Using NeatImage to clean up a picture is unacceptable unless you're
shooting ISO 1600 and above.
Unacceptable in what way? Unacceptable because it adds a step to
your workflow? Because it costs money? Because it isn't a good
product?
As someone who prides themselves on clean, professional quality,
well made prints, I would tend to argue the opposite: unless you're
running a noise reduction step in your workflow you have a great
deal of false detail in your shadows off any of the digital
cameras. What you're saying is a bit like saying "automated prints
from the lab are good enough." Perhaps for you, but not for someone
who really cares about image quality, and certainly not for someone
who is selling their work in larger formats.
I have a D100 and a D1H -- I also have a Canon 10D and Canon 1D.
Everyone knows that the Canon 10D doesn't even need NeatImage at
ISO 800: it's that clean.
I guess I didn't get that memo. Please forward it to me, as I
didn't know that; that's not been my experience with the 10D.
The 10D and the dirt cheap 300D render
better pictures than me D100 and D1H combined.
Perhaps you should stop trying to combine your photos from the two
Nikon bodies and just work on one at a time ;
).
Even at ISO 1600
and 3200 the Canon 10D wins hands down compared to the D1H. It
even beats the 1D.
The problem I have with all your statements boils down to this: you
haven't specified what kind of photography you do, you haven't
indicated at what size (or in what format) you're evaluating your
images, and you haven't shown us any examples so that we can form
our own conclusions. Thus, we have nothing on which to evaluate
your remarks as anything other than another troll post. Since you
have four bodies, you're either too lazy to SHOW us what you mean,
or you can't.
I'm fairly unbiased because I own so much equipment from each
company.
An interesting statement, but a non sequitor at best. Given your
comments about the 10D, I'd think that you'd be using it for every
picture you took, thus we're left to wonder WHY you have so much
other equipment.
Did Nikon make a mistake using a brand new sensor?
As opposed to using an old sensor? And what existing sensor would
have given them 8 fps? As I've written elsewhere, I don't think a
camera company has any choice but to own their own sensor
technology going forward. If Pentax had designed a better camera
and priced it significantly lower, the D100 would be in jeopardy;
at the point where Pentax gets the same price for that Sony sensor
as Nikon does (which takes lots more quantity, which they won't get
with the current offering and price), such camera bodies would
become commodity-like, and then it simply becomes a game of who can
shave manufacturering costs the best. Canon and Fujifilm have
already shown that you can and should differentiate with your own
technology, and Nikon has joined that game. Regardless of whether
or not the D2h is "noisier" or less capable than we want it to be,
developing their own sensor was the right thing to do.
Nikon View and Capture are pretty good, but nothing beats Photoshop
CS - I use both MacBibble and C1 DSLR. PS CS is an all in one
product and is up to par with everyone else and then some.
If you can't see the differences between the converters, you're not
looking hard enough. Yes, CS has gotten much better, and it has
some tools you can't find elsewhere. But I still find images that
it renders artifacts on that other converters don't. And as I've
pointed out in my newsletter, converters vary quite a bit in their
final image quality when thrown a RAW file with a blown out channel.
But after getting used to the CMOS sensor on the 10D you begin to
realize which camera renders a superior image. 2 hour exposures
literally noise free;
Right. Which is why the Hubble2 project has specified Canon 10Ds
for the new telescope. Moreover, this comment makes me think that
your definition of noise is incorrect or incomplete. Substituting
made up pixels interpolated from neighbors for actual ones in order
to remove hot pixels is a form of noise. It's generally not very
visible unless you know what you're looking for (lack of definition
in the shadows and at black edges), but nonetheless it is noise.
Noise, properly defined, is any pixel value that does not
accurately convey the number of light photons hitting the sensor at
that point. All digital cameras have a long way to go to get to
signal to noise ratios below middle gray that are 100% acceptable.
As for the D2h images that have been posted to date: if you're able
to tell what the noise properties of the D2h are versus any other
camera just by looking at random images in uncontrolled situations,
how about picking a few stocks that are ready to go up and
forwarding those to me? And as I discovered with the Pro 14n, even
if something looks wrong at first with a new camera you have to
figure out what that is and what is causing it. (For those that are
new to this, the reason why many think the Pro 14n is noisy is that
it attempts to capture as much as 10 stops of dynamic range. Chop
off the bottom two stops and the noise goes away and you still have
a bit more dynamic range than a Nikon D1x.)
--
Thom Hogan
author, Nikon Field Guide & Nikon Flash Guide
author, Complete Guides to the Nikon D100, D1, D1h, & D1x and
Fujifilm S2
http://www.bythom.com
.
