No one will EVER be happy. The more I see posted on these forums, the more I believe this.
The last professional level Nikon DX camera was the D2X. It sold for $4500. The images at ISO 800, looked like this D7100 at ISO 8000. The D2x was the world professional standard and literally brought pros off film into the digital age. It was hailed as a breakthrough with it's 12MP sensor, 5.5 frames per second, 11 AF points, and 15 frame buffer. It covered the Olympics, World Cup, World Series, Superbowl, Gulf War, and news from all over the world.
And now, here we are with a camera that does tons more than what that old D2x did, shoots with twice the megapixels, has literally 1/10 the noise at high ISO, has more than twice the dynamic range, shoots more FPS, and costs 1/4 the price.
What is enough?
So what's the point? I haven't understood a word that's been said up to here!
Statements like that impede growth of what? Technology? Hardly. On the contrary, never being satisfied with where your tools are offers a convenient excuse to shoot poor work.
Yes, it is natural that technology improves. And we will ALL want better and better. The question I am asking is if you NEED better? Is it the camera holding you back, or is it something else? When do we say that what we hold in our hands is good enough to do the job before us.
Yes, the High ISO of the D7100 (in this case talking about ISO above 6400) leave much to be desired. It's also obvious that the shots were misfocused, and perhaps had some motion blur in them as well. So it wasn't just the ISO issues that got presented. Is it reasonable to expect a DX camera in 2013 to provide a clean ISO 8000? I suggest not, considering it's predecessor, the D7000 had a LOT of trouble even at ISO 3200. I rarely used mine above ISO 1600 because the noise wasn't very good.
Maybe one day, we'll have a camera that shoots at ISO 128,000 with no visible grain. I wonder what we'll complain about then.
I'm loving this. No offense folks. I've just found out my camera is holding me back! Who knows what I could do with a decent camera. In the film days I went from an N70 to an F5. Great camera that F5, still use it some. But it didn't improve my stuff one bit! When I hear that phrase, "geeze, you must have a good camera", I think, nope, blind luck!
At least with objects not moving around, 3200 is looking amazing. I am going to give it another shot with a few different lenses before I decide what to do with this thing.
At least with objects not moving around, 3200 is looking amazing. I am going to give it another shot with a few different lenses before I decide what to do with this thing.
Now that's very promising
For my high ISO shots which are mostly on the web and B&W even 25,600 might even be usable but 12,800 is for sure.
This weekend i am taking it to an arenacross and shooting some flying motorcycles. I am bringing some big lights and I am guessing I should be in the ISO 3200-4000ish range in this horse arena. This is gonna be a much better test of AF. I am also just shooting JPG for now with this body. The way this track is layed out, one of the really good corners is in a spot that the 1.3 crop mode with a 70-200 will be awesome. My D3s just did not have the reach last year. This should give me roughly 3x over that. Pretty cool if it works out.
I've found the D600 tends to struggle a bit for focus where ISO 3200/F2.8 is needed. In fact, I've found it struggled to lock onto fast targets in better light than that. Will be interesting to see how your camera performs in arenacross. I don't think I've ever taken a JPG with mine, so let us know how that works out.
Nikon claims similar AF algorithims to D4. What i saw in the gym made me second guess that. But I am still hopeful. Maybe a 70-200 2.8 will yield much better results. I a very glad I am not depending on it though. I just want it for a few shots on this track. I will try to shoot the 300s with the same settings if I have time. It can be really hard changing stuff up during an event though.
Yes, the D7100 is supposed to have a better focus system than the D600. If that proves out, I will likely sell my D7000 and replace it with the D7100. I want to standardize at 24MP anyway, so I'm already tempted, but a strong focusing system would be icing on the cake. If the D4 had come with 24MP, I'd have bought one.
Statements like that impede growth of what? Technology? Hardly. On the contrary, never being satisfied with where your tools are offers a convenient excuse to shoot poor work.
Yes, it is natural that technology improves. And we will ALL want better and better. The question I am asking is if you NEED better? Is it the camera holding you back, or is it something else? When do we say that what we hold in our hands is good enough to do the job before us.
Do I need better..better than those shots? I sure hope so. I am not worried about Zerodog's ability one bit. So when he posts the shots for comparison it means something. If this level of performance is to your liking then grab the Visa and go.
But when I hear the caveat "for the price" I am no longer interested. Who cares what it costs if it doesnt do the job you need.
Zero, I look forward to your MX shots!
Gary
... when I hear the caveat "for the price" I am no longer interested. Who cares what it costs if it doesnt do the job you need. ...
