Nikon Seminar with Bill Frakes

Nikon Nordic NPS Team organized a nice seminar last Saturday in Helsinki. The title was Still Moving Pictures. http://www2.nikon.se/nordic/billfrakes/pages/?Home,en_GB

NPS seminar was divided into two parts. First there was a presentation on Final Cut Studio by Apple. This presentation was just an hour and half long which means it covered Final Cut Pro only very briefly. Actually most demoed features are included already in Final Cut Express.

Another three hours after lunch was reserved for Bill Frakes. Bill is a globe trotting Sports Illustrated photographer. He arrives on the shooting spot with a huge array of equipment. Like some 60 camera bodies at IAAF Championships in Helsinki 2005. Bill is the master of remote shooting with those bodies and suitable lenses installed before hand and then radio triggered as needed. Of course he uses cameras also manually but remote control gives so many more possibilities - WHEN you know what´s going to happen.

Bill has moved from film Nikon F-series through digital Canon 1D-series to present Nikon D3-series. Mainly he uses D3:s, some studio and landscape stuff with D3x and now more and more multimedia with D3s. Actually Sports Illustrated is now using Nikon cameras only, as far as I know. Bill claims to focus always manually and practises every day focusing on suitable moving subjects.

According to theme Bill showed how his work has moved from still photography into multimedia which combines stills, video and sound. Being a stills-only sports or news photographer in the USA starts soon to be a dead end. In Finland most photographers are not too eager to take advantage of video´s possibilities. But also there is a marked difference in using video at websites of major US and Finnish papers.

Bill started his foray into video with Nikon D90. Now he uses also RED. The difference between RED and D3s is in prepation time. With RED it´s triple. Also equipment costs with RED are much higher, some six times as much as with D3s. Lens selection is hugely better with Nikon. At HD video broadcasting quality there is no difference in image quality according to Bill.

Bill Frakes showed several videos he had made with his associate Laura Heald. Straw Hat Visuals is their company, and Laura is the expert in integration of HD video, stills and audio into multimedia productions. Some of shown videos can be seen at their web site http://strawhatvisuals.com/multimedia.html : ”All Over Down Under”, ”Missy”, ”Nascar Fans” and ”Rail Bird: The 135th Kentucky Derby”. Of these All Over Down Under is produced for Nikon to show the hybrid capabilities of D3s. Straw Hats Visuals web site tells also a lot about equipment they use.

Also shown at seminar was a music video shot previous day and night at Backyard Babies gig with seven cameras. During seminar Laura made the first cut of this video! She had no time to do final color and such but this video was still an amazing show of pros at work.

Some background on this video, shooting more material for it and seminar at Manfrotto web site: http://experience.manfrotto.com/turku_day_three and http://experience.manfrotto.com/helsinki_day_4

 All in all Nikon seminar was a great opportunity to see a high level example of where professional photographers are going with video!

-p-

Nikon D3x: ISO 400 -> 1600

Here are two observations on Nikon D3x in dimmer light conditions. One is about image quality at high ISOs and the other about camera´s stability at slow shutter speeds, which are kind of connected issues.

D3x, AF-S Nikkor 200mm 1:2G @ f/2, ISO 400

ISO 400 - ISO 1600

I have been lately shooting using Nikon´s great Auto-ISO feature. Previously I was very disappointed with Canon´s  Auto-ISO version in 5D MkII. For me it´s totally useless. Nikon betters by giving user two sets of parameters: a setting for highest allowed ISO value and a setting for lowest allowed shutter speed. These two settings make Auto-ISO a really useful feature. For instance with a 85mm lens I set 1/125s as the slowest allowed shutter speed. That ensures sharp hand held images, and thus gives me the real benefit from D3x high resolution sensor. Auto-ISO works as should with every exposure mode setting, and ISO sensitivity is shown in the viewfinder all the time so that I can override automation when ever wanted.

Originally I considered D3x only as a studio and landscape camera. I was not expecting anything special from higher ISO values at all. Actually in Lappland while shooting landscapes I was afraid of going over ISO 200 to maximize quality.  Now Auto-ISO led me suddenly into using higher values than before. When I evaluated images I was positively surprised with the clean tight noise granularity in them. Actually I did not notice any visual difference with Canon 5D MkII look which I liked so much. 

Now I had to test also this issue to really see how these two cameras compare.

Test image pairs at ISO 400, 800 and 1600 can be found here. Those images should be downloaded into your own computer if you want to see them at 100% size. Test images contain Canon files scaled (107,7%) into Nikon size to show comparable same size prints.

