. So I thought I'd take it up a notch. I asked Jeremy to bring in his Canon 5D, Amber to bring her Nikon D200 as she was in town shooting with me at my wedding yesterday (on a side note, the D3 performed remarkably at the wedding and I'm excited to share pictures very soon... and by the way, I never shot any LESS than 1600 ISO!!), and I asked my friend Parker to come over and bring his new Canon Mark III. Now we're talking! Let's see how they turned out...

Here's the basic shot, with the detail shots being 100% crops.



Again, I'm not some scientific scrutinizer here, but these tests are still fairly controlled. All are out-of-the-camera jpeg images using sRGB color space, auto white balance, on a tripod, all at f-1,8 at 50mm on a fixed-focal-length lens, in manual mode, with matrix metering. We let the cameras center the meter needle, which is what determined the shutter speed. All we did was change the ISO, then the shutter speed accordingly.

Immediately we can see that the D3's white balance is truer than that of the D2X. And obviously the noise levels are absurd... the D3 at 25,600 ISO rivals the D2X at only 3200! Dramatic difference.

When compared to the Canon 5D, the Canon holds its own well. The Canon's 3200 seems to be a bit better than the D3's 6400, but not by much. In the lateral ISO comparisons, we've concluded the D3 wins by a little bit. So if you're trying to decide between the two, and ISO is your only concern, the 5D does well for being about half the price of the D3. Having said that, the D3 soars past the 5d in other areas like its 11 frames per second to the 5D's 3, and the 5D has 9 focus points and the D3 has 51.

The D200 has been a great camera for those that have owned them and it's typically agreed upon that even the less expensive D200 excelled in noise handling over its big brother, the D2X. So now, how does the new D3 compare to the D200. (Incidentally, Nikon's new D300 is even better than the D200. I've shot with a D300, but not very much, and we didn't have one available for today's tests). We can see right off that the auto white balance of the D200 was quite different than that of the D3 (and all the others for that matter).

Now, dollar for dollar, the Canon Mark III and the D3 are much closer- with the Mark III being only about $500 less than the D3. And of the test cameras, the Mark III is the only one that has an ISO setting higher than 3200 with which to compare the D3, at 6400.

And one last one, hand held, with some skin tones (thanks, Amber! You should be a hand model).

The Mark III and 5D did very well in our noise level tests. Parker even commented that he liked the noise pattern on the Mark III better than the D3's lack there of. The D2X and D200 faired in the 3rd-place tie range, we thought, but it was close. But we all agreed that as far as noise handling goes, the D3 is, by far, the strongest performer. Let me know what you think!