What if something does 80% of what you want, but only costs 25%-35% of something that does 90% of what you want? (It's rare to find things which do 100% of what you want.)
That's where the concept of "value" comes into play.
Yes, "for the price " could be what this body is all about. Will it be as good as a D700 at low light action? I doubt it. Will it be as good as the 300s? I would hope it is even better. But with the studio shots done at photographyreview.com showing how good it really can be, I am will ing to give this thing another serious look.
The D4 is awesome. When I reviewed it, I really liked it. Just not enough to drop $6000 on one. For mr 16megapixels is about perfect. More megapixels come with a price. Slower file handling and more storage. And before anyone says computers are fast and storage is cheap, consider shooting an event that you take 15,000 photos that need to get sorted, key worded and loaded to the Internet. That extra rendering time and upload time sucks. This is one of the reasons I am hanging on to my much loved D3s and D700. I am very on the fence about this 24 megapixel deal. I am most interested in the 1.3crop mode to give more reach. This also cuts it down to around 16megapixels. A much easier to deal with size.
The reason to shoot DX at those ISOs was purely a test. What can this thing do in horrible conditions? Will a soccer mom be able to capture little Johnny doing his thing? A few weeks ago, in the same gym my d700 walked all over this thing. I believe it was mostly due to AF performance.
not sure why you would even shoot a dx body at those iso-s
How about, because you can shoot the D7100 with the 70-200 f/2.8 at a night lacrosse game and get the same reach and performance I get with my D3s and the 300 f/2.8. How about maybe my arms won't cramp up from having to use such a heavy rig, AND I'll have an equivalent of a 105-300 instead of a fixed 300? Works for me. YMMV.
John :
Natural selection is responsible for every living thing that exists.
D3s, D500, D5300, and way more glass than the wife knows about.
How about, because you can shoot the D7100 with the 70-200 f/2.8 at a night lacrosse game and get the same reach and performance I get with my D3s and the 300 f/2.8. How about maybe my arms won't cramp up from having to use such a heavy rig, AND I'll have an equivalent of a 105-300 instead of a fixed 300? Works for me. YMMV.
Exactly! The reach is what I'm hoping for. Saturday I'm gonna find out.
not sure why you would even shoot a dx body at those iso-s but we sure know now it's not a good idea
i am only interested in the buffer and whether the shutter button jams (often) because the buffer is full
Because the Sigma 8-16mm is much sharper than the Sigma 12-24mm, and neither are f/2.8 unfortunately.
(I just shot a wedding with the D7100, and did a few test shots at various ISO's. I won't pass any final judgment until I get the RAW files in Lightroom, but for now I must say that I'm quite impressed. even ISO 3200 is usable!
Sample images will come soon, as will a review on SLR Lounge...
not sure why you would even shoot a dx body at those iso-s but we sure know now it's not a good idea
i am only interested in the buffer and whether the shutter button jams (often) because the buffer is full
Because you can get more reach. When the D3 came out, sports photographers salivated over the ISO performance, but lamented the loss of reach. However, it didn't stop sport shooters from getting it because the tradeoff was worth it.
If we can get ISO 3200 or 6400 in a DX body close to the D3 performance, sports shooters will be getting that camera. This is why I think we haven't gotten a D400 just yet. If Nikon releases a D400 it will compete against the D4 in the sports dept. I believe Nikon is waiting for D4 sales to stabilise before releasing a D400. If Nikon had released the D4 and D400 at the same time, I think it would hurt the sales of the D4. Instead of upgrading to the D4, users would have kept there D3/D3s and gotten a D400 for the reach and performance.
I just got back from shooting an Arenacross. I did a back to back test with my 300s and the D7100 during this mornings practice. I used my 80-200afs on the 300s and my 80-200vrII on the d7100.
Both bodies had identical settings. And what I thought at first was true. The AF is a little slow on the 7100. Or maybe not slow. Just not as reliable. I had to adjust and give it a little longer to lock on and track. With the 300s my keeper rate was higher even with the old lens. To me, the 300s seems quicker.
But when the 7100 was in focus it is stellar. Tons of detail. Very nice color. And the same noise levels as the 300s. But at 24megapixels the reality is the noise is twice as nice as the 300s. Prints will be awesome from it.
Will post some samples when I get caught up.
0
Options
Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
edited March 28, 2013
I also am finding the D7100 to be quite stellar. I have done less high ISO testing and more landscape testing, but so far I love it. It is the closest thing to full-frame image quality that I have ever seen from a Nikon...
Wohoooo!! I know what I'm doing tonight. I will process these bully ones again and see if I get more out of them. I keep thinking stuff was lost in translation.
