I am an amateur photographer with several years of experience taking photos with Canon’s mid-range digital SLRs. I’ve very much enjoyed learning the process and understanding how digital photography works. I’ve always been curious about noise performance on modern SLRs and was wondering if anyone could tell me which type of camera/sensor is considered to have the best high ISO performance with the least amount of visible noise. I’m shooting with a Canon 50D now and while it is excellent overall I start seeing slight noise artifacts at ISO 200 and more prominently at ISO 400 and above. I’ve read that the size of the sensor’s pixels greatly impacts noise in an image and that some very high end Kodak sensors have extremely large pixels and hence perform very well even at ISO levels above 1000 9not that I could afford one!). So I’m just curious as to what kind of gear gives the best noise performance, let me know what you think,
From cameras I’ve actually used, the Nikon D3s. I’m surprised you’re getting noise at 200 on the 50D. I’ve never used that camera, but the 40D, 30D, and 20D all had what I’d consider clean files through at least 400 ISO. I guess it depends on how much pixel peeping you’re doing.
The numbers in parentheses refer to “Low-Light ISO indicates the highest ISO sensitivity to which your camera can be set while maintaining a high quality, low-noise image (based on a Signal-to-Noise-Ratio [SNR] of 30dB, a dynamic range of 9EVs and a color depth of 18bits).”
I’ve shot four of those five cameras (all except the D3X), and that pretty much jibes with my experience with them.
The Canon 50D rates 696 ISO. That’s interesting. And it looks like my perception was right–the 40D, 30D, and 20D all rate very slightly higher (in the low 700s).
Now, don’t get hung up on all these numbers. But so far as a factual answer goes, the D3s looks like the answer to your question.
Technology is evolving rapidly, but generally speaking bigger is better when it comes to noise performance - you’ll note the 5 cameras listed above all have “full frame” (36mm x 24mm) sensors, which generally have better high ISO noise performance than the smaller APS-C sized sensors used in DSLRs like the 50D (and which, in turn, generally have better noise performance than the yet smaller sensors used in point-and-shoot compacts).
Thanks for the detailed info, very much appreciated. I was think a sensor along the lines of my link below might give the best performance due to the flexability you’d have with a 50MP sensor:
From what I’ve read you can basically merge groups of the individual pixels together so they act in tandem producing really good low light performance as long as you’re willing to sacrafice some of those MPs.
It sure might - keep in mind this is a very different class (medium format) of camera from those listed above, with an even bigger sensor than the full frame DSLRs (49 x 36.7mm) and a much bigger price tag ($17,000 for the digital back only - camera body and lens sold seperately.)
Note some much less expensive cameras are also now bringing out different sorts of pixel interpolation for purportedly improved noise performance (at the expense of MP count) - the new Fuji X10 for example, you can read some about it here.
The ISO rating describes how bright the image is, for a given illumination level. It doesn’t tell you how much noise the image has. An ISO-200 image from one camera may have as much noise as an ISO-1600 image from another.
The absolute amount of noise in each pixel is mostly determined by how good the readout circuit is. And there has been considerable improvement over the years. But the important parameter is not the absolute noise, but the signal-to-noise ratio. This is why larger pixels have an advantage. Given the same readout circuit, a 10x10 micron pixel has only slightly more noise than a 3x3 micron pixel, but it collects 11 times more light. So the signal-to-noise ratio is almost 10 times better.