In the thick of the action: Nikon D5 real world samples gallery

"If you want careful controlled comparisons, wait for our review, or visit our already published studio work on the camera."

What I want are GOOD real world examples. I'll stand by my criticisms, which I felt were constructive. I gave you one example, but there are too many to describe with the limited space we're allowed here. I'll continue to value DP Review as a source of news.

I understood you just fine. I just disagree with your ostensible request to now shoot all galleries at F4 or smaller, something many here would disagree with.

There's only so much a 'real world' gallery with no context can tell you. In fact, if we manually focused every camera in Live View and always shot at F4, we'd just be approaching our studio tests, wouldn't we? A real-world gallery is just that - what do we get from real-world use of the camera, trying to avoid as much user error as possible, of course.

In this case, there was an artistic choice made to shoot that image at 35/1.4. You can disagree with that artistic choice. But using it as some general indication that our galleries are useless to you is, well, odd.

My objective response disagreeing with your underlying premise is me taking it personally?

Interesting. Also, not sure why I would take it personally when I didn't even take the photo you're referring to.

Rishi, you should learn to say, "Thanks for the feedback." and consider what people to say to you. Reading your comments almost made me facepalm.

Shocked you said the photos are soft, some are at shallow depth of fields making only the face sharp. Which I found the rugby shot where the player is in the air with the rugby ball in front of him to be amazing that the camera focused on the face that well instead of the ball blocking half his face. Same with the tennis player having a well focused face while her arm swings partly across it with a racquet. Nice sports shots.

This reminds me of my old D200's image quality. Even at low ISO, the shadows are loaded with noise, not signal. I am not talking about the jpegs, I downloaded the RAW files and ran them through ACR.

Informative examples are DSC_2040, 4557, and 4661. All exhibit considerable shadow noise that you would not see in any of the D6xx, D750, or D8xx models. Again, using ACR and looking at the RAW files.

I also noticed that in the Rugby frames, even things in moderate shadow in high contrast scenes have chroma noise that again would not be seen in any other recent generation FX Nikon.

I guess this isn't Nikon's best effort. Maybe they'll improve it with firmware.

cont.

What I'm trying to say, is that beyond that notion we all have of big budget fashion shoots, out there in the real world, small fashion shoots are extremelly challenging situations that demand a camera up to the task.

I used to consider my D800 too slow for these shootings.

What's actually needed is a camera that has ultra reliable AF (for shooting backlit models all the time, with heavy ND filter to allow flash sync speed).

Really fast review time (no matter if you like chimping or not, the client always wanna take a look at what you're doing, and you don't wanna your camera to be slow).

Really fast shot to shot time.

Huge battery life.

Great High ISO (that "it's 9 p.m. and we're still shooting" example I mentioned? Happens all the time).

Best in class weather sealing (shoots happen a lot on beaches, under salt moisture, rain and dust).

Reasonable file sizes (not for me, but for the retouching people that will hate the extra hours retouching 36 to 50 mp files).

cont.

So yeah, considering the D5 has reached a nice resolution standard of 20mp, I'd take it before D800 and 5ds series.

20 mp is more than I need, and the rest of the camera is simply a better match.

BTW, low ISO DR is not a problem. Lighting is always controlled on these shootings.

On a last note, you might remember me defending MF gear, and those are reaaaally slow, going against all that's said above.

But that's a whole different story.

I used DMF gear for slower paced jobs, when there was time to breathe, and to consider the extra quality.

But on fast paced jobs (the usual), I'd grab a D5 before my D800 anyday.

Our methods are so different.

Shooting model portfolios... sure... 12mp is more than enough. Probably cool for city magazine spreads too.

But brand clients want, need ultra high MP for extended media potential. An energetic producer and pre-pro meetings are essential. Stick to the shot list. Live easy.

You do work from a shot list... right?

There were a lot of ACR-processed images, but I based this on some of the from-camera jpegs you posted with D-lighting auto.

If you have already punched up contrast in-camera with Picture Controls then you don't leave me much to go on, except to say I have found the new NP2 profiles are more contrasty than the older NCP profile set.

I believe we all left JPEG settings at default in 'standard' mode. To echo Rishi - I like some more 'punch' in my images, and I like the JPEGs out of this cam a lot more than I expected to!

We should probably resuscitate our old JPEG DR test to address these sorts of things.

ADL in 'auto' never opts for much higher than 'normal' if I remember correctly, leaving High and Extra High 1 and Extra High 2 to the user to select if such drastic adjustments/compensations are desired.

