There’s a brief but interesting comparison of the 1600 ISO performance between the Canon 400D and the Nikon D80 over at KammaGamma.

They conclude that

Nikon D80’s noise reduction system is more advanced than the one implemented in the EOS 400D. The Nikon D80 removes color noise almost absolutely and leaves very little edge problems. On the other hand, the Canon EOS 400D leaves more color noise bit delivers more details. We would choose less details and less color noise than the opposite under high ISO, but that is a matter of personal taste.

Canon is definitely stretching the DIGIC II’s limits with the 10MP resolution. We hope to see cleaner and better results in Canon’s future cameras. In the mean while we are happier with Nikon D80’s results in high ISO.

I’m not sure I agree with their conclusions, though, I personally prefer the lighter noise reduction and greater detail of the Digital Rebel XTi images, at least based on the samples they show. There is more noise in the Canon results, but the Nikon ones just look over-smoothed and don’t have nearly as much detail.

Be sure to check out the images yourself to see what you think. Feel free to leave your own thoughts below in the comments (comments are closed on KammaGamma’s original post for some reason.)