Nikon needs to step it up

Nikon seems to be one generation behind Canon, and they want to do everything better ;-)

Ok, IMHO there has been all the way a feeling of hasty in D200 launch. I'm pretty sure Nikon originally aimed D200 to be ready to Christmas market, and the 5D forced them to come out with D200 ASAP. Even all the "leaked" samples were commented at least in Nikon forums to be made with preproduction cameras even a few days before the known product launch. Nikon's own "official" photos I saw were all scaled down significantly - the more the higher ISO photos they were.

I'm sure Nikon will be able to finetune their production in near future. But if I'd be still thinking of buying D200 I'd be very worried how long-lasting the "tuning" Nikon does for the banding problem is. Electronics tend to get old, and if the bandng reduction is made with a tuning of some critical paramters, the likelyhood these are in correct values after a few months (or a couple or years) use is unknown.

MachuRoberts said:

Nikon released the D200 and got this forum all up-in-arms raising
the most seemingly profound question "should I switch to Nikon"

Do you really want to switch to a company that released their
camera with issues that they clearly knew about? I don't remember
Canon having to "recall" the 20D when it was released (I will
probably be corrected on that one).

Yeah, Nikon blew Canon away with the D200, but I feel sorry for
those select few that spent all that time and money switching
systems, to find their new love had problems before they even got
it out of the box.

Click to expand...

Looking Canon whole product range and Nikon whole product range, I cannot agree with this. D200 is somewhere between 5D and 20D, but admit it has a few qualities that bypass 5D.

But to say "blow away" ... NO.

MachuRoberts said:

Now don't get me wrong, the 20D isn't perfect, and there have been
countless stories of focus issues and such. Getting a "good" 20D
was hard at one point. However, all-in-all it rarely affected the
overall image quality that the 20D is still known for.

Just my observation when I heard complaints, and then for Nikon to
say "we will reduce it to the minimum" does that mean it will still
be there, visible, or they will only look at it to make ease their
worried customer’s minds. Looks like CCD can’t keep up ha ha ha ha.

CANON ALL THE WAY!!!!!

Just my 2 cents

-Machu

The Beauty of IR

Click to expand...

This is a bit of a stupid thread in the canon forum don't you think.

As for blowing the 20D away......hmmmm price difference is way to big for the little extra's a D200 has. You can buy a 20D + 17-40L of 17-85 IS for the price of a D200. That combination beats easily any extra's the D200 can offer.

MachuRoberts said:

Do you really want to switch to a company that released their
camera with issues that they clearly knew about? I don't remember
Canon having to "recall" the 20D when it was released (I will
probably be corrected on that one).

Click to expand...

The only difference between the banding in the two cameras is that Nikon admitted to the problem, while Canon refused. Canon's response was universally "its within spec" and yet they quitely managed to prevent the problem from emerging with the XT when it was released 6 months later. Not sure how Canon is better than Nikon in that respect, both cameras had problems, Nikon is addressing it directly, while Canon left it up to the RAW converters to eventually solve.

As for the battery grip... Canon never got to the heart of the issue (the flex in the design), but they did make a slight adjustment when the grips were recalled due to a "power" issue.

--
-CW

well said

MachuRoberts said:

Nikon released the D200 and got this forum all up-in-arms raising
the most seemingly profound question "should I switch to Nikon"

Click to expand...

I don't know how a few isolated posts (half or more probably from Nikon shills) among thousands of other postings constitutes "all up in arms." Since there will always be fairly strong contingent of mindless consumers rushing from gadget to gadget, having a few hacks switch to Nikon is no big deal. They switch again and again in search of the latest ubergadget. They also tend to be the source of threads like "My sensor has dust", "My camera won't focus", "I have banding","My LCD is crooked" and other mindless drivel, so why is losing them a bad thing?

I certainly think Nikon should come up with cameras as good as Canon as soon as possible. I am against Monopoly and if Nikon can not compete Canon god knows how much Canon would charge for a 45D or next generation cameras.

I think it is best for consumers to have different equal choices so companies compete with each other. I do not like to see another Microsoft but in camera business. No offence to Microsoft though since the quality of their products is not as bad as everyone complain.

I did not see it as humor either.

