Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 24 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 9Mb.

The Nikon D3500 produced images of excellent quality during the review period. The settings of ISO 100 through ISO 400 are as good as indistinguishable from each other. The slightest hint of noise starts to creep in at ISO 800 but the images are still very clean at that setting. ISO 1600 and ISO 3200 show progressively more noise, but both are eminently usable, even for very large prints. By ISO 6400 and 12800 the JPEGs are already full of chroma noise but the raw files only show some finely grained luminance noise that allows even the fastest ISO 25600 setting to produce printable results.

The out-of-camera JPEGs are a little soft at the default settings, but switch to raw image capture, and you'll see just how much detail the 24 megapixel sensor can record. The night photograph was excellent, while red-eye was not a common occurrence with the useful built-in flash. Active D-Lighting helps to salvage some extra detail in the shadow and highlights areas of high-contrast images, while the range of Picture Controls and Effects provide some in-camera creativity.

Noise

The ISO sensitivity settings on the Nikon D3500 range from ISO 100 to ISO 25600. The following 100% crops show the noise levels for each setting for both JPG and RAW formats.

JPG	RAW
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)
ISO 12800 (100% Crop)	ISO 12800 (100% Crop)
ISO 25600 (100% Crop)	ISO 25600 (100% Crop)

File Quality

The file quality settings available on the Nikon D3500 are Basic, Normal and Fine for JPEGs, with Raw capture also at your disposal. The following crops demonstrate the differences in quality and the file sizes.

Fine (12.1Mb) (100% Crop)	Normal (6.38Mb) (100% Crop)
Basic (2.37Mb) (100% Crop)	RAW (20.5Mb) (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Nikon D3500 are Auto, Auto with red-eye reduction, Fill-flash, Auto slow sync, Auto slow sync with red-eye correction, and Rear curtain with slow sync. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (27mm)

Flash On - Wide Angle (27mm)

Flash Off - Telephoto (82.5mm)

Flash On - Telephoto (82.5mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On or the Red-eye-Reduction settings caused any noticeable red-eye.

Flash On

Red-eye Reduction

Night

The Nikon D3500 lets you dial in shutter speeds of up to 30 seconds and has a Bulb mode as well for exposure times of practically any length, which is very good news if you are seriously interested in night photography.

There is also an optional long-exposure noise reduction function that can be activated to filter out any hot pixels that may appear when extremely slow shutter speeds are used. Do note that this works by way of dark frame subtraction, which effectively doubles the exposure time.

The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 30 seconds, aperture of f/11 at ISO 100.

Night

Active D-Lighting

Active D-Lighting increases the detail in the shadow and highlight areas of very high-contrast images.

Off	On

Picture Controls

Nikon’s Picture Controls are preset combinations of sharpening, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue. The available choices are Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait, Landscape and Flat. The following examples demonstrate the differences between these options.

Standard	Neutral
Vivid	Monochrome
Portrait	Landscape
Flat

Effects

The Nikon D3500 has an Effects shooting mode that provides 10 different creative filters which can be applied to both still images and movies.

Night Vision	Super Vivid
Pop	Photo Illustration
Toy Camera	Miniature Effect
Selective Color	Silhouette
High Key	Low Key