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TOF guy
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Scotch Plains USA, NJ, United States
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Scientist
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Nov 30, 2003
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Thank you for another well done review.
Looks like a good performance camera and great value. But Nikon should be dinged for not offering Mirror Lock-Up at this level. It should be added to the cons list.
After the recent QC issues which Nikon has experienced, have you checked the Af accuracy (no back focus with any af sensor) ? How about dust / debris ? A lot of potential buyers would like to know if these issues in newly released cameras are in the past.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to the dpreview staff! Keep up the good work.
Abhijith Kannankavil: Aren't they gonna celebrate it with new models, discounts n other stuff?
Finally a comment to the news I can relate to.
+1 on discounts.
New lens announcements would be nice too.
This is impressive high ISO performance - even 25600 is useful for more than snapshots
The new 24-70 seems promising too.
Saffron_Blaze: The 70-300 was often reported as good as the 70-200 in that range. How will this be any advancement given the cost differential?
Whoever reported the 70-300 to be as good as the 70-200 should ease on the beer. The 70-200 is sharper, has noticeably more contrast, has better bokeh and is faster.The built is more solid as well. On the other end it is heavy expensive less versatile for its zoom range. Each one has its uses and strengths.
Thank you Adobe for this initiative. I hope Adobe will continue in this regard and have a look at how Biking does lossy compression. The pixels values are rounded only in mid-tones and highlights. The differemces due to rounding are always kept much smaller than the unavoidable noise from counting statistics ("shot noise"). The storage savings are less but these is loss whatsoever in image quality.
PHOTOJOE55: Does the D600 have an APTINA sensor?
Most likely the new Sony 24 MP sensor found on the latest Sony FF cameras
Vladik: Full Frame is great, but I wouldn't necessarily say that it is a beefed up D7000. D7000 has a minimum shutter of 1/8000
To Jan: there is a typo in the dpreview description: the D600 has AF fine tuning.
Point taken about 1/4000s. Seems fast enough for 99.9% use though.
I've bought a very similar unit (actually probably the very same unit) from Cameta Camera in NYC for $59. It is advertized on their e-bay store. That includes shipping! The advantage (for us in the US) over ordering from HK is that the grip is shipped from a warehouse in the USA: it took 2 days to be delivered. Also Cameta camera is a good store with a good return policy. Pixel is probably okay but shipping back the accessory to HK would be more of an hassle.
Red G8R: Does this apply to North American bodies too or should I wait for Nikon USA/Canada ?
You don't have to wait for Nikon USA or Canada.
In my view this is the wrong way to approach B&W. The right way is to start with a color picture and convert it to B&W. It's so much more flexible that way, and therefore increase the artistic potential of the image.
With a color image one can convert to LAB and extracts the vision-wise sensible luminance channel. But one can do much more than that. Often a subject, say red, will stand out in color against the back ground, say greenery. But they may have similar luminance and therefore the subject will not stand out in B&W. This is clearly visible in many of the posted examples: they lack "separation" between various parts of the image (example sky against sea for the image of the Seattle needdle - fine image though in this case). It's easy to go around this issue when starting with a color image by mixing channels. The artistic possibilities are way beyond what a B&W camera can offer.
Or use filters with the B&W camera (no more noise benefit). IMO sorely missing in these images.
Taikonaut: ISO 1600 looks like D800 ISO 200.
There is less noise and no nasty colour fringing on the 22mp unlike the D800 samples.
ISO 25,600 looks like D800 ISO 50.
There is less noise and no nasty fringing on the 22mp until Canon releases a 40MP sensor, at which point I'll claim that color fringing with higher MP sensor is a non-issue
What's unexpected is how well this camera performs in low light / high ISO. It's among definitely among the top 5 dSLRs in that regard in spite of the pixel count.
36MP, That's a lot of pixels!
jnk: Considered that D3/s is the camera body that went to outer space where failure rates are not acceptable at this level and you're complaining about a 'wet job'?
Get real about the build of Nikon - Navy Seals used the D700 for their night missions and that should spell out the sealing questions of these bodies.
That's not the reason why Nasa chooses Nikon.
DFPanno: No EVF is going to be superior to the human eye and that is what an OVF is (in essence).
Of course an excellent EVF stands to be better than a poor OVF but that goes without saying.
The substitution of one for the other may create the opportunity for other design advantages but that is a tangential conversation.
random78 wrote:
> You don't really watch "directly" through the lens in an OVF.
