Soliciting advice...

[pnodrog]

You've got me at it again Manfred. What I find noise wise via Dpreview is that the D800 isn't disimilar to the D7000 and a number of others. Also that against those levels of camera the 2 stop full frame advantage is more like 1 stop. I've only seen the 2 stop claim posted on CinC never in a review.

Pictorially, this is crops it looks like this



To be honest though I do wonder about these as a newer camera version is always better than the previous ones. The manufacturer might interfer with numbers that raw converters use or maybe Adobe never completely turn noise reduction off. Some new versions do contain new sensors though so pass.

Graph wise just for chroma which can tend to be the most pesky they look like this



The more I go into it currently I see full frame gaining 1 stop iso wise against crop or m 4/3. Where it does really gain over both is in terms of good old line widths per pixel height basically because the frame is bigger. This doesn't prevent huge prints being made from either of the 2 smaller formats.

The reason the 6D is there is certain things relating to light levels and focusing. Not sure where Nikon fit in on that aspect yet. Also as usual they tend to have lower dark noise figures. Part of me is beginning to think there are no real practical advantages to encourage me to spend money on a full frame camera. The fact that I wouldn't really gain on ISO via a D800 does put me off that one though. Each to his or her own really.

John
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Interesting. The DX0 tests give a different indication....

Low ISO performance 2965 for D4, 2925 for D610 and 2853 for D800.

If it were comparing car top speeds say 296Km/hr vs 285Km/hr it would be insignificant for most driving activities.

The D7100 result is 1256 that is significant.

[fenix]

What just occurred to me as I was reading your response are the following questions, which are all related to MPs: What about file size, especially when shooting RAW files at 36MP? Are those large files slower to work with and would the D800 user have to be prepared to invest in additional hard drives for those photo files?

Answering your questions with a question:

How are you going to view your pictures or show them to other people?

If you're not going to print at all, you don't really need 36MP, IMHO.

If you're going to print A3 size then it depends on what ppi you want to print at.

If you're to print large, then I imagine the D800 would be preferred.

Eric

[fenix]

<snip> or maybe Adobe never completely turn noise reduction off.

At my humble level, I can confirm that this true. And my version of ACR (5.4) applies significantly more NR than two other converters that I use.

Eric

[Manfred M]

Answering your questions with a question:

How are you going to view your pictures or show them to other people?

If you're not going to print at all, you don't really need 36MP, IMHO.

If you're going to print A3 size then it depends on what ppi you want to print at.

If you're to print large, then I imagine the D800 would be preferred.

Eric

Yes and no. If the only parameter you are looking at is image size, then I can understand your comments.

The other areas where the D800 shines are dynamic range, colour depth and pretty decent high ISO performance. People tend to forget about these and purely look at the pixel count.

[ajohnw]

Interesting. The DX0 tests give a different indication....

Low ISO performance 2965 for D4, 2925 for D610 and 2853 for D800.

If it were comparing car top speeds say 296Km/hr vs 285Km/hr it would be insignificant for most driving activities.

The D7100 result is 1256 that is significant.

The one I posted shows pictures that can be seen and perfectly straight forward graphs of the average. Not some mysteriously derived numbers which might for instance go out of it's way to make increasing pixel counts look better. The other point of course is that a number doesn't give any information about what type of noise it is. Sorry but I don't rate the DXO site at all.

On the other hand certain very useful forms of information no longer appear in Dpreview reviews - I would hope all can appreciate what that happens from time to time.

John
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[ajohnw]

At my humble level, I can confirm that this true. And my version of ACR (5.4) applies significantly more NR than two other converters that I use.

Eric

I came across comments about the same factor in other Adobe products when a number of people were trying to take shots with m 4/3 using long manual lenses and no magnified view. More or less impossible to get a sharp image. One comment related to simply reducing the size of a jpg. but I have no idea how many of their products do this. The jpg resizing problem isn't unusual in packages that only actually reduce a shot when it is saved as it isn't possible to judge sharpening until it is reduced It seems that some Adobe software use some sort of rule.

John
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