Night Marinascape - D800 crop + original

[dubaiphil]

OK - Here's a resolution test.

Comments more than welcome. 50mm f1.4G at f8, 15 seconds, ISO100

Firstly, a crop from the original file:



And the original:

[kdoc856]

Phil,

I am gobsmacked by that, but would like to verify your results. Please send me your D800

[Otavio]

Can I have it for a couple of weeks, after Kevin?

[dubaiphil]

Lol - The Westin hotel is 1060 metres away from my shooting location (according to Google Earth).

Pull your bathroom curtains if you're visiting - I might be out there with a 300mm at some point!

[Rhoads238]

absolutely stunning. how big would that print be full size? Did you by chance shoot this with the d600 as well? I would love to see the comparison between the two.

[Mike Buckley]

Let's please not overlook that the image is really nice. Well done, Phil!

[kdoc856]

Phil,

You're killin' me with those shots. I've looked at them about 5 times with progressive unhappiness. I would love, love , love to get a D800.

I started with Sony DSLRs when Sony made the MinoltaKonica legacy lenses compatible with their new Alpha series. How often do we get to undo obsolescence? Now I am so entrenched in Sony gear that I cant get out of it. Not that I'm unhappy with my Alpha 77 (until today) but it cant do THAAAAT!

And the low light performance of the D800 is just sick.

You have made me the most miserable of men.

Kevin

[MaggieR]

Definately, the original without cropping. Love the way the colors came out. Great job.

[dubaiphil]

absolutely stunning. how big would that print be full size? Did you by chance shoot this with the d600 as well? I would love to see the comparison between the two.

You'll have to wait for my review, Jason!

Hint 1 - the D600 was good, but not as good
Hint 2 - this view prints up nicely with my 12MP D700 on a 30 inch width - how big you can print in full size? Well it's a 7360 pixel width image, so at 240dpi that's 30 inches across without interpolation

[arith]

Superb. I like the mist and everything.

[rtbaum]

Kate Middleton..........Look out!!!!!

[PhotoByTrace]

Far..out... WOW... just wow.... stunning image btw and the crop, well... OMG.

[PhotoByTrace]

How are you going to manage to give that back???????

[dje]

Phil that's a very impressive cityscape image, despite what appears to be a fair amount of haze. If anything, the haze gives it a special character of it's own.

As far as the camera is concerned, it should be OK for a few holiday snaps

Just out of interest, I looked up the sensor test results on the DXOMark website. The D800, D600 and the 5DmkIII all have similar noise performance of about 46 db (18% SNR test) at ISO 100. This is about 6 db better than the current 1.6x crop cameras. Interestingly though, the D800 sensor has a resolution of 36MP compared to the D600 and 5D MkIII which have 24 MP. So the noise performance relative to actual pixel size is considerably better in the D800 !

By the way, was your crop an "actual pixel" view ? And was there any noise reduction applied in pp ?

Dave

[Bobobird]

Beautiful shot and that crop is amazing.

[dubaiphil]

Phil that's a very impressive cityscape image, despite what appears to be a fair amount of haze. If anything, the haze gives it a special character of it's own.

As far as the camera is concerned, it should be OK for a few holiday snaps

Just out of interest, I looked up the sensor test results on the DXOMark website. The D800, D600 and the 5DmkIII all have similar noise performance of about 46 db (18% SNR test) at ISO 100. This is about 6 db better than the current 1.6x crop cameras. Interestingly though, the D800 sensor has a resolution of 36MP compared to the D600 and 5D MkIII which have 24 MP. So the noise performance relative to actual pixel size is considerably better in the D800 !

By the way, was your crop an "actual pixel" view ? And was there any noise reduction applied in pp ?

Dave

Hi Dave

I'm not reviewing either of these cameras (D800 and D600 in my hands at the moment) with one eye on DXOMark or any other 'techie' websites. I'm just reviewing them from a usability and hands on performance perspective.

There is no noise reduction in these samples, as I was shooting at base ISO. Yes, longer exposures can induce noise, but with nightscapes I don't do any noise reduction on my base ISO D700 files, so I want to compare honestly about like to like performance. In camera NR was switched off too.

The D800 file was converted from RAW in Lightroom 4.2 (I has to download that to get the driver for the D800) into a 233MB tif file (ouch!) with my default sharpening settings (around 25). Then in Photoshop I cropped to 16:9 ratio, converted to a 20MB (12 quality) jpg and that was it. The heavily cropped section was purely a zoomed in 16:9 crop of the original - I'm no pixel peeper, so I just kept it simple and with the original file you can see the amount of crop I've used.

If you want to see a cleaned up ISO6400 image from the D800, check out my Farewell 14-24mm post in this section of the forum.

[Mark von Kanel]

Phil,

You're killin' me with those shots. I've looked at them about 5 times with progressive unhappiness. I would love, love , love to get a D800.

I started with Sony DSLRs when Sony made the MinoltaKonica legacy lenses compatible with their new Alpha series. How often do we get to undo obsolescence? Now I am so entrenched in Sony gear that I cant get out of it. Not that I'm unhappy with my Alpha 77 (until today) but it cant do THAAAAT!

And the low light performance of the D800 is just sick.

You have made me the most miserable of men.

Kevin

And me the happiest i get mine week Monday nice info phil , keep it coming!

[kdoc856]

Mark,

You have a cruel streak in you I'd not previously seen

[Mark von Kanel]

Mark,

You have a cruel streak in you I'd not previously seen

SORRY