D80 Skin Tones?

Hi everyone,

I'm seriously considering the Nikon D80. I currently shoot with the Fuji S3, so IQ is extremely important to me. Anyone have any good examples of D80 skin tones, straight from the camera?

Thanks in advance,
Marco.

mrflood said:

Hi everyone,

I'm seriously considering the Nikon D80. I currently shoot with
the Fuji S3, so IQ is extremely important to me. Anyone have any
good examples of D80 skin tones, straight from the camera?

Thanks in advance,
Marco.

Click to expand...

Posted this skin tione photo in another thread here:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=20169387



see also:



--
http://www.pbase.com/luxun54/galleries

Thanks.

Any more?

mrflood said:

Hi everyone,

I'm seriously considering the Nikon D80.

Click to expand...

Good for you.

I consider all below as tests because I played a lot with the white balance. Some are on auto WB. But all are jpegs out of camera, downsampled for web. EXIF preserved.

Overcast:



Bright sun, 12:00-13:00:



Overcast again (slight) and shadow, late afternoon:



Bright sunny day, in shadow:



Bright sunny day, in shadow:



Manual WB, wrong setting (was too low - 4000K, should've set it to 5000K):



Manual WB, correct setting (this is EXACTLY as it looked):



Overall, I'm very pleased of the results.
This camera rocks !

miancu

miancu,

Thanks for taking the time to post this. Much appreciated. I'm still debating. The D80 IQ looks pretty good, and the body and viewfinder are excellent. I think there is still a slight edge to the Fuji S3 IQ. I'm really struggling with this decision.

mrflood said:

miancu,

Thanks for taking the time to post this. Much appreciated. I'm
still debating. The D80 IQ looks pretty good, and the body and
viewfinder are excellent. I think there is still a slight edge to
the Fuji S3 IQ. I'm really struggling with this decision.

Click to expand...

mrflood,

Listen to this: I got this camera a couple of weeks ago. I was also struggling between Nikon and K10D from P*ntax. I wanted to get a D200. Once I was also considering the S3. But is too damn slow.

If you make a living from photography, probably you should consider something else, but this one (D80) is really a beauty for an amateur and maybe as backup for a pro. It has a large buffer, no problem with bursts of RAW and eats lots of jpeg bursts before slows down. Robust, solid, not as big as D200, ergonomic. No hunting in low light, locks fast though I have only one, slow, lens, a 28-200 f/3.5-5.6 D (not G! D, the old one for film) and all photos you see are taken with this zoom, handheld.

So think wise and see what's most important for you.

IMO, the IQ as straight jpeg is marvelous and, with minimal in-camera tweaking, you can get what you want in no time.

miancu

Taken with Incandescent white balance, ISO 800, no flash. Not sure if it's any help, but I hope it is...

ad in md

Thanks, it does.

Miancu, very sharp pictures, I'm impressed. What lens.

BTW, you all talk about IQ. I've looked in the glossary but could not find it. What is it?

--
Christopher

I feel it gives excellent skin tones.





I am curious why you are switching froma S3. Any particular reason???

--
Sam
http://www.samjsternphotography.com

Hi Sam,

Thanks for posting these.

I doubt that I will switch, I just fell in love with the viewfinder, speed and the size of the D80. RAW is pretty much unusable with the S3, not to mention the brutal software. Nikon Capture is truly revolutionary in comparison. In the end, it's hard for me to justify switching when I look at my Fuji S3 jpeg's, and am blown away by the color.

Chris,

IQ is simply Image Quality. You will also see the term HDR, which is high dynamic range.

Image Quality

cr697 said:

Miancu, very sharp pictures, I'm impressed. What lens.

BTW, you all talk about IQ. I've looked in the glossary but could
not find it. What is it?

--
Christopher

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply on the IQ.

But I just checked the EXIF on that first picture of two ladies and babies, and it is at ISO800. For my untrained eye, this is equal to no noise. Very nice.

BTW, the sharpening is very high as well, which explains the sharpness a bit maybe?

--
Christopher

.... Walter S Matthews? He owns the S3, Canon 5D and D80, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you could get in touch with him for further information.

See:
http://www.nikond80links.com/nikon-d80-user-impressions/ (#2)

Good luck!

--
Regards, David Chin
(D.7.0. & C.P.4.5.0.0.)

Nikon D80 Links:
http://www.nikond80links.com
http://www.pbase.com/dlcmh/nikon_d80_sneak_pictures

Links to all my other sites:
http://www.flickr.com/people/davidchinphoto

Thanks David, that does help alot!

When I took these I just used the default settings frfom the D50







Pierre
--
http://www.pbase.com/matrixone
http://www.pbase.com/pierredubeau/root

Absolutely stunning Pierre!

I wonder if the D80 can do the same?

make for great photography including great skin tones. The camera used is the least significant part of the equation ...

Best.

cr697 said:

Thanks for the reply on the IQ.

But I just checked the EXIF on that first picture of two ladies and
babies, and it is at ISO800. For my untrained eye, this is equal to
no noise. Very nice.

BTW, the sharpening is very high as well, which explains the
sharpness a bit maybe?

--
Christopher

Click to expand...

Hi, Chris.

The lens is a 28-200 f/3.5-5.6 D (not G), the old (1998), film one which probably means that is apx. a 42-300 on D80's APS-C format.

The lens is not suprisingly sharp, on the contrary, a bit soft but its sharpness is better at the long end (towards 200). The photos were taken with sharpness setting to +2 (in-camera). No other modifications except some cropping (the photo of the crowd), no downsampling just resizing to 800 pixels / something. Some of them have the contrast adjusted and saturation. Anyway, no PP in PC software.

I take the freedom to re-post some more photos, maybe you are interested. All are jpegs from camera without PP outside the camera.

The ones below are taken at the longest focal, and you can see the sharpness is better at this end:









A wasp nest was inside this statue:



You can see in the next photo the CA of the lens (around the chimney, lower right corner)



When I tested the AF-C mode:



On the lower end, sharpness is less evident:













For those who wonder about High ISO capabilities, photos below are some of my FIRST with this camera and I used (erroneously) the manual WB with a high setting for a low temp environment (see the cast) and I wasn't aware about "High ISO noise reduction setting" so they are taken with this setting set to Off, at 1600 ISO:











Next, this is how photos look without in-camera sharpness (set to 0), on overcast:





Moreover, see the action of the built-in flash used as fill:











Other, focus tests:

















Green test:



Colour fidelity test: