RVB
Member
Johhny,
Remember, I don't do sales. I'm a techie. Obviously I care about the presentation of the products that my company sells, but I also care very much about putting out good information. To my eye that ISO1600 file, with no noise reduction, is significantly ahead of any medium format file I've seen before. If you disagree I'd ask you to wait until I can post a raw file for you to play with and work up to your preferred aesthetic.
We'll have a variety of raw files, including ISO6400, ready to post when 7.2 is available publicly. Until then having the raws wouldn't do you much good! This isn't a massive conspiracy (likewise to the the crowd that seems to think not prematurely posting our conclusions on tech camera usage implies there must be a conspiracy to deny you information - relax, it's been 1 working day since the announcement, and we haven't even gotten our demo units yet; we just want to make sure we provide a complete and verified report rather than a mix of speculation and the manufacturer's internal testing; we're asking for a few days).
D800 as a benchmark for ISO comes directly from looking at our user base. Those who own a digital back have as their two most common "other" cameras a 5DIII and a D800. The vast majority of them have those cameras in case they need higher ISO performance than their digital back.
The relevant question is absolutely not "is this the best high ISO camera in the world?" but rather "can I continue to use my DB when the light starts to drop instead of carrying and switching to my dSLR kit?"
Those who need the absolute best ISO cameras in the world would pick something like the D4 over a D800 despite the resolution difference (perhaps even considering the lower resolution a benefit since many ultra-high-iso shooters are in genres like sports or PJ where they shoot very rapidly, don't need to print large, and need to edit and deliver quickly). They would never consider medium format for that because smaller format cameras will ALWAYS have the advantage on things like stabilization technology, ultra-fast glass, fast long zooms which go hand and hand with the genres that need ultra high ISO.
It's more an issue of "is ISO 1600 usable" than "can I shoot at ISO 256000".
This 1600 iso shot is slightly front focused but the noise performance seems impressive to my eyes..
And as cheap and useful as the Canikon's are there is no high speed flash sync..