Does ISO 200 Produce Less Noise than ISO 100 on Nikon Cameras?
December 25, 2010 
4 Comments
Many photographers say that the native ISO of Nikon cameras is ISO 200. They say that since ISO 200 is the native ISO, it produces less noise than ISO 100. I have always been intrigued by this common belief because it goes against the traditional wisdom that the lower the ISO is, the less noise is produced in the image.
I put this belief to the test this week to see if ISO 200 really was less noisy than ISO 100. What did I learn from the testing on my Nikon D7000? That the thought that the native ISO of 200 somehow produces less noise than ISO 100 is completely untrue.
If you need proof of this myth, just look at the 100% views of the images on this page. While the difference is (very) slight between ISO 100 and ISO 200, I personally see slightly less noise with ISO 100 than in the photos shot at ISO 200.
While I only included a few shots on this page, they are representative of many other photos that I took and analyzed to see if this is true. Also, Dustin Olsen investigated this myth on his Canon DSLR and achieved the same result: ISO 100 produced slightly less noise than ISO 200.
Tough to see without zooming in really tight, but ISO 100 produces just barely less noise than ISO 200 on this test taken with a Nikon D7000.
ISO 100 vs. ISO 200 on a Canon Rebel T3i. Again, there is very slightly less noise on the ISO 100 sample.
Further Reading:
- 12 Myths Every Photographer Should Know
- Gary Fong Lightsphere vs. Tupperware
- 10 Steps to Great Night Photos (Guest Post)
- A Buyer’s Guide: DSLR Cameras
This article is technically incorrect on the Nikon D7000 (and likely the Canon T3i) because the *native resolution* of the sensors are ISO *100*, not ISO 200 as in older Nikon DSLRs.
Of course if the native resolution is at ISO 100, you *will* have less noise than at ISO 200.
Please check your facts – I hope that you will at least update the article to indicate that newer DSLRs have a lower native resolution and draw your conclusions from *that fact*.
Also worth noticing is that native resolution (in this case 100) is the resolution to which the sensor has been designed/built so at this resolution the camera records the information (signals) just as it has been captured by the sensor. Switching the sensitivity to a different ISO does not really change the sensor’s sensitivity (popular misconception) but instead what happens is that the camera amplifies or halves the signal values before it records the information. So once we understand this, there is an effect to be had into account when lowering the ISO from the native (say your native is 200 and you lower to 100 to reduce noise)… because in such a case the camera is actually capturing the signal at 200 and halving the signal, the noise will be reduced but also you will be reducing the dynamic range compared to the original. That is why we say that shooting at native ISO can give you the ‘best quality information’. From there on when you move up or down there will be the pros and cons that we are all familiar with on top of the one I’ve described. Hope this helps.
We tested picture at ISO 100-125-160-1200. The clearest ISO appered – 160.
It is simple: Nikon’s ISO Lo1 in fact uses the same amplification as ISO 200, but the numbers are (digitaly) divided by two. The noise is therefore identical, but the dynamic range isn’t, because the shot is overxposed in fact.
The same is at the high end, ISO Hi1 or Hi2: the camera (D700 in this case) uses ISO 6400, underexposes one or two stops respectively and digitaly multiplies each pixel value by factor two or four. In these cases the noise is higher, of course.