Nikon Z 7II & 24-70mm f/2.8 at ISO 800

[Abitconfused]

This camera and lens combination are not challenged at all on a sunny day at ISO 800.

https://edruthphoto.com/flowers/

What do you think?

[revi]

Well, I'd be surprised if the camera faced a serious challenge under such conditions. I did notice quite serious over-exposure on some of the flowers (the brownish ones and the yellow especially), where the petals either turned white, or lost all detail (the yellow).

Were these the in-camera jpegs?

[MrB]

On the contrary I would think that the conditions would be a challenge for any camera capturing this subject matter. I suppose it could be personal taste that the high contrast lighting and the resulting high contrast image examples fail to enhance the beauty of the flowers for me. Perhaps someone might be able to produce improved images from the captured data by post processing, but I wonder.....

Philip

[DanK]

yes, I too see some apparently blown out areas, but that may be just a function of metering. Center weighted metering doesn't necessarily work well in a scene with high dynamic range. It's safer to spot meter off the brightest areas and then open up the aperture from there. It depends on the circumstances, but an extra stop or two is often enough to push the histogram back to the right. It's the same technique one can use with snow. Then again, with a static images like these, one can just check for blown out areas and set exposure compensation before retaking the photo.

I don't think this is a test of the lens.

As a test of the camera, I can see two things to look at. One is noise, but I wouldn't expect visible noise at ISO 800 with ETTR on a modern camera, at least not without pixel peeping. The other is dynamic range. High-contrast images like this could be a good way to see this in practice--if the brightest areas were as bright as they can be without blowing out, one could then look to see whether detail is lost in the darkest areas--or vice versa.

However, we already know the answer to that last question: the DR of the Z7II is pretty good. It essentially matches my 5DIV at ISOs at or above 100 but does a bit better at the lower ISOs that the Nikon allows. The blue line is the Nikon, and the black is Canon:

[Manfred M]

It's rarely a lens problem, but can be a sensor issue, especially when the shots are taken in a high dynamic range environment. All of the images show crushed shadow detail and all but one show clipped highlights, so your camera was definitely challenged and was not successful with both the brightest highlights and deepest shadows.

Looking at the graphs that Dan is showing, ISO 800 gets you a dynamic range of just under 9 stops, where at 64 ISO it shows a dynamic range of of just under 12 stops. Shooting at the base ISO would have given you an additional 3 stops of dynamic range.

Shooting at f/18 is definitely going to give you some softening from diffraction, although from a practical standpoint, you won't see any appreciable difference in the down-sampled images you have displayed.

If you want the sensor to be able to capture the full dynamic range, shoot when the sun is lower in the sky or bring along a small diffuser to soften the light hitting the plants.

[Abitconfused]

Thanks to all for comments. Truly bright sun is a challenge here. But I sacrificed some dynamic range and detail in highlights with post-production shenanigans. As shot these are botanically accurate even good examples of the species. But as rendered they achieve some personality...for good or ill as with all personalities.

[Abitconfused]

I just found out that my web host had compressed my images significantly...this caused some loss of information in highlights.

[Abitconfused]

Update, using Spot Metering over highlights and shooting at dusk aids retention of detail in highlights, 35mm, 1/250s, f/10. ISO 800. https://edruthphoto.com/wp-content/u.../07/Dusk-1.jpg

[Stagecoach]

Update, using Spot Metering over highlights and shooting at dusk aids retention of detail in highlights, 35mm, 1/250s, f/10. ISO 800. https://edruthphoto.com/wp-content/u.../07/Dusk-1.jpg

One of the great things with the Z series is that you can undertake a hack that will show any area in the EVF that has reached 254 as 'black'. This alleviates the need for careful assessment of the histogram and makes using it an absolute doddle when speed is important.

[billtils]

The original set struck me as what could be called "botanical record shots" and a bit of a lost cause: much too busy, no obvious centre of interest and a very high dynamic range. I don't agree with the comment that "camera and lens ... are not challenged".

Your last post addresses most of the issues though.

[Manfred M]

I just found out that my web host had compressed my images significantly...this caused some loss of information in highlights.

Generally compression algorithms do little to the luminosity channel, as that is the part of the image that the visual system is most sensitive to. The tend to play fast and loose with the colour channels. I have yet to run into an issue where the compression algorithms crush the shadows or clip the highlights.

[Manfred M]

Update, using Spot Metering over highlights and shooting at dusk aids retention of detail in highlights, 35mm, 1/250s, f/10. ISO 800. https://edruthphoto.com/wp-content/u.../07/Dusk-1.jpg

Much better shot than the first ones. The colours are strong and you have taken care of the clipping and there are only tiny areas of where I see crushed shadows. A bit stronger framing would not hurt...