Posted by The Canon 1D Mark IV has arrived, it’s been unboxed, and my highest curiosity is about the focus systems and the high ISO abilities. I’ll talk about camera features in another article, but for now, I want to get into the guts of these babies. A few quick shots were taken to check it out and then in the past few days testing has been done to check out what has been done in the focus department and what the 1D4 had going for it under the hood in the high ISO department.
Here are a few shots to compare the hottest cameras out there right now. The original picture and setting is this:
Working our way up, here is a round of ISO 1600 shots. All the following pictures unless otherwise posted are straight out of the camera with the following workflow: shot in raw, converted to tiff using LightRoom with no adjustments and standard LR settings. The profile for all the cameras were set to Camera Neutral. No sharpening or noise reduction other than default standard LR settings. Developed as tiff files and then 100 percent crops were extracted to jpg files and posted straight here. Additionally, all images in each section were shot with equivalent manufacturer best of breed lenses on a gitzo stick and controlled for all relevant variables including white balance and exposure. Can’t get much plainer vanilla than that.
ISO 1600 Section
Settings for all cameras: 1600 ISO. 300mm f/2.8 lens set to f/5.6. 1/200 shutter. ~2900K fixed at point of capture.
ISO 1600 Canon 1D Mark IV 100 percent crop:
ISO 1600 Nikon D3s 100 percent crop:
ISO 1600 Canon 7D 100 percent crop:
ISO 1600 Nikon D300s 100 percent crop:
Download the Full Raw 1600 Files (Warning VERY LARGE files):
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ISO 3200 Section
Settings for all cameras: 3200 ISO. 300mm f/2.8 lens set to f/5.6. 1/320 shutter. ~2900K fixed at point of capture.
ISO 3200 Canon 1D Mark IV 100 percent crop:
ISO 3200 Nikon D3s 100 percent crop:
ISO 3200 Canon 7D 100 percent crop:
ISO 3200 Nikon D300s 100 percent crop:
Download the Full Raw 3200 Files (Warning VERY LARGE files):
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ISO 6400 Section
Settings for all cameras: 6400 ISO. 300mm f/2.8 lens set to f/5.6. 1/640 shutter. ~2900K Fixed at point of capture.
ISO 6400 Canon 1D Mark IV 100 percent crop:
ISO 6400 Nikon D3s 100 percent crop:
ISO 6400 Canon 7D 100 percent crop:
ISO 6400 Nikon D300s 100 percent crop:
Download the Full Raw 6400 Files (Warning VERY LARGE files):
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ISO 12800 Section
Settings for all cameras: 12800 ISO. 300mm f/2.8 lens set to f/5.6. 1/1250 shutter. ~2900K Fixed at point of capture.
ISO 12800 Canon 1D Mark IV 100 percent crop:
ISO 12800 Nikon D3s 100 percent crop:
ISO 12800 Canon 7D 100 percent crop:
Download the Full Raw 12800 Files (Warning VERY LARGE files):
Winner
Is there a clear winner – yes and no. The point is to look not only for the cleanest picture, but also for detail. Clearly the Nikon D3s has the cleanest frames. Does that eliminate all the other cameras? No it does not. The 7D puts up a heck of a fight and is a big surprise. The Canon 1D Mark IV is about a stop worse than the D3s at ISO 6400 and higher but it is totally usable. Don’t get caught in the internet trap that there is such a thing as a noise free camera – there isn’t. Some may be surprised to know that ISO 1600 black and white film is as noisy (or grainy) as the ISO 12800 shots here and even grainier when pushed higher.
Just for fun – make you sure you note that this is only for fun and somewhat for curiosity, here is what ISO 12800 images would look like at 100 percent if enlarged to 16×24. A 16×24 print would be a size I would use in a full spread of a 12×12 wedding album. Since the Nikon is so good, I have not done any more than sharpen the image. The Canon 1D Mark IV is a stop or more worse than the Nikon D3s, so naturally I wanted to see how close i could get to the Nikon D3s. The Canon shots have a small touch of noise reduction done to them.
