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Nikon D3000 Review – High ISO NR

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Overview

Nikon D3000 High ISO Noise Reduction

The Nikon D3000 offers just two noise reduction settings, On and Off, with Off being the default. The setting combines high ISOnoise reduction as well as dark frame noise reduction, the later only being applied to exposures longer than 8 seconds. High ISONR is applied to JPEG images at ISOs over 400 when On. Above ISO800, the Off setting still performs “minimal” noise reduction (according to Nikon), but leaves a lot of fine/subtle subject detail there for you to work with. The combination of shooting with NR turned off and using a good noise-filtering program after the fact can produce very clean images with lots of fine detail in them. (And of course, the D3000’s NEF files have no noise-reduction processing applied to them at all, adhering to the true philosophy of RAW shooting.)

See for yourself how the noise reduction works under both daylight and tungsten-balanced lighting. Click on any of the crops below to see the corresponding full-sized image.

High ISO Noise Reduction Comparison
Daylight-balanced illumination
NR=Off
NR=On
I
S
O

8
0
0

 D3000 Overview image 1 D3000 Overview image 2
D3000 Overview image 3 D3000 Overview image 4
D3000 Overview image 5 D3000 Overview image 6
NR=Off
NR=On
I
S
O

1
6
0
0

 D3000 Overview image 7 D3000 Overview image 8
D3000 Overview image 9 D3000 Overview image 10
D3000 Overview image 11 D3000 Overview image 12
NR=Off
NR=On
I
S
O

3
2
0
0

 D3000 Overview image 13 D3000 Overview image 14
D3000 Overview image 15 D3000 Overview image 16
D3000 Overview image 17 D3000 Overview image 18

The above crops show the effects of the two levels of high ISO noise reduction, under our studio HMI lighting we use to simulate daylight. As you can see, the
On setting does a pretty good job a reducing noise, but it also reduces detail. We would be inclined to leave it Off, and reduce noise via post-processing, or better still, shoot RAW.

How does the Nikon D3000 compare with competing cameras? See the following table which compares at the default Noise Reduction setting.

High ISO Comparison with
Nikon D3000, Canon XS, Sony A230
Daylight-balanced illumination
Nikon D3000
(NR=Off)
Nikon D3000
(NR=On)
Canon XS
(NR=On)
Sony A230
(NR=On)
I

S

O

8

0

0

 D3000 Overview image 19 D3000 Overview image 20 D3000 Overview image 21 D3000 Overview image 22
D3000 Overview image 23 D3000 Overview image 24 D3000 Overview image 25 D3000 Overview image 26
D3000 Overview image 27 D3000 Overview image 28 D3000 Overview image 29 D3000 Overview image 30
Nikon D3000
(NR=Off)
Nikon D3000
(NR=On)
CanonXS
(NR=On)
Sony A230
(NR=On)
I

S

O

1

6

0

0

 D3000 Overview image 31 D3000 Overview image 32 D3000 Overview image 33 D3000 Overview image 34
D3000 Overview image 35 D3000 Overview image 36 D3000 Overview image 37 D3000 Overview image 38
D3000 Overview image 39 D3000 Overview image 40 D3000 Overview image 41 D3000 Overview image 42
Nikon D3000
(NR=Off)
Nikon D3000
(NR=On)
CanonXS
(NR=On)
Sony A230
(NR=On)
I

S

O

3

2

0

0

 D3000 Overview image 43 D3000 Overview image 44
N/A
ISO 3,200
Not Supported
 D3000 Overview image 45
D3000 Overview image 46 D3000 Overview image 47
N/A
ISO 3,200
Not Supported
 D3000 Overview image 48
D3000 Overview image 49 D3000 Overview image 50
N/A
ISO 3,200
Not Supported
 D3000 Overview image 51

Using defaults puts the NikonD3000 at a bit of a disadvantage in the above table, since it defaults NR to Off while others default to On, so we’ve included images from both settings for it. As you can see, the Canon XS appears to have the lowest noise of the three. The Sony A230 applies stronger noise reduction, so while it’s images are a bit cleaner, they do not have the same level of detail.