Also, it would help to check the facts before presenting such a statement as "Canon has never..." Canon has. It took them some time to fix. It was all over these forums and the 1D forums.

I have thought about switching yet I've bought in to the system I have and will continue to use it. There is nothing wrong with the platform I've selected and switching does not make good financial sense.
--
TonyK

Until we know the root cause of Nikons D200 banding issue we cannot assume it is linked to long development times. It could be something in the sensor (which Nikon does not directly control) or in the firmware, or between the interact of the two.

--
TonyK

This is not a recent change in business. Business has never been about getting it right out the gate.

Its just there are more products being produced so problems are highly visible sooner.

Anyone remember the flaming Pinto from Ford? For the lack of $1.50 in parts ( I did an ethics paper on this subject for a college course), Ford released a car with a known issue. That issue was to burst in to flames on rear-end collisions and kill their occupants.

The bean counters had determined it was more cost effective to defend at trial than spend $1.50 to mitigate the problem. Too many people died because of $1.50.

There is a lot of pressure to release a product so the company can begin to recoup on its investment.

Tannin said:

Many, even most, new products have teething problems. The days when
the average big company with complex products could afford to sit
on a near-ready major project ironing out the last small detals
till it's perfect are long gone (assuming they ever existed in the
first place). Nope, the poilicy is to get it as good as possible
within a given time frame and then release it, ready or not, to
grab a place in the market and start some revenue flowing in. Any
problems that crop up can be dealt with as running changes.
...

Click to expand...

--
TonyK

People can expect all they want. Until we root cause the issue and determine if it is hardware (sensor) or software (firmware) or the interaction of both, we cannot begin to know when it was introduced.

The sensors could have been changed, even in a minor way, just prior to release of the camera. Maybe they made a "small" change in the firmware. We may never have the root cause.

For us, its more of a matter of how Nikon handles this. So far they are handling it poorly.

--
TonyK

Chez Wimpy said:

MachuRoberts said:

Do you really want to switch to a company that released their
camera with issues that they clearly knew about? I don't remember
Canon having to "recall" the 20D when it was released (I will
probably be corrected on that one).

Click to expand...

The only difference between the banding in the two cameras is that
Nikon admitted to the problem, while Canon refused. Canon's
response was universally "its within spec" and yet they quitely
managed to prevent the problem from emerging with the XT when it
was released 6 months later. Not sure how Canon is better than
Nikon in that respect, both cameras had problems, Nikon is
addressing it directly, while Canon left it up to the RAW
converters to eventually solve.

Click to expand...

The 20D "banding" issue was noise banding at ISO 1600-3200. That's quite different from the kind of banding that certain D200 bodies are exhibiting at even low ISO settings, which isn't noise banding at all. Most people who don't shoot at those high ISO speeds would never even encounter it. And since it was noise banding, the appearance of this banding went away with mild noise reduction. I remember I used to have it at extreme IS0, but somewhere along the way (maybe when I updated the firmware) the issue completely disappeared. In fact, I only remembered that I had banding (a long time ago) only because you reminded me of it! That's how much of a non-issue it was. And I believe the remedy for the 20D was quietly done with a firmware update-- something that apparently is not a remedy for D200 banding. Again, very different from the D200 problem.

Here's an ISO 1600 image sample from my 20D:



The original is here:

http://www.pbase.com/dpreview1/image/53699946

I had posted it a couple months ago, and while I do remember having noise banding at high ISO (1600 or higher) at one time, as you can see the issue is completely gone from my ISO 1600 images now. And this is a straight-out-of-camera JPEG too. \Unless the camera repaired itself, I guess Canon must have remedied the problem with firmware with no inconvenience to the user. Again, this is quite different from the D200 situation where, apparently, you need to send in your camera to Nikon to have the problem "minimized".

Chez Wimpy said:

As for the battery grip... Canon never got to the heart of the
issue (the flex in the design), but they did make a slight
adjustment when the grips were recalled due to a "power" issue.

Click to expand...

Actually, Canon did say that the battery grip was physically modified in subsquent production runs. And in terms of repairs to existing units, they were pretty straight-forward with that, apologized for the mistake, and offered repairs free of charge. They were very matter-of-fact about it. In other words, they did get "to the heart of the matter":

http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=PgComSmModDisplayAct&keycode=2112&fcategoryid=215&modelid=10464

TonyK_in_Texas said:

Until we know the root cause of Nikons D200 banding issue we cannot
assume it is linked to long development times. It could be
something in the sensor (which Nikon does not directly control) or
in the firmware, or between the interact of the two.

