Photos here at Flickr.
Now with a bad back and the fact that I won’t be going anywhere this weekend I decided to compare a few cameras I have kicking around after just purchasing a Nikon D800. I have used Nikon for years going from film to digital as everyone else did, my first DSLR being a D1 then D100, D2HS, D200, D300, D300s,D7000 and now a D800. My favourite camera has to be the D7000 it’s small, fast and cheap and takes great images at all ISO's that I tend to use.
Thom Hogan is currently having DX month and I guess that was the inspiration for this test, I must confess I prefer DX cameras although most of my lenses are normal or FX lenses I rarely update my lenses as improvements for me in the last few years have been slight, I've gone through phases of using all in ones such as the Nikon 18-200, Sigma 18-250 and just got hold of the Nikon 28-300 but I think I prefer carrying a load of lenses and changing them often it’s just me I guess. My main obsession is photographing birds so for this I use a Sigma 500 mm F4.5 because it’s lighter than the Nikon! yeah and a few $1000's cheaper and works really well and is sharp enough for me, I also use the Sigma 50-500 OS when I'm out and about as I can go from a close up of a snake to a distant shot of a bird and even a landscape with the same lens, now living in Australia there is plenty of sun so I can get away with fast shutter speeds meaning hand held so no tripods, back in the UK under the grey sky this lens probably wouldn’t be up to much but out here it’s awesome.
Anyway the test/comparison, first why I bought the D800 main reason it was cheaper than the D4 and a used D3s given everyone is now buying them in spades.Also the D800 crop factor to DX, improved autofocus, noise and being able tofocus in the dark sort of, I was never really impressed by the 36MP FX I don’t need it and I don’t think many people really do so I found it amusing people queuing up for the D800 whilst the masses were still using D700, D7000 and D300s. I'm not sure Nikon understand their market and their photographers, I'm not talking about the select few who always need the fastest lenses and the newest cameras.Mainly people like me who sell to agencies, do the odd bit of press, editorial and creative photographs and use a camera as part of their job. As an ecologist I'm fortunate to travel a lot and get to see nature in all its glory and I use photography. to record these animals and places and how I see them; I'm not really interested in selling my work that’s not what drives my creativity, it's a bonus.
Now as i say I'm more than happy with the D7000, it would have been great if it was in a sturdier body such as the D300s and a better FPS but so far it’s been great. Most agencies want at least a 5000 pixel sized image so with the D300s I had to upsize using genuine fractals never a good idea but it works fine, with the D7000 you don’t need to upscale as much, the ideal for me would be DX 18MP in a camera probably like the Canon 7d but I never liked their menus or buttons and would have to splash out on all new lenses so no chance of jumping ship. So in the absence of a good upgrade for DX no offence to D3200 but not sturdy enough and a lack of options etc. for me. So given the D4 is out the-next best thing according to Google and Nikon et al is the D800, the supposed successor to the D700, now as I said I always struggled to see why FX was better than DX - as we are all told, I like being able to get in closer to wildlife without spooking it and if I need a wide angle I walk back, I think the main reason was improved ISO. So I decided to compare these cameras to see if the D800 really performs better than the D7000 and the D300s when used in DX mode.
The setup - A tripod mounted Sigma 500 f4.5 set at F10, allcameras set to Aperture priority, all noise reductions turned off no high ISONR, no Active D lighting, no special colour settings, Auto white balance, sohopefully everything pretty much the same. Photos taken in RAW and opened inPhotoshop CS6 camera raw 7.2 no adjustments apart from changing to 8 bit andcropping to make sure the subject is at 100%. For the D800 I shot in DX mode.Now I'm not sure but somehow High ISO NR comes on automatically on the D3200 asit’s not my camera I'm not that bothered!
Now the subject is a small toy kiwi given as a present from a trip to NewZealand, placed on a stone wall in the garden on a ridiculously hot day in Brisbane,this spot is in the shade as most birds would be on a day like today. I oftenfind DSLR's struggle with those slightly shadier out of focus areas and this iswhat I consider problem noise in an image I normally get rid of it with NoiseNinja.
Anyway the results, ISO 100 to each cameras maximum for the D300s this mean1EV under ISO 200 and 1 EV over 6400, all the others go from ISO 100 to 2 EVover 6400 apart from the D3200 ...
The photos are hosted on Flickr, hopfeully I can link these crops of the main photos to the flickr so you can see the images at 100%.
ISO 100
ISO 200
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600
ISO 3200
ISO 6400
ISO 2EV over 6400
There you go obviously they all look perfect as small 72 dpi jpegs so please click on the photos and hopefully they connect through to the larger images on Flickr.
From what I can see here with the RAW images is that there is no improvement on the D7000 images by using the the D800 in DX mode only that the autofocus may be marginally better noise is worse but contrast looks better, the D3200 looks to be better than all of them but as I said for some reason High ISO NR kicks in after ISO 800 and I cant find an option to turn it off.
So if you need a wide angle 36 MP photo and dont have genuine fractals to upscale it go get a D800, I think mine might be going back in the hope that Nikon give us a decent upgrade for the DX cameras, of course no D600 here but given its 24MP in FX if you crop to DX you get an image smaller in size than the D300s not sure what the noise is like on that one tho.
