As of the date of writing, the sample photos that were showcased in the Nikon D3 article at Photo-Cafe.jp were the best examples of high ISO Nikon D3 dusk and night city photography.
It’s too bad that the article there isn’t live anymore (here is a screen capture of the article though), perhaps due to bandwidth meltdown, but I’ve hosted those photos in my Flickr account for the time being.
Please note the following:
- Full copyright to the photos belong to Photo-Cafe.jp
- The photos have absolutely no EXIF data, but were taken at ISO 1600, ISO 3200 and ISO 6400.
Unfortunately, I can’t recall which is which, since I hadn’t saved the information for each photo from the web page— see the screen capture of the article for details. - To my eyes, these D3 photos are impressive because highlights, color, tonality and detail remain beautifully rendered even at such high ISO levels. The noise “grain” — beautiful and pleasing — I wouldn’t mind shooting cityscapes and street photography at ISO 6400 all night long with quality like this.
Lens used was the new Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8. If I recall correctly, the aperture was set at f/8 for all the photos, which show excellent sharpness from corner-to-corner.
Here are the image thumbnails — clicking on each thumbnail brings you to the full-sized image. Use Ctrl-Click to open in a new browser tab, or Shift-Click to open a new browser window session.
ALL IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT PHOTO-CAFE.JP
 |  |
|
|
 |  |
|
|  |
 |  |