Click to expand...

In saying that with Nikon's much longer times to market for new products, conceivably they should have had more time to beta test it, rather than having many of their initial users be the beta testers. Typically, beta testing is designed to help identify these issues before they hit the market. And when you have longer development cycles, you would think you would have more time to do beta testing. It would be different if the D200 was coming only 18 months after the D100. But the D200 comes some 48 months after the D100.

And I am saying even minor changes, both known and unknown, in the components that make up a system, could be impacting this issue.

Its up to Nikon to root cause and resolve.

Look at the space shuttle and the two lost vehicles. How long was it in development? How well known were these issues?

--
TonyK

Do we want the canon will monopolize the market

my answer is No

as long thre is a competition we have new better cameras at the lowest cost

Already some of very good ideas has gone away just because companies the cannot make it in to the market
and here are some examples.

a development of a sensor the would go in to a film camera.
the roller was going to be battery and memory for the sensor
that is gone because large camera companies didnt like it.

The sigma cameras with foveon also very good idea
unfortunaly sigma is not strong enough to develop it better

the Fuji with its extended dynamic range and etc.

also the autoclen on the sensor,now maybe canon has to consider

So is this what we hoping Canon to blow up Nikon ?

--
-Machu

The Beauty of IR

I have. I have plenty of shots with blown highlights, and the camera does not show banding. Now, you may argue that I should take a shot of a lightbulb in auto mode at iso 800 with +4ev compensation. Will i see banding around the lightbulb? I don't know and I dont really care. I don't shoot like that and I expct most other people don't either. Now there are a few cameras where banding showed up under many conditions. Nikon has offered a fix for them. No comments about canon's banding issue? I imagine most Canon users don't care, because they were not affected, or the problem was patched.
--
http://www.dustandrust.com/photoblog

the canon banning problem didn't seem to get as much heat as the nikon.

i don't know if it was more or less serious, or, if it was just more isolated
--
-Machu

The Beauty of IR

ALEXADNDROS said:

Do we want the canon will monopolize the market

Click to expand...

That can never happen... too many players and especially wanna-be players.

ALEXADNDROS said:

my answer is No

as long thre is a competition we have new better cameras at the
lowest cost

Click to expand...

Competition itself is not sufficient. We have as a modern human civilization many things that exist because we need them and figured out how to make them.

ALEXADNDROS said:

Already some of very good ideas has gone away just because
companies the cannot make it in to the market
and here are some examples.

a development of a sensor the would go in to a film camera.
the roller was going to be battery and memory for the sensor
that is gone because large camera companies didnt like it.

Click to expand...

It failed because it couldn't be made to work in time and at the right cost.

ALEXADNDROS said:

The sigma cameras with foveon also very good idea
unfortunaly sigma is not strong enough to develop it better

Click to expand...

It's a Foveon idea, not a Sigma one. The X3 sensor has it's own problems wrt color and dynamic range, not to mention cost. IF CFA sensors couldn't meet (and even exceed) the need the of the camera buyer then Foveon might have more of a market, but there have now been several hundred million CFA digital cameras sold, so CFA must have something going for it...

ALEXADNDROS said:

the Fuji with its extended dynamic range and etc.

Click to expand...

Fuji is one of the leading digicam makers... if they are unable to sell a product they have only themselves to blame.

ALEXADNDROS said:

also the autoclen on the sensor,now maybe canon has to consider

Click to expand...

Don't quite know what you're aiming at here... but Olympus pushes their supersonic cleaning every chance they get... perhaps it helps them a little bit.

ALEXADNDROS said:

So is this what we hoping Canon to blow up Nikon ?

Click to expand...

Only Nikon can do Nikon in.... if they ever truly fail in the digital camera business it will happen if they are grossly mismanaged (over a long time.)

-gt

... as really the OP is being more hyperbolic... just that this group and indeed a great many of the camera forums are consumed with unnecessary and counter-productive hyberbole.

-gt

--
Eric Sorensen
Bossier City, Louisiana
http://www.pbase.com/ericsorensen