These images are converted from RAW files. Both cameras had always equal ISO settings and all camera corrections set off. Lenses were Nikon 85mm/1.4 and Canon 85mm/1.2 LII respectively. Aperture was set at f/8. My chosen converter was Adobe Lightroom because that´s the one I always use. Noise Reduction settings were Luminance 0, Color 25. To bring out any possible differencies I had  Shapening settings at 50 / 0,5 / 50. I´m fully aware that there are tests like DxO Labs (dxomark.com) which say these cameras should not have similar sensitivities. My findings do not support that claim. Same Lightroom tonality settings gave almost same highlight values only Canon being slightly more ”sensitive”, but these highlight corrected pairs show Nikon as slightly lighter at 1/4 tone. So these cameras seem to have a little different tonal responses but in reality sensitivity differencies are buried into differencies in lens aperture calibration.

I find comparison pairs very similar. Nikon has a slightly smaller and tighter noise grain and shows also a slightly better detail. This difference is shown on screen but it is almost disappears in a print. Still, this is a very impressive result from Nikon when you consider how much better camera D3x was at ISO 100.

Disclaimer:

I also test converted Canon files with DPP and Nikon files with NX2. DPP gave a cleaner and tighter grain structure for 5D MkII which I knew from my previous experience. Nothing new there. For D3x it was more interesting with NX2 but I did not see any practical difference between it´s two converters. So, because for me DPP is a subpar converter in every other respect than slightly better grain and sharpness I did not go into a useless trouble of trying to get DPP images into same tonality and sharpness as Lightroom images. Outside of test images I´m not going to sacrifice the beauty that I like in my real world Canon shots for a little tighter grain by using DPP. If anyone wants to see the difference between Lightroom look and DPP look, it can be seen in my comparison between 5D and 5D MkII.

D3x, PC-E Micro Nikkor 85mm 1:2.8D @ 1/50s, f/2.8, ISO1600. Crop 100%.

Stability of shooting at slower shutter speeds

Another IMO thing that had to be solved by doing a little test was the stability of hand held shooting. Namely, when I started  testing D3x it felt as a very stable platform and shooting with it felt positively non shaking. Now I have done some shooting with 5D MkII again, and when I raised it to shoot it also felt very stable but in a totally different way than D3x. The moment of exposure with the whole feel of it is so different. Actually, now I don´t know which I prefer more. But my little test showed that my first hinch was in the right direction. During a longer series of images that are scaled in to same print size I think I can manage more sharp images in the average with D3x. The slower the shutter speed the better for Nikon comparatively. Each of my test shots is a sum of ten consecutive shots. (Ten shot aligned as Photoshop layers to give as tight pattern as possible, mode screen). Shutter speeds are 1/15s and 1/2s, lenses 85mm like above.

This almost equal result shows again the difficulty of ”testing”. If someone says that one top camera is better in hand and has better ergonomics than the other, I say hardly, you just think so. These are very personal preferences that are dependent on your physiology and previous experience.

-p-

Nikon D3x, resolution king?

Everyone is driving yesterdays car and shooting with yesterdays camera. This is how it is always from technolygy point of view. I have never thought that new models make my old cameras any worse and kept shooting with them as they fit into my needs. However, from professional point of view, staying put means falling back in a competitive environment. That´s why I have been really interested in Nikon D3x since it´s launch. All the specs and other information gave me the impression that Nikon has pushed the limits of sensor technology as far as is possible today. It looks like that low price was not a target for Nikon. I wrote some thoughts on D3x launch earlier in this blog.

Speaking of technological advances, it must be said that progress does not always go straight forward. A good example is Leaf Volare back, which was the epitome of quality long past what you could read from a spec sheet of many later launched one shot digital cameras. How ever good, Volare was the last of it´s kind because there was no market for that kind of backs.

After a period of shooting

I have now used D3x (actually two bodies) and Nikon lenses (ranging from 14 to 200mm) for a month and half. I´ve been shooting both for my own pleasure and professionally. After a background of nearly 10 years with Canon DSLRs, it took me a while before Nikon logic started to become sensible. Before that D3x seemed like a mystical computer with wrong UI. When I had managed to configure bodies according to my shooting style and my fingers started to find their way to buttons and wheels, using D3x started to be pure delight.

After this period of shooting I am assured to say that D3x´s image quality is the best in any DSLR ever made. And with DSLR I´m referring to 35mm category. If D3x is the best camera for my personal shooting or not is another matter. My present choice Canon 5D MkII has the edge in some areas of usability. Also if I were now to buy a DSLR for my personal use with my own money, I think my choice would be 5D MkII because of price difference. If I had to make the same choice today as a studio shooter, I would not hesitate to pick D3x instead of any Canon.

A Lappland shot with Nikon D3x. Magnifient scenery like this really benefits from as much resolution as ever possible.