I finally tested one out and tried out 2 main things:
1) There were some rumblings on forums about compatibility issues with older 3rd party lenses, I have a bunch from the early-mid 2000's and they all AF'd fine on it.
2) High ISO, I know for studio work it'll do the job so this was the area I was concerned about and the verdict is that especially in Hi 1.0/2.0 it actually does better than the D700. I didn't pixel peep, instead I took 2 photos at the same settings with equivalent focal lengths and zoomed into the same areas to fill the screen equally. The D7100 had much finer noise making for finer details and there was no real "ugly" noise either. An added benefit is I saw no banding on the D7100's Hi 2.0 setting. And I tried running both through my lightroom settings for B&W concert/event work and the D7100 again came out ahead.
The only really annoying thing is coming from a Fuji S5/D700 combo that I've been using for years and years now is getting used to the lack of physical controls, but that's a minor issue.
And one thing for anyone thinking of a new body with this many MP to do before buying is take home some RAW files and run them through your normal processing methods. The D800 pretty much eliminated itself from the running since I'd need a new computer and I'm hoping to hold off a little longer to get a bigger jump in performance, the D7100 still has a bit of lag but it's not horrible. Just to give an idea of what I'm using for a CPU (and it was CPU limited, I could see that spike as it changed settings) it's a Intel Xeon w3540 which is a 2.93 GHz chip from 2010, not the top of the line from that era but not far off.
Some notes from my first shoot purely with the D7100, the buffer wasn't much of an issue after I started using a SanDisk Extreme 80 mb/s SD card, and the AF did a pretty good job, close enough to my D700 even in very low light that I didn't notice much of a difference in the keeper rate (the vast majority were in focus, my issue was motion blue) but while I wasn't shooting static subjects they weren't moving a ton either.
And finally an image! This one is at ISO 3,200 and has been processed in lightroom for B&W but nothing fancy, just and a tiny bit of noise reduction in lightroom 4. There are tons of regular sample shots up there so I'm posting this to show how detailed/rich the B&W's from this camera can be. Honestly the output feels more like my Fuji S5 Pro than D700 and that's very high praise coming from me since I've always loved the photos from that Fuji.
Here's a 100% crop to show the noise level/detail that's left.
You can see how small of an area that is of the total photo so in any web photos you wont notice it at all, and in prints you wont unless they're pretty large.
And an ISO 6,400:
100%:
ISO 12,800:
100%:
Also those last 2 were in much harder lighting conditions, I was at F1.8 for both and had to bring them up about a stop so you can get a good bit less noise for those values and there is some soft focus.....but as you can see even with it thanks to all the resolution it's still not too bad.
Comments
So what's the point? I haven't understood a word that's been said up to here!
I'm loving this. No offense folks. I've just found out my camera is holding me back! Who knows what I could do with a decent camera. In the film days I went from an N70 to an F5. Great camera that F5, still use it some. But it didn't improve my stuff one bit! When I hear that phrase, "geeze, you must have a good camera", I think, nope, blind luck!
Here are studio samples
http://reviews.photographyreview.com/nikon-d7100-studio-sample-photos
At least with objects not moving around, 3200 is looking amazing. I am going to give it another shot with a few different lenses before I decide what to do with this thing.
Now that's very promising
For my high ISO shots which are mostly on the web and B&W even 25,600 might even be usable but 12,800 is for sure.
perroneford@ptfphoto.com
perroneford@ptfphoto.com
But when I hear the caveat "for the price" I am no longer interested. Who cares what it costs if it doesnt do the job you need.
Zero, I look forward to your MX shots!
Gary
What if something does 80% of what you want, but only costs 25%-35% of something that does 90% of what you want? (It's rare to find things which do 100% of what you want.)
That's where the concept of "value" comes into play.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
The D4 is awesome. When I reviewed it, I really liked it. Just not enough to drop $6000 on one. For mr 16megapixels is about perfect. More megapixels come with a price. Slower file handling and more storage. And before anyone says computers are fast and storage is cheap, consider shooting an event that you take 15,000 photos that need to get sorted, key worded and loaded to the Internet. That extra rendering time and upload time sucks. This is one of the reasons I am hanging on to my much loved D3s and D700. I am very on the fence about this 24 megapixel deal. I am most interested in the 1.3crop mode to give more reach. This also cuts it down to around 16megapixels. A much easier to deal with size.
i am only interested in the buffer and whether the shutter button jams (often) because the buffer is full
Randy
http://www.CarolinaSportsPhotography.com/
How about, because you can shoot the D7100 with the 70-200 f/2.8 at a night lacrosse game and get the same reach and performance I get with my D3s and the 300 f/2.8. How about maybe my arms won't cramp up from having to use such a heavy rig, AND I'll have an equivalent of a 105-300 instead of a fixed 300? Works for me. YMMV.