You do in a dSLR
> The lens forms an image on a screen and you then watch that screen through a prism.
Not in a dSLR. In these a mirror and a prism reflects the image towards the viewfinder. The prism also achieve the function of turning the image around or it would look upside down
> And that process does NOT show exactly what the lens sees.
Not in a dSLR
> For example OVFs do not reliably show the depth of field captured by the lens at large aperture.
That is not correct. And on most dSLR a DOF button allows to check DOF at less than maximum aperture (at the expense of brightness)
Not to say that EVF are not a good technology, but at least let's not make up some nonsense about OVF to justify the existence of EVF
mrmut: NASA chosen Nikon. The price doesn't mean anything up there, only quality and reliability is important.
NASA has very specific requirements which have little to do with reliability in general, and a lot to do with the camera being able in an environment with no gravity. Example: cameras as specified by NASA cannot contain specific lubricants which are used in all dSLRs (except the D3s). Until recently all the cameras NASA used were custom-made by the manufacturer for that reason (except the Nikon D3s), and very few camera manufacturers are unwilling to custom-make to NASA's specific requirements. Hence the choice of Nikon. Of course Nikon's willingness to work with NASA is a very smart marketing move on its part.
So now here is the real question: is the D4 - successor of the D3s - also built off the shelf to NASA's specifications ? Don't know if you've noticed but Nikon makes no statement to that effect anywhere.
Hugo600si: I'm curious why the lcd is non move-able, I'm no pro but I find it one of the best upgrades from the a700 to the a77, especially when the camera adds video. Probably the market does not need it, but it beats me as to why not.
I am with you: a tiltable screen would be a great addition to this camera. They can be made quite reliable even if you carry your camera all day long as proved by Olympus cameras. Yes even so it is still one more thing which could break. So does the metering, autofocusing, top lcd screen (I've broken on a D200, not precisely a flimsy camera), etc so let's all use cameras with manual metering and focusing, no top lcd, less buttons etc. These issues of reliability evades the true debate: is it useful? More importantly, are there shots which I would miss because I don't have this feature. The answer is definitely "yes". IMO that's what matters to a true photographer at heart (pro or amateur). As for reliablity, the solutions is a back-up camera, not removal of a key feature.
TOF guy: I'll ask Dr. Fossum since he is the in-house expert Is the idea really new? A similar scheme is found in some detectors for scientific applications (example, X-ray detectors http://www.dectris.com/sites/technology.html). Where Fuji inovates is that they discovered a material converting photons to charges which is sensitive to much lower energy photons than X-ray. If correct the key difference (not explained by dpreview above) is that there is no well in these sensors. The photons are counted as they come. What limits DR is how fast the charges are counted. Useless to say DR can be way above well-based (CCD/CMOS) sensors. There is no blooming either. For X-ray, noise and sensitivity exceeds back-illuminated CCD in spite of (currently) somewhat poor surface coverage. Also it should be easy to design the sensor to provide true syncing with a flash at least to 1/500 sec (the flash becomes the limiting factor!).
You're right. Re-reading the description more carefully: it does not say anything about counting the charges as they come. But this would be a much better approach, and Fuji may already have the key ingredient in place (the organic layer).
edu T: "The organic material's sensitivity to only visible light also avoids the need for a UV-filter in front of the sensor (silicon sensors are sensitive to UV light)."
Given the wavelength x output curve shown, didn't you mean "IR-filter" and "IR light" instead?
To eduT: the graphics you point out does not show what happens at near visible UV: it is cut at 400nm. On the graph The signal is about a fifth of the peak at 400 nm. Still it should be higher. CCD or CMOS sensors are sensitive to all sorts of higher energy light. It's hard to explain the curve not knowing the source for the graph of the unfiltered sensor. Most glass cut off some light starting near UV, and increasing with photon energy. Was a piece of glass present in front of the sensor?
PC Wheeler: Organic? Do they plan to sell it in health food stores?
Seriously, Fujifilm does have a history of sensor innovation. It will be interesting to see where this one leads.
To HowaboutRAW: the announcement states "innovative organic-hybrid sensor technology". Yes organic is used in various contexts, but in the context at hand it is about a product from carbon chemistry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound), and has nothing to do with food as I explained. And there is nothing to be afraid about having an organic material in a camera: they are present in all cameras as I've explained. Plastics are organic compounds (no need to double quote "organics"): they're derived from carbon chemistry. It's that simple. So no I don't need to try and eat a camera or some rubber foam because, unlike you, I understand Fuji's announcement just fine.