ISO 12800 at 24×16:
Canon 1D Mark IV
Nikon D3s ISO 12800 24×16:
Canon 7D 100 percent 24×16:
These last 3 frames are equalized by being the same size and upsized to 16×24.
The Nikon D3s is again the clear winner, but I would not hesitate to operate fully with a Canon 1D Mark IV. In fact, the 1D4 is the camera I own along with a D3X. I really have to scratch my head with the Canon 7D though. I thought it would be pure garbage, but it is not and while I wouldn’t be using it at ISO 12800 it does surprise me that it isn’t a lot worse.
I also want to thank Professional Photo Resources and B&H photo for all of their help in providing gear and lenses as needed for these reviews. Please support this site by visiting them for your camera gear and rental needs.
Coming soon is the focusing test.
Please Note – Nikon D300s does not have an ISO 12800.
Jacob, I’m a photojournalist, I own a 7D, and I’m afraid I’m going to bust your balls a little and disagree with some of your statements:
>>people buy FF cams because it´s FF, PJ´s buys FF because they get better WA capability and they can get close to their subjects in cramped areas,
Yes, FF provides somewhat better wide capability, but this is true for any type of photography. The rest of your statement doesn’t track: First, getting close to subjects doesn’t require FF. If I really need to get close, there are lenses that’ll do a fine job on the 7D — 10-22 EF-S, Tokina 12-24, etc. Second, I’m not sure where you get the idea that getting up in a subject’s face is any more necessary in photojournalism than in other forms of photography. When shooting people, I’m much more often using a long lens, because it’s often impractical to be that close to a subject.
>>most PJ´s would consider a D3s if they were starting out fresh,just cos of the FF and the 12mp ,it makes the file transfer and storing a lot easier and the high iso lot cleaner as you can see.not everyone needs the extra mps , sure if i were a studio photog i´ll welcome it, if i were selling big prints , hell ya.
Uh, no. Most photojournalists starting out fresh a) are usually in a financial situation that makes acquiring the latest pro-level body difficult and b) often don’t need to own their own gear for journo work, as they use their organization’s gear (if they’re on staff; if they’re freelance, well, then there’s even less money for gear). In any case, the D3s isn’t the body — any more than other bodies — that most budding photojournalists seriously consider buying straight out of j-school. Also, I’d argue that noise reduction is less critical for neophyte photojournalists; many of them start out at newspapers, where print quality just isn’t high enough to justify the cost of a body with the absolute lowest noise.
Anyway, I’m guessing by your statements you’re a Nikon cheerleader, which is fine — it’s great to be enthusiastic. Just try not to make wildly inaccurate statements while cheering.
I still think Canon should compensate us 1D MK iii owners or offer some up date in a better processor and sensor. I love my 7D and sadly The 1 D MK III I have not used for some time. Kept for rainy days and sports.
Remedy:
What would a guy with D3s have to do to get 7Ds’s 1.6x800mm view angle without teleconverters ?
Why is lack 12mm wide view angle be the criteria for putting down 7D anymore than lack of FoV equivalent to 1.6x800mm image stabilized lens for D3s or any Nikon?
What about 1.6x loss of DoF on D3s which is more required than low light capabilities in some application?
You have to crank up the ISO 1.6x to get same DoF, there goes the ISO advantage.
Hi,
I think there is a problem with the test results, because the exposure of the samples are not the same.
I downloaded the ISO 6400 and ISO12800 files, then I opened them with Photoshop cs5.1 with default settings. I didn’t change any settings in photoshop. I see that the files which is taken with 1D mk4 is underexposed approx 1 EV according to the nikon D3s files.
Especially, the shadow areas in nikon D3s file is well exposed so the noise level is much lower than the canon 1D, As a result the nikon D3s seems that it is the clear winner but it’s wrong.
When I compare the photos according the color chart part of the pictures, I saw that canon 1D is a little bit more grainy but sharper and d3s is little bit softer. I think If the same photo was taken with 0.5-1 EV higher exposure settings with canon 1D, The high iso results would be better than nikon d3s.