I'm in love

As a good nerd it is a new camera from Nikon that specifications wise as close to perfect as I've ever seen.

Nikon D800?

You have undoubtedly already seen this on the internets but in the off chance you haven't: there is an interesting picture and set of specs on what is likely going to be the D700's successor, the D800, on nikonrumors.com. If true and not a photoshopped picture, this looks like one very interesting camera. With 36 MP it will have basically the same pixel density as the 16.2MP crop sensor D7000. This means it should be a a great compromise between noise, dynamic range, and resolution if it uses the same or better sensor technology. A fantastic DSLR camera for landscape photography in other words. I am always looking for ways to get really large prints to look good at least to me that do not involve all the stitching I do now. This is because composing the image in the field with the stitching in mind is not trivial and involves a lot of visualization. Having to visualize is not a bad thing overall of course but even Ansel had a ground glass plate to see the composition in the field. I have to approximate this with some kludgy comparisons that are not super exact (see here for an example). Also, the viewfinders on full frame cameras are so much better than on crop cameras as I am reminded of every time I put my eye to my old 35 mm film DSLR. Of course, when you use live view, as I do all the time on my D300 when doing landscape work that doesn't matter that much. It makes a huge difference in candid and other types of photography though and is therefore a very useful thing to have and a major advantage of full frame cameras over crop sensor ones.

So to Nikon I say: if you need any beta testers or reviewers, send one my way. I will test the heck out of it ;-) . Of course, when this camera would actually come out, I am sure Nikon will price it at a price point equivalent to "Canon 5D mkII + one or two nice lenses" so as to still make it unattainable to only a few. Hopefully it won't be anywhere near the stratospheric D3x range, but even that wouldn't surprise me.

Nikon announces new high ISO monster

The D3s. The thing is capable of ISO 102400. The Sample images show amazingly clean ISO 12800. The ISO 102400 I am sure of course is a trick mode (HI 3) that is really ISO 12800 boosted in software. Still the images very impressive as I am sure the price will be. For the rest it is like the old D3. And oh yeah, there is a movie feature which shoots in silly time-limited mjpeg, a codec from the stone age that nobody uses anymore. Why no mpeg4/H264? Now the question is with the D3s and the D3x, where is Nikon's answer to the Canon 5D mk II? The D700x?

Excellent D3x review

Thom Hogan has a very good review of the new D3x up on his site. As you would expect he says it is the best DSLR made to-date but presents doubtful value to most photographers. Might be right for some, mostly landscapers with a lot of money to burn.

Images from the Canon 5D mk II

Photography blog has a review of the 5D mk II that includes RAW and jpeg samples. Check them out. As I said before, if you want image quality, especially for landscapes, this is a great camera and it is borne out by the images. You can load the RAW into Lightroom and Aperture by using Adobe's free DNG converter to convert them to CR2, or by using ACR 5.2 in PS CS4. The detail is very very good, and at least on par with the D3x sample images posted by Nikon. It remains to be seen if RAW from the D3x also results in better detail than the jpegs they posted. Of course, the D3x is going to be a better camera from everything but image quality such as build, autofocus (which is weak in the 5D) and other factors. A landscape photographer, however should care very little about those, but should care about real resolution, color rendition and weight where the 5D mk II scores very well.

The D3x is out

Long a rumor, now it's real. Nikon released the D3x, a 24 MP monster in a D3 body. There are some very nice sample images here and some other ones in a annoying and crappy flash interface here - gorgeous images though. Gorgeous detail and beautiful color. However, the price of $8k! makes it completely irrelevant for me. If you're a commercial studio photographer then of course this is great, but perhaps offers not that much different from medium format digital except for the use of all your nikon lenses. If you're a landscape photographer, you have to be super rich or super successful to afford this and then you'll still get far better quality using large format analog which will set you back far less. Or go for the Canon 5D mk II, which offers basically the same quality (for landscapes) in a much smaller package. Let's hope Nikon comes out with a D700x to compete with that using the same sensor as in the D3X. The D3x is a monster. A beautiful one, but a monster nevertheless.

Update: Ken Rockwell writes "... Nikon dared ask $8,000 for a $5,500 camera that is the same thing as the $4,200 D3.", and "The D3X is Nikon's greatest camera ever; it's just not worth $8,000, except to turkeys." He is absolutely right. Don't bite at this price. You can get the same quality using Velvia 50 in any old 35 mm Nikon you can get for $50 on craigslist if you own a good scanner or use a good scanning service.

Update II. Wonderful analysis by Thom Hogan here.

Interesting new video capabilities in new cameras from Canon and Nikon

two recent cameras, the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D mk II have added high def video capabilities to DSLRs. The D90, a successor to the D80 but now with the image processor of the D300 and up, does 720p at 24 fps, while the full-frame 5D mk II adds 1080p at 30 fps. Here is a piece of video shot with the D90 I found online



Nikon also has lots of video on their D90 website.

On the Canon side, the 5DmkII has far higher resolution and better low-light performance than the D90 for almost 3x the price.

Vincent Laforet (from the obscene amount of gear) has shot a very interesting video showing off the capabilities of the 5D. See it here. The video very effectively shows off the capabilities of the camera. Beautiful stuff. Also superbly deep colors. There is not much story but that is not the point I guess.

These developments are very interesting as they allow very high quality but budget movie shooting with real lenses. Game changers indeed. I don;t think I would buy either of these cameras because of this feature though. On the other hand, I think the 5D mk II is very interesting as a camera for landscapes, but financially this is not a simple thing as I would need a whole new set of lenses too.

