Well, I don't own a D3. That said, my D200 and >ISO 800in poor light don't really get along. One of the first things my editor said to me when she assigned me to shoot gymnastics last night was, "Oh, and you can't use flash." (It seems my obsession with Strobism precedes me). Why no flash? It seems it might pose a distraction when people are doing flips and such and could pose a health risk. OK, I don't love it, but I get it, safety does come first after all. ("It's such a great photo!" "Doug, she broke her neck." - not a conversation I want to have).
Ambient exposure in the gym was ISO 3200 (that's right) 1/160 F/1.8 with my 50mm, and worse when I used my 70-200 and had to stop down to F/2.8.
Now, 1/160 is barely (and usually not really) fast enough to shoot people doing flips and such, but that's not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that my autofocus isn't quick enough to snatch more than 1 frame (if I'm lucky) (D3, D3, D3...). When you're shooting at F/1.8, this tends to be a problem, as there's not going to be much in focus to begin with. I'm sad to say I didn't come up with a great solution here, and if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.
The image above was shot at ISO 3200 1/160 F/2.8 with my D200. (You can click on either for a larger view.) The bottom version noise reduction applied with Nik Software's Dfine 2.0 Photoshop plug-in. In my experience, the software works very well on properly exposed images, like the one of Lindsay above. If, however, you have to push the exposure in your RAW converter, the noise will be too powerful to overcome in post-production.
Also, last but by no means least, Rob sent me this link this morning to 100 free 1-sided postcards from Overnight Prints.com. I've ordered business cards from them in the past, and I think you guys know I was busy doing postcard design last week, so I just got my order in a few minutes ago.
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