Alright, I received a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens today so how could I not try to pair it with the D700 and try to see what kind of result I would get in a room with minimal light. So I went downstairs into Devon's play area tonight with no interior lights anywhere turned on and the only light source being the street lamp outside that was dampened by our shades that were fully down over the windows. At first the camera wouldn't autofocus because there simply wasn't enough light. So I turned on the built-in autofocus illuminator which solved that problem. And the result is as follows. Focus was on the "F". This first shot is unprocessed besides conversion to JPEG and full-sized if you click through:
ISO 25600, f/1.4, 1/15s, 50mm
This next shot is the same as the first but I've run it through Noise Ninja before exporting as JPEG.
ISO 25600, f/1.4, 1/15s, 50mm
And this last photo I'm putting up to show how it would look as a regular pop-up photo on this blog. Meaning I sized it down to a width of 1024 and ran it through Noise Ninja before saving as JPEG.
ISO 25600, f/1.4, 1/15s, 50mm
So, yeah if you really needed to you can pretty much shoot in next to no light with the D3/D700. You can't shoot in absolutely no light (yes I tried) as the sensor needs something to work with. You obviously won't be using any photos taken in such conditions at full size but shrunken down to around a quarter of the size (which still makes it 1024 pixels wide) and then post processed for noise, the results are more than acceptable in my eyes.
As for the Nikkor 50mm lens, man it's freakin' tiny. So far it seems decent but further testing is needed. Stay tuned.
