[cali92rs]

Apparently Nikon tweaks the sensor sacrifice the low ISO performance and shifted the focus to high ISO(mainly indoor activities)... If simply compare the physical aspect between D5 and K3, 2.5 stops advantage at most if the ISO invariance is perserved like K3.

For this particular camera yes, and it makes sense for this type of shooting where you wont be printing larger than a magazine spread. Canon has been doing this for years with their cameras ...but Nikon also has the D810 (and it's upcoming successor) which is for higher resolution/landscape/low ISO type shooting.
Horses for courses

[Nicolas06]

to be fair 51200 looks very good on the D5

here's K3

Yes, I agree I compared the 51200 iso of K3 rougly match the 200K of D5 and for D4S it is something between 100K and 200K. So there was 1.5 EV vs D4s and there 2EV vs D5.

[kenspo]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing this. When you say it's not good on lower ISO, how does that manifest itself?

The dynamic range is totally gone. The Nikon rep present yesterday said the same He also said he was sure i would get a killer machine in K-1

[pathdoc]

He also said he was sure i would get a killer machine in K-1

When a Nikon rep admits that about Pentax, it means something.

I'm still waiting when some manufacturer figures out that temperature is important and straps a peltier to their sensor to drag it down to -50C for better high ISO shots

A bit like the more advanced first generation of heat seeking missiles, which had nitrogen cooling for their seekers. (It worked well enough, but once you'd primed the missile on its rack you only had a narrow window of opportunity before the LN2 ran out, and after that your expensive missile was a brick with a rocket motor strapped on. The early Sidewinder wasn't cooled, but AFAIK you didn't risk it becoming useless if you couldn't fire it in time.)

[BigMackCam]

The dynamic range is totally gone. The Nikon rep present yesterday said the same He also said he was sure i would get a killer machine in K-1

That's fascinating. As you said before, they've clearly focused on high ISO performance. I don't pretend to understand why that has compromised dynamic range at the lower ISOs, but it's interesting to see that - as far as current technology is concerned - you can't have both the stratospheric useable ISO *and* low ISO performance in one unit. Something for the future, maybe. I do wonder how many D5 purchasers will be taken by surprise and subsequently criticise the camera when it has clearly been designed with specific purposes in mind.

It's encouraging that the Nikon rep was so enthusiastic about the K-1. I'm sure Nikon has closely followed Ricoh's progress with development of the camera...

[wildman]

as far as current technology is concerned - you can't have both the stratospheric useable ISO *and* low ISO performance in one unit.

As a tradeoff, for my kind of photography - wildlife, I'd gladly give up shooting below 500 for optimal results at say, 1600-3200 ISO for instance
In other words I would more value good real world practical results at ISO 3200 than superb results at ISO 100.

[BigMackCam]

As a tradeoff, for my kind of photography - wildlife, I'd gladly give up shooting below 500 for optimal results at say, 1600-3200 ISO for instance
In other words I would more value good real world practical results at ISO 3200 than superb results at ISO 100.

I'm not sure my photography would warrant the sacrifice entirely, but since a good number of my shots are at ISO 1600 and above, I can definitely see advantages in having that sort of capability in my kit

[wildman]

If I can get this out of a Q-S1 at ISO 3200 I can only imagine what I could get out of a APS-C, let alone a FF sensor, optimized for high ISO performance.

Grackle....

[pathdoc]

I'd rather have ISO 3 than ISO 3 million. Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but there are occasions where less is definitely more.

If we didn't look at the marketing at all, we would never buy another camera. The trick is being able to sort out the wheat from the chaff, which frequently involves either trying out the gear ourselves or reading a hell of a lot of reviews by unpaid ordinary people in the street before clicking the "buy" button sight-unseen. And even then, watching rave YouTube reviews by people who you can almost smell are in the can for the company whose gear they shoot can tell you a lot from what they do NOT mention.

[wildman]

If we didn't look at the marketing at all, we would never buy another camera.

In over 60 years of shooting I can only think of twice where a new camera really made a noticeable difference in the quality of my finished images.
Once in the mid 1950s when I went from a Argus C3 to a Nikon S2 rangefinder and about ten years ago when I went to digital. The improvement from film to digital was mainly due to the ability to PP with powerful tools (Photoshop) rather than the camera it's self.

[pathdoc]

I can only think of twice where a new camera really made a noticeable difference in the quality of my finished images.

My two big standouts in this regard were:

1) The move from half-frame point and shoot to full frame film SLR (but this is no surprise).

2) The move from *ist-DL to K-5. In this case, the easy shots in bright light haven't improved much at all, but I've got acceptable results with the K-5 in circumstances where the *ist-DL simply would not have been able to deliver anything meaningful.