D300, 1D2n Noise & Sharpness Comparison
I did a quick and dirty comparison of my new 12-meg Nikon D300 and much-loved 8-meg Canon 1D2n. I don't suppose these were done under particularly rigorous scientific standards, but I think they give a good indication of where the much cheaper and new design D300 stands in terms of sharpness and noise.
I used a Nikon 50mm f1.4 AI on each camera at f2.8. Focus point was on "Canon." Because the Nikon is a 1.5 crop and the Canon is 1.3, foot zoom was used to equalize image width. All images were shot in RAW, converted in ACR with the same settings, and imported into Photoshop CS3. Because the Nikon produces images at 4288 x 2848 pixels and the Canon at 3504 x 2336 pixels, I equalized them to 3000 pixels wide, cropped the body you see below and normalized it to 400 pixels, and put everything side-by-side in a new file.
I was prepared to see a edge in sharpness in the D300, since it has 4 more megapixels on a smaller sensor, but I was surprised at how much better the Nikon handled noise.
Another interesting result was the differences in depth of field.
Click on each image for a larger version.
Update: I've added a full frame of one of the test images at the bottom of this post so you can see how much was cropped. 
1 comments:
Thank you for the comparison -- most interesting! When I was shooting film I used Nikons, but for digital I switched to Canons -- mostly for the lens selection at the time. How would you compare the viewfinders of the two cameras? In the cheaper Nikons & Canons I actually preferred the Nikon view -- larger & brighter. Share some more when you have spent more time with both.
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