At around double the price, the NEX-7 may seem like a big upgrade from the NEX-5n, but does the image quality hold up at high ISO? Steve Huff has a quick comparison that may answer that question. Personally I think the NEX-7 does a great job for it’s high megapixels, but whether those Megapixels are worth it is another question. The features certainly add weight to the argument, at least where image quality is ‘not’ concerned.
Ok here you go! I have had a ton of requests for this test and I will be adding it into my official NEX-7 review as well. Many wanted to know how the newly released NEX-5n stacked up against the high megapixel but same size sensor NEX-7 in the high ISO department. So I set up my gorilla pod and did some testing. I shot the scene with both cameras using the Zeiss 24 at f/5.6. I shot one at ISO 100, then followed that with 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, and 12,800. I processed each file from RAW using Capture One which is supporting BOTH cameras. I left everything at default but turned off ALL sharpening so this was at 0 for each file. I wanted to show the RAW performance of each sensor not the JPEG Noise Reduction performance.
I made 100% crops of each at full resolution. 24 megapixels of the 7 and the 12 of the 5n. I then resized the NEX-7 files to the same size of the 5n files to see how they stacked up in this way. Below are the results, let me know what you think!