What's ironic is that a camera like the D5, with far less DR than the D810, offers Extra High 2, when it shouldn't because of the amount of noise introduced from underexposure. Meanwhile, the D810 or D750 can easily tolerate the extra underexposure because, like, 0 read noise, so it's ironic that these cameras don't offer higher ADL modes.

"That is why they are "the best" because they get "the shot" every time."

Like when they miss because their AF systems need to be calibrated by the end-user for a specific subject distance, focal length, and lighting? Or when they don't offer the flexibility a lesser (in your opinion) camera offers due to Raw latitude?

You're simplifying a multi-variate problem, just like when you troll Sony articles.

They get some shots better (arguably many, given how jaw-dropping the D5 AF system is), while other cameras get other shots with more reliability. No camera gets every shot 'every time'. Saying otherwise is just a misleading attempt to simplify a more nuanced reality.

Suggesting a D5, or 1D X II, never misfires or gives you a OOF image is silly - we have many, many images that prove otherwise, in fact.

Relying on a D5 to track your player amongst many distractions might actually work, even during bursts to capture the decisive moment, and I'd never even attempt this on an a7R II.

And yet in terms of hit-rate of nailing focus on an erratically moving model or baby's eye for a single shot, even at F1.4? a7R II will beat the D5 in hit-rate.

Why? Because the two scenarios place different demands on the AF systems, with neither being perfect. Knowing this allows you to better select, and use, your tool.

Umm, my A7RII must be a faulty one I guess. Hit rate on moving models are low. On the other hand hit rate of my D4 was high, even higher with my 1DX. I don't shoot anything else than stills or videos with my A7RII, but there it's great.

This camera is not aimed at a A7RII. That would be the D810 which has better DR. Also Sony only have one lens that is close to resolving enough for the A7RII. Check what their lens are capable of resolving. At the moment it is a camera body without a lens range. Will be interesting to see what the G series is like but so far the 24-70 f2.8 is not looking up to much.

It's pretty obvious you know next to nothing in regards to not only the lens selection used on a A7RII let alone the capabilities and spec of the body itself. Just enjoy your Nikon's. Dinosaurs enjoyed their time on earth till the big bang as well. ;-)

Go to any event, sports, racing, politics, stage, and see what pro shooters are using. D4/D4x, 1Dx, the occasional D300S, 5Dmk3, or old D3X thrown in, all with a Gold Strip or White constant aperture zoom or f2 tele in front (or the odd Sigma EX here and there). I'm just a pretender with my gripped D610. Those promoting the E-M1 and A7 series as pro cameras are Olympus and Sony endorsed pros shooting free gear. Those who really need the megapixel count and shooting the A7II or D810 for fashion and editorial are likely killing time until their first Hassy. Sony would LOVE for you to believe that the A7 series are pro cameras, but they simply are not.

Also, and I know we're not the AP or Ryan Brenizer, but rugby, tennis and a dimly lit wedding venue would seem to me to be the exact kinds of situations I'd expect to find this camera being used in.

@thejohnnerparty - understood, and we appreciate the feedback. I'm personally planning on doing some testing with the D5 on some landscapes over the coming couple of weeks, so that at least will guarantee some deeper DOF to look over.

@thejohnnerparty: In my opinion, the sharpening's not great on OOC JPEGs. It appears to be a large radius sharpening that really doesn't preserve fine detail like Sony's latest engine does, and there's no better place to see this than in our controlled studio scene study. See here.

Now that I've had some time with the D5, I rarely zoom in 100% to an image and exclaim 'wow' at the detail in the eyelashes, or what have you, as I do with the a7R II. And even to a certain extent with the D810, despite its pretty soft JPEG engine. I don't think the large radius sharpening on the D5 is really helping it.

But the detail's there in the Raw!

You must not live in snow. Sports cars are MORE fun on snowy roads because it's a real test of your driving skills. Especially when you're still driving on your summer tires and haven't switched to snows yet.

I bet they tried to pulled the shadows several stops. The lens hood and front of the lens look bad for a 20MP FF sensor at ISO 100, and they are in the direction of 'shade' - the sun is to the right.

High ISO on the D5 looks similar to A7Rii and somewhat unusable over 10K without a lot of processing. For low ISO, I agree the A7Rii is much better but the D5 low ISO images aren't as bad as you've indicated.

Low ISO is fine, just relatively noisy in deep shadows, compared to other modern Nikon/ Sony FF cameras. About Nikon D5000 level in that specific area.

The images of my A7RII do not look similar and I won't use the Sony above 8000. I used my old D4 and 1DX at 25600 ISO at concerts when needed. I won't use my A7RII for it. Not only for the ISO performance, but simply for the poor AF in low light at moving subjects.