Natural selection is responsible for every living thing that exists.
D3s, D500, D5300, and way more glass than the wife knows about.
Exactly! The reach is what I'm hoping for. Saturday I'm gonna find out.
Website
Facebook Twitter Google+
Because the Sigma 8-16mm is much sharper than the Sigma 12-24mm, and neither are f/2.8 unfortunately.
(I just shot a wedding with the D7100, and did a few test shots at various ISO's. I won't pass any final judgment until I get the RAW files in Lightroom, but for now I must say that I'm quite impressed. even ISO 3200 is usable!
Sample images will come soon, as will a review on SLR Lounge...
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
Because you can get more reach. When the D3 came out, sports photographers salivated over the ISO performance, but lamented the loss of reach. However, it didn't stop sport shooters from getting it because the tradeoff was worth it.
If we can get ISO 3200 or 6400 in a DX body close to the D3 performance, sports shooters will be getting that camera. This is why I think we haven't gotten a D400 just yet. If Nikon releases a D400 it will compete against the D4 in the sports dept. I believe Nikon is waiting for D4 sales to stabilise before releasing a D400. If Nikon had released the D4 and D400 at the same time, I think it would hurt the sales of the D4. Instead of upgrading to the D4, users would have kept there D3/D3s and gotten a D400 for the reach and performance.
Both bodies had identical settings. And what I thought at first was true. The AF is a little slow on the 7100. Or maybe not slow. Just not as reliable. I had to adjust and give it a little longer to lock on and track. With the 300s my keeper rate was higher even with the old lens. To me, the 300s seems quicker.
But when the 7100 was in focus it is stellar. Tons of detail. Very nice color. And the same noise levels as the 300s. But at 24megapixels the reality is the noise is twice as nice as the 300s. Prints will be awesome from it.
Will post some samples when I get caught up.
Here's my (initial) review:
http://www.slrlounge.com/nikon-d7100-field-review-breaking-the-mold-again
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
Lightroom 4.4 is out with support for the D7100.
Natural selection is responsible for every living thing that exists.
D3s, D500, D5300, and way more glass than the wife knows about.
Well said!
http://jrogers.smugmug.com
1) There were some rumblings on forums about compatibility issues with older 3rd party lenses, I have a bunch from the early-mid 2000's and they all AF'd fine on it.
2) High ISO, I know for studio work it'll do the job so this was the area I was concerned about and the verdict is that especially in Hi 1.0/2.0 it actually does better than the D700. I didn't pixel peep, instead I took 2 photos at the same settings with equivalent focal lengths and zoomed into the same areas to fill the screen equally. The D7100 had much finer noise making for finer details and there was no real "ugly" noise either. An added benefit is I saw no banding on the D7100's Hi 2.0 setting. And I tried running both through my lightroom settings for B&W concert/event work and the D7100 again came out ahead.
The only really annoying thing is coming from a Fuji S5/D700 combo that I've been using for years and years now is getting used to the lack of physical controls, but that's a minor issue.
And one thing for anyone thinking of a new body with this many MP to do before buying is take home some RAW files and run them through your normal processing methods. The D800 pretty much eliminated itself from the running since I'd need a new computer and I'm hoping to hold off a little longer to get a bigger jump in performance, the D7100 still has a bit of lag but it's not horrible. Just to give an idea of what I'm using for a CPU (and it was CPU limited, I could see that spike as it changed settings) it's a Intel Xeon w3540 which is a 2.93 GHz chip from 2010, not the top of the line from that era but not far off.
And finally an image! This one is at ISO 3,200 and has been processed in lightroom for B&W but nothing fancy, just and a tiny bit of noise reduction in lightroom 4. There are tons of regular sample shots up there so I'm posting this to show how detailed/rich the B&W's from this camera can be. Honestly the output feels more like my Fuji S5 Pro than D700 and that's very high praise coming from me since I've always loved the photos from that Fuji.
Here's a 100% crop to show the noise level/detail that's left.
You can see how small of an area that is of the total photo so in any web photos you wont notice it at all, and in prints you wont unless they're pretty large.
And an ISO 6,400:
100%:
ISO 12,800:
100%:
Also those last 2 were in much harder lighting conditions, I was at F1.8 for both and had to bring them up about a stop so you can get a good bit less noise for those values and there is some soft focus.....but as you can see even with it thanks to all the resolution it's still not too bad.