Photography News | Issue 38 | absolutephoto.com
Camera test 47
The EOS 5D Mark IV’s native ISO range is 100 to 32,000 with expansion down to ISO 50 and up to 102,400 possible. Test pictures were done with low-light outdoor scenes but also of a colour test chart in controlled conditions. The set shown was shot with the tripod-mounted camera fitted with the 24-70mm f/2.8 L II USM lens set at 33mm. The base exposure for the ISO 100 was 1/8sec at f/8. The Raw files were processed in Lightroom with default noise reduction. Imagequality is really impressive. Colour fidelity, black density and saturation are almost identical from low ISOs right up to ISO 6400. Delicate hues and rich colours are equally well recorded with little degradation as ISO increases and the only difference is the presence of noise which naturally increases with speed. It is more evident from ISO 3200, but even at this speed critical use is possible and perhaps it is only significant at ISO 6400 where the coarseness might put some people off. Performance: ISO
Performance: high ISOnoise reduction
Original image
No NR
LowNR
ISO 12,800 is still capable of very high image quality and while there is evident noise and artefacting in smooth tonal areas colour quality, fine detail retention and black density remains of a very high standard. I think that remains the case at the top native ISO of 32,000 where the noise has a filmic look and is neutral so it’s not distracting at all, but is obvious in areas of darker even tones.
For comparison, I did a side-by- side ISO set with the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV alongside the Nikon D810 with the Raws processed through Lightroom (shown below). Viewing the images at the same image size, ie. the Canon images at 109.5%with the Nikon shots at 100%, both cameras produced shots with near identical noise levels to ISO 1600 but after that the Canon proved noticeably superior with smoother images with less noise and better detail.
Standard NR
ISO 100
ISO 800
ISO 1600
Strong NR
Multi-shot NR
ISO 3200
ISO 6400
ISO 12,800
ISO 25,600
ISO 32,000
ISO 51,200
Comparison ISO
Original image
Canon
Nikon
Original image
The EOS 5D Mark IV has an High ISO NR function with four selectable levels plus off. The Multi-shot NR is selectable when JPEG only shooting is set and as four consecutive frames are taken and then merged you will need the camera on a tripod. For this test, shots were taken at ISO 6400, 12,800 and 25,600 at each High ISONR setting. The shots shown here were at ISO 25,600. Considering the high ISO, even the shot with no NR applied is pretty decent. However, if you want to lessen noise in-camera without bolting a camera down on a tripod then the Standard setting works fine and doesn’t impact too heavily on detail. TheMulti-shot JPEG option is the best, though, and the images are very smooth and impressive for this high ISO – but the camera needs to be on a tripod.
Above The Nikon D810 and Canon EOS 5DMark IV produced equally impressive performance at high ISOs with the Canon proving very slightly superior above ISO 1600.
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