Kayakers on Clear Creek in Golden

Last Tuesday I went to shoot some pictures of the Kayakers that are stunting on Golden's Clear Creek most of the summer. These people are fun to watch. I've tried Kayaking before but was constantly bailing out because contrary to quiet water, I could rarely get myself upright again after flipping in even slightly more rapid stuff. Fun, but cold sport. I shot all in jpeg on my D300 and as always focus and exposure were basically perfect everytime. Quite amazing. This is just a tiny subselection of the images I shot:











There are far more images on the smugmug gallery. See the whole set here as a slideshow on smugmug.
If you're a flickerite, a subset is found on my flickr pages here.

Noise in bokeh areas on the Nikon D300

I usually shoot my Nikon D300 at ISO 200 (the default). However, in certain circumstances, I have noticed noise in darker out-of-focus areas (i.e. in the bokeh). You can completely remove it in Lightroom by just dialing in a luminance noise reduction of 5. However, this prompted me to check out the noise as a function of ISO in a realistic image using default RAW conversion in Lightroom instead of some silly test chart. The NEF was shot at 14-bits and using only lossless compression. I used a 50mm f1.8 lens at f2.8. Here is the awesome scene I shot:



Here is a 100% crop at ISO 100


ISO 200:


Clearly there is far more noise in the bokeh. There is very little chance you will ever see that in a print and as I said, you can take care of it easily with just a tiny bit of luminance noise reduction, but it might be good to be aware of it.

Now for completeness:

ISO 400:


ISO 800:


ISO 1600:


This is where I reached the maximum shutter speed on the D300 (1/8000 s), so I cannot show you any more. The D300 does very well even at ISO 6400 as I reported before. At the low ISOs, Capture really doesn't do much better than Lightroom in noise reduction for those who are curious to know. However at high ISOs (>800), Capture does far better.

Interestingly, if you look at the filesizes of the jpeg exports I made from the 100% crops at high quality, you can see the exact same trend. Jpeg size, due to the way the compression operates, correlates with noise as the agorithm cannot distinguish between noise and real information. Here is the list:

ISO Size (KB)
100 148
200 160
400 172
800 188
1600 212

Since the scene and lighting was exactly the same in each image, the only thing that is different is the amount of noise in the image. Amazing that the effect is that clear.

Next: Analysis of the filesize in terms of noise

High ISO noise in Lightroom and Capture NX

Together with the new D300 came a free copy of Capture NX, Nikon's dedicated RAW converter software. Apparently Nikon wants to push the use of this program. First, after trying it a little let me say that this program still has by far the worst user interface of anything I have ever encountered. In its current form it is a major disaster. The side panels are horribly designed and the way everything works is designed as an 80's X-windows program. Horrifying to say the least. What Nikon does know very well is how to deal with the data coming from their cameras. By default it gives great color and contrast. One other thing it does well is high-ISO noise. I shot the following image at ISO 6400 with the D300 and loaded it as a .NEF in both Lightroom (2.0 beta) and Capture NX. This is the default conversion (the camera was set to Vivid picture style and Capture picks that up, Vivid adds some saturation some sharpening and some contrast)



You see this camera is usable at this ISO. There is a little noise in the dark blue sky but pretty nice. Amazing how far this has come, the image is better than film at ISO 800. Now for some 100% comparisons. This is Capture default conversion



Pretty amazing if you ask me. The noise is very grain like as if it is film.
Now Lightroom. Left, default Lightroom conversion, right optimized noise reduction (about 50/50 in both luminance and chroma)


As you see, Lightroom's conversion is far noisier by default and it is typical digital noise. The more optimized conversion is still noisy and becomes splotchy. Not very good. You also see strange speckling around the lights in both images that is not present in the Capture conversion.

Conclusion: Not surprising since the software comes from the camera maker, Capture NX deals very well with high ISO noise. If only the program were not so horrible in its use that I dread opening it every time, I would use it all the time and import tiffs or jpegs into Lightroom from it.

EDIT: because of a request below, I added the Mac OS X (i.e. identical to Aperture - my trial license for Ap 2 expired) default system RAW library conversion. It looks like this:


Very similar to Lightroom default version but not as good as Capture NX's. Somehow the noise seems to be a little more even than in the Lightroom conversion, so perhaps it would be easier to deal with, but I digress.

RAW files for the D3 and D300

Just found these examples of RAW files taken with the new D300 and D3 and compared to the D200. Lightroom and ACR will read all these files, so you can easily compare them yourself. The white balance is wrong in the file, so use the eyedropper on the grey patches in the colorchecker to get good color. Shortly, the high ISO performance of the D3 is absolutely crazy. It is also amazingly sharp. At 1600 ISO, compare it to the D200 file. The D3 has gobs and gobs more detail. Even if you take the ISO all the way up with the D3 and compare that file to the 1600 ISO D300 or D200, you'll see far more detail. This might be the often discussed full-frame advantage. Quite extraordinary. Makes me lust for a D3, however new windows for the house are more important right now ;-)

RAW development in Nikon's tools

As a followup to an earlier post, I am here providing a another conversion.
First Nikon's conversion (100% crop):

Then Mac OS X(aperture) default:

Horrifying indeed. Nikon's tools are dog slow but their quality, although not as good as lightroom's, is head and shoulders over Apple's RAW libraries.