ISO 4000, 85mm, f/2.5, 160th sec

Just a few more sample images from the D700, as I had a chance to take a few snaps at my wife’s cousin’s wedding this past Sunday. Suffice it to say that the more I get to use this camera, the more it’s changing absolutely everything about the way I shoot.

The above images were taken at ISO 4000 – no noise reduction! And not only that, it’s amazing how well the color and sharpness holds up at such a high ISO. Nothing special was done in post-production to compensate for anything; only the same standard adjustments were applied as I do with just about every image (curve bump, slight color correction, exposure adjustment, sharpening).

I mean, seriously: shooting at ISO 4000 and getting images to which I might apply noise reduction, but don’t necessarily have to? Really? Are you kidding me?

Here’s one of the above images, no adjustments applied except standard RAW conversion via Adobe Camera RAW (using the D2x Mode 1 Beta camera profile, since Adobe doesn’t know how to convert Nikon RAW files):

And for you pixel peepers out there, here are 100% and 25% crops. I include a 25% crop because that’s closer to reality as far as what you would see in print. At 12.1 megapixels at 300 PPI, you’d have to print an image at 32″ x 48″ to see the equivalent of a 100% crop. On the other hand, 25% gets you just about at the native print size, which is right around 8″ x 12″. Of course, you could print at a 100% equivalent, and with a little bit of post-production work you’d still be able to get a great quality print, even at such a high ISO.

Here are some taken at ISO 1600. As with the above images, absolutely zero noise reduction has been applied.

I realize that there are very few shadows in the above images, but I really like them, k? :)

By the way, how good looking are these two? Like, ridiculously good looking, right?

Happy Tuesday!