What's the best ISO setting for a Nikon D5300?

[Trippelforge]

I have been using my Nikon for awhile and really never was sure of the optimal ISO setting. Currently I am shooting at 400. I have read that Nikons over all perform better at lower ISO's than Canon's. But I am sure it's more model dependent. I had an old chart but it didn't have the D5300 on it. Thanks 😃

 

[Mr Spock]

Up to 1600 is good. The Nikon is consistently above the equivalent Canon when it comes to noise and image quality. Also read noise - which is where your comment comes from re performing better at lower ISOs. There's more here on CN https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/864967-so-confusted-about-iso-range-with-canon-vs-nikon/

For a non astro view: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d5300/14

[Mandy D]

3 hours ago, Trippelforge said:

I have been using my Nikon for awhile and really never was sure of the optimal ISO setting. Currently I am shooting at 400. I have read that Nikons over all perform better at lower ISO's than Canon's. But I am sure it's more model dependent. I had an old chart but it didn't have the D5300 on it. Thanks 😃

 

Nikon's ISO performance is very model dependent. D3200 - I don't like shooting above ISO-100 if I can help it. D800 is excellent up to ISO-400, very, very good at ISO-800 and very good at ISO-1600. D7200 gives lower noise than D3200, but I haven't compared it with the other two properly. Ken Rockwell's camera reviews show the ISO performance of most cameras and I recall that he did a comparison between the D800 and some cameras from other manufacturers, with the D800 leading the pack all the way through.

[sharkmelley]

The Nikon D5300 is a special case.  It's best to keep ISO really low e.g. ISO 100 or 200 in order to keep the peak of the back-of-camera histogram well over to the left and avoid those annoying coloured concentric rings in the background, caused by Nikon's badly implemented lossy compression.

Mark

Edited November 11, 2023 by sharkmelley