Now with a bad back and the fact that I won’t be going anywhere this weekend I decided to compare a few cameras I have kicking around after just purchasing a Nikon D800. I have used Nikon for years going from film to digital as everyone else did, my first DSLR being a D1 then D100, D2HS, D200, D300, D300s,D7000 and now a D800. My favourite camera has to be the D7000 it’s small, fast and cheap and takes great images at all ISO's that I tend to use.
Thom Hogan is currently having DX month and I guess that was the inspiration for this test, I must confess I prefer DX cameras although most of my lenses are normal or FX lenses I rarely update my lenses as improvements for me in the last few years have been slight, I've gone through phases of using all in ones such as the Nikon 18-200, Sigma 18-250 and just got hold of the Nikon 28-300 but I think I prefer carrying a load of lenses and changing them often it’s just me I guess. My main obsession is photographing birds so for this I use a Sigma 500 mm F4.5 because it’s lighter than the Nikon! yeah and a few $1000's cheaper and works really well and is sharp enough for me, I also use the Sigma 50-500 OS when I'm out and about as I can go from a close up of a snake to a distant shot of a bird and even a landscape with the same lens, now living in Australia there is plenty of sun so I can get away with fast shutter speeds meaning hand held so no tripods, back in the UK under the grey sky this lens probably wouldn’t be up to much but out here it’s awesome.
Anyway the test/comparison, first why I bought the D800 main reason it was cheaper than the D4 and a used D3s given everyone is now buying them in spades.Also the D800 crop factor to DX, improved autofocus, noise and being able tofocus in the dark sort of, I was never really impressed by the 36MP FX I don’t need it and I don’t think many people really do so I found it amusing people queuing up for the D800 whilst the masses were still using D700, D7000 and D300s. I'm not sure Nikon understand their market and their photographers, I'm not talking about the select few who always need the fastest lenses and the newest cameras.Mainly people like me who sell to agencies, do the odd bit of press, editorial and creative photographs and use a camera as part of their job. As an ecologist I'm fortunate to travel a lot and get to see nature in all its glory and I use photography. to record these animals and places and how I see them; I'm not really interested in selling my work that’s not what drives my creativity, it's a bonus.
Now as i say I'm more than happy with the D7000, it would have been great if it was in a sturdier body such as the D300s and a better FPS but so far it’s been great. Most agencies want at least a 5000 pixel sized image so with the D300s I had to upsize using genuine fractals never a good idea but it works fine, with the D7000 you don’t need to upscale as much, the ideal for me would be DX 18MP in a camera probably like the Canon 7d but I never liked their menus or buttons and would have to splash out on all new lenses so no chance of jumping ship. So in the absence of a good upgrade for DX no offence to D3200 but not sturdy enough and a lack of options etc. for me. So given the D4 is out the-next best thing according to Google and Nikon et al is the D800, the supposed successor to the D700, now as I said I always struggled to see why FX was better than DX - as we are all told, I like being able to get in closer to wildlife without spooking it and if I need a wide angle I walk back, I think the main reason was improved ISO. So I decided to compare these cameras to see if the D800 really performs better than the D7000 and the D300s when used in DX mode.
The setup - A tripod mounted Sigma 500 f4.5 set at F10, allcameras set to Aperture priority, all noise reductions turned off no high ISONR, no Active D lighting, no special colour settings, Auto white balance, sohopefully everything pretty much the same. Photos taken in RAW and opened inPhotoshop CS6 camera raw 7.2 no adjustments apart from changing to 8 bit andcropping to make sure the subject is at 100%. For the D800 I shot in DX mode.Now I'm not sure but somehow High ISO NR comes on automatically on the D3200 asit’s not my camera I'm not that bothered!
Now the subject is a small toy kiwi given as a present from a trip to NewZealand, placed on a stone wall in the garden on a ridiculously hot day in Brisbane,this spot is in the shade as most birds would be on a day like today. I oftenfind DSLR's struggle with those slightly shadier out of focus areas and this iswhat I consider problem noise in an image I normally get rid of it with NoiseNinja.
Anyway the results, ISO 100 to each cameras maximum for the D300s this mean1EV under ISO 200 and 1 EV over 6400, all the others go from ISO 100 to 2 EVover 6400 apart from the D3200 ...
The photos are hosted on Flickr, hopfeully I can link these crops of the main photos to the flickr so you can see the images at 100%.
ISO 100
ISO 1600
ISO 3200
ISO 6400
ISO 2EV over 6400
From what I can see here with the RAW images is that there is no improvement on the D7000 images by using the the D800 in DX mode only that the autofocus may be marginally better noise is worse but contrast looks better, the D3200 looks to be better than all of them but as I said for some reason High ISO NR kicks in after ISO 800 and I cant find an option to turn it off.
So if you need a wide angle 36 MP photo and dont have genuine fractals to upscale it go get a D800, I think mine might be going back in the hope that Nikon give us a decent upgrade for the DX cameras, of course no D600 here but given its 24MP in FX if you crop to DX you get an image smaller in size than the D300s not sure what the noise is like on that one tho.
