By default, the D5 neutralizes warm tones under tungsten light, leading to somewhat unnatural results in low light, but you change this behavior by setting White Balance to 'Auto2: Keep warm lighting colors'. Importantly, color saturation is retained at high ISOs - more so than with the D4S, and certainly more so than the Sony. Canon still has the upper hand when it comes to reds though. Nikon still renders some of the nicest greens we've seen, particularly due to their warmth. In fact, the D5 has some of the nicest yellows we've ever seen: Sony's yellows look positively green in comparison, and just more yellow than the 1D-X II. *Ĭolors are a strong point though, and generally appear punchier than the D5's predecessor. While large radius sharpening sacrifices pixel-level detail, it does lead to higher perceived acuity at smaller viewing sizes - note how the 1D-X II appears sharpest when everything is downsized to 8MP, but at the cost of sacrificing finer detail. This sharpening is difficult to reverse if you don't want the halos or over-sharpened look, and overall we never experienced the eye-popping pixel-level detail we're used to seeing in recent Sony JPEGs at 100%. That said, halos aren't as severe as with the Canon 1D-X II, which appears aggressively over-sharpened.
The lack of fine detail even at low ISO is likely due to large radius sharpening, which leaves behind halos at edges that aren't there in the Raw, or the Sony JPEG for that matter.
Detail in the Raw is left on the table at both low and high ISO sensitivities, especially in comparison to Sony's more sophisticated engine. So how does the JPEG engine fare? In terms of detail retention, Nikon (and Canon, for that matter) have some work to do with respect to optimally balancing sharpening and noise reduction. Couple that with a growing tendency for news outlets to reject Raw files in favor of JPEGs from their contract shooters and the importance of a solid JPEG engine becomes even more apparent. JPEG performanceĪs evidenced by the gigabit ethernet port on the D5, it is designed not only to take photos quickly, but also to send them off quickly as well. That benefit on the high ISO end diminishes at lower ISOs: the D5 has a 2 EV deficit in base ISO dynamic range compared to the a7R II.Īlthough the D5 is the best full-frame performer in terms of high ISO performance, you may be wondering: 'why the lack of a drastic improvement'? At this point, we're simply running up against the best that modern silicon can do: with single electron read noise levels at the highest ISOs in some modern architectures, there's only so much performance to be gained without drastically increasing conversion efficiency or light gathering capability past the limits already imposed by the Bayer array and current (very good) microlens design. In fact, compared to the 42MP Sony a7R II, midtone performance at the very high ISOs is fairly similar at a common viewing size, with benefits most apparent in high ISO dynamic range, or, shadow performance at in extremely low light scenes. Although the performance advantage is more obvious at higher ISOs, like 204,800, the actual benefit does appear to be minimal at best. Nikon's claims of better ISO performance due to color filter array optimizations appear to have merit: noise levels in Raw mode are slightly lower in comparison to the D4S, or any other full-frame camera including the 1D-X II, when normalized. So what does ISO 3 million look like? See for yourself if any of the ISOs above the D4S' previous maximum ISO offer anything useful.