Resolution test

The rest of this essay concentrates solely on my resolution test with D3x. I´ll write about other issues later. I have been using the same test setup for digital cameras for a decade. This setup tells about resolution and color. I´m not interested in any absolute values but comparing cameras against each other with my background experience of using the same equipment in practise. My comparison setup is easily reproduced, it gives always the same result and most importantly it answers to the right question. Test group was now D3x, 5D MkII and PhaseOne P45+ digital back. I have tested earlier Canon´s 5D MkII and 1DsMkIII, so I know that their resolutions at ISO 100 are very similar. They are not exactly the same but they are so close to each other (depending on RAW converter in use) that any critics on comparing dissimilar DSLR bodies is pointless here. Besides my experience of shooting with D3x told that it is meaningless to do any more pixel peeping between these two Canon bodies. 

It´s not possible for me to compare DSLR bodies or digital backs directly, with out optics. And I wouldn´t care because I`m a photographer. Lens is very decisive in a test like this. That´s why I included more than one lens from Canon and Nikon. In suitable focal length range I had three Nikon lenses: AF Nikkor 85mm 1.4D, PC-E Micro Nikkor 85mm 2.8D and AF-S Micro Nikkor 105mm 2.8G ED. As corresponding Canon lenses I chose my own great and proven EF 85mm 1.2L II USM plus from Potkastudios lens cabinet 3pc TS-E 90mm 2.8 and 2pc EF 100mm 2.8 Macro USM. So Canon was given three extra tries. Moreover, after shooting with it I had noticed that 105mm Micro Nikkor can´t be okay. It is a demo lens from Nikon Nordic, which according to my location shots seemed to have something wrong with possibly VR unit. My resolution chart (VR off) confirmed that this lens needs to be sent to repair shop. It was so much inferior to all other lenses. That left Nikon with 2 chances against Canon´s 6.

This case with Micro Nikkor shows again how important lenses are with a body like D3x. Camera body´s extra resolution shows only with top lenses. Perhaps Micro Nikkor´s faultiness might have passed my notice with a body like D3? At least nobody had noticed it before...

I shot tethered into CaptureOne Pro 4.7 so that files had same exposure in every case. After shooting, files were converted in C1. After that I imported RAW images also into Adobe Lightroom and matched tonal ranges to be as close to C1 files as possible. Canon files were opened also in Canon DPP software and Nikon files in Nikon Capture NX2, and again developed to match C1 files. This test period is my first experience with NX2. Matching files there succeeded only okay. I need more practice. The other converters are familiar to me since they were born, and I have been a beta (and even alpha) tester for C1 and DPP.

Both Nikon and Canon files showed one lens as better than others. Nikon´s both lenses were so close to each other that in an ordinary photograph it would have been hard to tell any difference. Anyway PC-E 85mm was slightly better. In Canon camp my favorite lens 85mm 1.2L II beat all others. Beating is of course an overstatement but it was easy to choose. Note that test chart was only in the center of image. I was looking for the best possible resolution in camera, not comparing lenses.

As a side product this test gave a comparison of both companies´ still life tilt/shift lens with their best resolution bodies. Canon, this is pathetic, hurry up with a re-designed 90mm TS!!!

Nikon advertises that D3x rivals with digital backs. Also in that context it was interesting to see a difference between 24,5 MP DSLR and 39 MP digital back. P45+ back was attached to Mamiya AFDII camera, and lens was Mamiya´s excellent 120mm Macro.

You can find comparison shots of these three cameras (the best lens of each) here. To see them at 1:1 they should be downloaded to your computer. Also use your own choice of interpolation to upscale Canon and Nikon files to match PhaseOne. Only then you can see the real differencies.

Conclusions

My conclusions:

• 1. P45+, 2. D3x, 3. 5D MkII - clearly
• D3x is surprisingly much better than Canon and surprisingly less worse than P45+. Surprisingly refers to my expectations when considering AA-filters (or not) and linear resolutions. (P45+ suffers here slightly because shooting distances were defined by long edge of frame).
• My early expectations on D3x was proven right: Nikon has managed to maximize 35mm resolution without ruining other aspects of shooting pleasure and quality. D3s might be expensive but you get what you pay for. From what I see, besides of sensor, also AA filter, microlenses and other image quality related parts are chosen and designed with image quality in mind. Canon really has to run faster now when they are developing their new flagship model.
• D3x is a match to any digital back with MP count starting with 2. Beyond that it´s only natural that size matters as P45+ shows.
• D3x is a very, very interesting choice for a studio thinking about how to invest between DSLRs and digital backs. Studios with Canon gear, like we at Potkastudios, must invest heavily in both.
• Concerning RAW converters, C1 Pro is very good for all these cameras, Lightroom shows again it´s typical mushiness and shows this 5D MkII moiré which is absent with DPP. I´ll come back with NX2 after some more studying.

High image quality is much more than resolution. My opinion on D3x regarding those issues in next blog. 

-p-