To measure and compare the Nikon D80’s noise levels we photographed the standard Gretag Macbeth ColorChecker with it and a number of rival models at each of their ISO settings. The D80’s High ISO Noise Reduction was set to Normal.

The crops are taken from the original images and presented here at 100%. To compare typical noise in skies and dark shadows the crops were taken from patches 3 and 24 respectively.

The D80 clearly delivers very clean results up to and including 800 ISO with noise only visibly creeping-in at 1600 ISO and above.

Tonal and colour differences aside, the D80 performs very well against its rival cameras. While pretty much neck-in-neck with the Canon 400D / XTi up to 400 ISO, it delivers noticeably cleaner results at 800 ISO and above. And despite using what we believe is the same sensor as the Sony A100, the D80 enjoys lower noise pretty much throughout its entire range. Noise levels also appear lower than the D200 at 800 ISO and above.

This is a very impressive result for the D80, especially against the Canon CMOS sensor which traditionally has lead the pack in terms of low noise levels. Of course the Gretag chart only shows solid colours and often masks smearing or loss of detail through noise reduction systems, so always also compare real-life noise tests as seen on the following page.