Nikon D3100 Samples

Here the ISO performance of the Nikon D3100 is compared to the Pentax K-5
Pentax K-5 for a bright outdoor scene. All crops below are shown at 100% and are taken from the highest-resolution and quality JPEG available on each camera. Both ISO and Aperture we set on each camera. Remaining settings were left on automatic. Note that due to the huge ISO range available on these cameras, the use of a 3-stop ND filter was needed for the last 2 Nikon D3100 shots and the last 3 Pentax K-5 ones. One can easily notice that the filter-used was not color-neutral and introduced a slight yellow cast.

The output of both these cameras starts very similar but with a slight softness to the D3100. The kit-lens is partly responsible for this. What we can see is that when noise starts to become visible on these cameras, the D3100 shows more color-noise while the K-5 keeps it all in luminance. Overall the slow rate at which noise increases here is an excellent performance with very little difference being visible in prints. The Nikon D3100 maintains excellent output quality until ISO 1600. Further than that, noise reduces possible print sizes but even ISO 6400 is usable for small prints of very high quality. ISO 12800 can be used for emergencies.

Nikon D3100	Pentax K-5
ISO 100	ISO 100
ISO 200	ISO 200
ISO 400	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 800
ISO 1600	ISO 1600
ISO 3200	ISO 3200
ISO 6400	ISO 6400
ISO 12800	ISO 12800
	ISO 25600
	ISO 51200