D300 - ISO range question

L1.0 is equal to ISO 100 up to Hi 2 which as I recall is equivalent to ISO 6400. Best working range is ISO 200> 1200.

I find ISO 1600 to be very acceptable, and on a recent trip to London, set my max ISO to 3200 and still got fantastic results. YMMV of course, but even up to ISO 3200 the D300 shines in my experience.

At The British Museum, D300 at ISO 3200, Sigma 10-20mm at 20mm

A lot depends on how your shoot (RAW or JPG) and what software you use to process your images. ISO 3200 D300 images can be made to look as good as low ISO images if you have the right software and know how to use it.

The D300 only has Hi 1 but not Hi 2. Hi 1 is approximately ISO 6400. Its rated range is 200 to 3200 with Lo 1 and Hi 1 options.

Any time you deviate from the base ISO, you'll lose some quality, but for the D300, I am still happy with ISO 1600 indoors. 3200 is the max in the range and is still OK in my opinion. I would avoid Hi 1 as much as possible.

Dave Lee's sample image has very little shadow areas and therefore even ISO 3200 looks good. Unfortunately, the shadow areas are where the problem is. Therefore, I would say Dave's sample is not a representative one. That issue has already been pointed out to Dave multiple times.

It all depends upon what you do. I have set one of my shooting banks to "ISO 6400 B&W", i.e. ISO fixed to 6400, JPEG output set to B&W (the NEF is still raw, thus shooting NEF+JPEG I can still get color), and the results are very satisfying. It's a funny game: forget about ISO and noise, shoot action at night, the result is a slightly grainy (less than high-speed film) but pleasing B&W image. See here for an example. This is not bad. Not bad at all :)

In my experience with the D300, ISO 1600 is pretty darn good in almost all situations. I even don't think about using it -- much less worry about it -- when I need to increase shutter speed such as wildlife and action photos. In fact, tomorrow I will probably use it to photograph a Blue Angels show.

However, like Shun is saying, ISO 3200 is a bit rough when you have shadows and you want to raise detail. Just my opinion, that's the time to use NR software but it still comes at a price of detail loss.

Depending on the light, of course, much of your work could be accomplished at f/2.8 indoors with ISO 1600 but for those shots that require another stop, I would plan on using software to carefully bring back the shadows.

For night city shooting, I try to keep it at ISO-200 preferably... ISO-400 hesitantly, and ISO-800 if i have to. Any higher and the color quality is affected, the colors are dulled. Anything over ISO-200 I notice grain. I use high-ISO noise adjustment set to high in camera.

D300, ISO-1600, 1/45s f/2.8, 17mm...... Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8

I like how the lake looks in the picture (affected by exposure time) but i don't like the grain in the sky. When I used ISO-200, however, the shutter speed blurred the water. Maybe a composite of sky at IS0-200 and bottom from ISO-1600 :-) that would work.

Of course the quality starts deteriorating already at ISO 400, but high-ISO is very good, I do not hesitate to increase sensitivity when needed. I do use ISO 1600 or higher when really needed.

To me more precise (don't mean to nit pick on you, Oskar), quality starts to deteriorate when you make the smallest change from the base ISO 200, i.e. from ISO 250, but of course the deterioration is tiny. When you reach ISO 800 and 1600, it starts becoming noticeable.

When I wrote the D300 review here, I included several high-ISO samples in my D300 portfolio. The following fisheye shot (with a pixel level crop) was at ISO 1600: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6751025

The following two were at 3200:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6808296

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6808216