Nikon D4S review – Noise, resolution and sensitivity
Images: Noise is low at standard sensitivities, though the extended Hi settings are still a stretch
With the D4S using a tweaked version of the 16.2-million-pixel sensor from the Nikon D4, the amount of detail that can be resolved is obviously about the same. The D4S is capable of resolving up to almost 26 on our resolution chart, which is a standard result for a 16.2-million-pixel camera, though it pales in comparison with the 20-million-pixel-plus sensors that are increasingly becoming the standard.
However, the D4S isn’t about resolution – it is about speed. Most of the photographers using the D4S will be news and sports journalists for whom capturing the image in focus is more important than anything else. Their images will largely be used in newspapers and online, and not printed to a huge size, so a 16.2-million-pixel resolution leaves plenty of options for cropping and yet still printing at a suitable size.
One area where the D4S excels is low-light performance. The large photosites of its sensor not only provide a good dynamic range, but also capture a lot of photons in low light. This helps to keep noise to a minimum at sensitivities at which images from other cameras would be unusable.
Although I was unable to perform a side-by-side image comparison with the D4, having tested the older camera I feel that JPEG images from the D4S are better at each given sensitivity, particularly higher standard settings. Looking at and editing raw files, there is a little less difference, though they still show an improvement in noise levels in the D4S. It is impressive that the D4S resolves almost as much detail at ISO 12,800 as it does at ISO 100. It is only after this point that luminance noise begins to reduce the level of detail.
These images show 72ppi (100% on a computer screen) sections of images of a resolution chart, captured using the Sigma 105mm set to f/5.6 . We show the section of the resolution chart where the camera starts to fail to reproduce the lines separately. The higher the number visible in these images, the better the camera’s detail resolution is at the specified sensitivity setting.