The AF part I can understand, but the D4, 1DX and even the D5 look quite a bit worse at ISO 25600 than the A7RII at ISO 12800, let alone ISO 8000.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr18=lowlight&attr13_0=sony_a7rii&attr13_1=nikon_d4&attr13_2=nikon_d5&attr13_3=canon_eos1dx&attr15_0=raw&attr15_1=raw&attr15_2=raw&attr15_3=raw&attr16_0=12800&attr16_1=25600&attr16_2=25600&attr16_3=25600&attr171_0=off&attr171_1=off&normalization=compare&widget=267&x=-0.27045179129287733&y=-0.8296285508493879

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr18=lowlight&attr13_0=sony_a7rii&attr13_1=nikon_d5&attr13_2=nikon_d4&attr13_3=canon_eos1dx&attr15_0=raw&attr15_1=raw&attr15_2=raw&attr15_3=raw&attr16_0=12800&attr16_1=25600&attr16_2=25600&attr16_3=25600&attr171_0=off&attr171_1=off&normalization=compare&widget=267&x=0.005475087777152213&y=0.22442379093907835

"The low-light image quality of the D5 is only slightly better than what the best APS-C and even Micro 4/3 cameras are producing with good glass attached."

Surely you and the 8 people who liked your comment so far are NOT SERIOUS?
I use both MFT, APSC and FF, and I can say with certainty that I wouldn't be using my MFT with premium glass attached for lowlight when I can use the A7Rii with a decent glass - the difference is tremendous! and D5 is even better than the A7Rii in high ISO.

Angrymagpie

"...the difference is tremendous!"

Define "tremendous." Anything a non-pixel peeper would notice in a print?

Color me suspicious, but I regularly read comments in these forums about cameras being in different leagues, no comparison, image quality 1,000x better, and so on, when the differences in photos are barely discernible pixel peeping and certainly nothing that 999 out of 1,000 people would notice in a print.

@Angrymagpie

Photo 11/80 the bride at ISO1600 has the similar grain and noise of the Pentax K5 at the same ISO but I could be wrong since I'm not exactly at home to compare it with some of my ISO 1600 shots

I'm not saying that the old K5 16mp APSC sensor si better than Nikon's latest and greatest. I'm just saying that they look similar at least on ISO 1600.

These images are very noisy for some unknown reason, this is not what I have seen the D5 do, and I have seen a lot of galleries with clean files even at 25.600.

@nicolai

i noticed this too, there is an image of a dog at the end of a driveway that is very grainy taken at 12,800 and then right after a city street taken at 36,000 and its much sharper and less grainy. very odd.

Hmmm... How did that happen? Why is EXIF data being changed?

Interesting catch PVCdroid. Why when we upload pics the EXIF is automatically used but in DPReviews own images it isn't? That doesn't seem right.

I also noticed the thread calling Rishi out for being pro-Sony in these D5 comments has been deleted.

Said it before and will say it again - things that make you go 'hmmmmmm'.

EXIF data is never changed. We have the ability to just 'tag' images with a specific lens, which ignores the metadata. That's why there were shots saying a 35mm lens was used, but the EXIF data indicates a 135mm focal length. The latter was correct, and I've updated the files in question to reflect that.

And yes, comments indicating that we are 'salespeople' for specific brands are usually deleted because a) they aren't true, and b) they usually aren't relevant or adding anything constructive.

Not to mention, I shot a bunch of the images in this gallery. And also wrote the words: "It's a purpose-built machine: we don't think there's a camera in the world that can keep erratically moving subjects in focus during fast bursts like the D5 can. But it's good at a lot else as well."

So, as Carey said, your comments were untrue, irrelevant, misleading, disrespectful, and as another member even pointed out, ironic given what I contributed to this gallery.

No, (a) there aren't many complaining, & (b) they're complaining about actual perceived problems - like NR killing detail, unsophsticated sharpening not showing much detail, or low ISO DR causing more noise than expected in some shots. These are real world problems - why would we reshoot to, presumably, hide them? That'd be a disservice.

The reality is that image quality does have a bit of pro, and a lot of con.

But the bigger point here is the AF system, that allowed a sports n00b such as myself to even track players long enough to get a decent moment from within a 12-frame burst. With the camera understanding my player & tracking him for a good portion of the time. That's the story, and is the bulk of what's going into the review. We're trying to pour our hearts into this one, so all your talk of what content leads up to what and Sony this and Sony that really fall on deaf ears in the office - the only thing we're biased about is testing the next tech & framing it for our audience.

Although if the OOC JPEGs are so good then I could skip post-processing altogether. I just wish Nikon would enhance the Picture Controls.