Real-world test: Nikon D750 at the Museum of Flight

"If I could throw away everything I've learned and had to deal with regarding exposure by purchasing a Nikon, hey I'm all over that."

That's a very nice, spot-on, and insightful way of stating that point!

I can really appreciate how much freedom letting go of the shackles of exposure workarounds would give a photographer. I've been told that many times, but it took your video to drive it home. I could babble on, but this is not the place.

Thanks

I'd like to know if the D750 does line skipping for 1080p video? Or does it interpolate down most of its sensor area, except for the black upper/lower 16:9 edges? That makes a big difference in detail resolution and low light noise.

High ISO on m43 can't match the D750. There's about a two stop difference. If you plan to shoot lots of super low light pics like they did in this video, don't go for a crop-sensored camera. In good light and at lower ISOs, things get muddled and it depends on a lot of factors. Unless you have a very high dynamic range type of landscape photo or some very shallow DoF portrait shot, it can be hard to tell, particularly with no pixel peeping or only medium to small prints.

AF... it depends. M43 is very good and quick with single shot AF, down to which eye you want to focus on. Things get iffy when lighting conditions dim. The only m43 camera that still AFs well in low light is the GH4. Tracking AF is still lagging behind with all m43 cameras, some models are better than others, but you still have a higher miss rate than you would have with the D750.

Of course, there are things m43 excell at, but I'm about to hit the character limit with this post!

Barney, it's absolutely inexcusable how long it takes for these reviews to come out. This is supposedly a top photography website, and its content often excellent, but to take this long to review several important cameras (the D810 comes to mind immediately) as well as to NEVER review the 1DX or D4 (or D4s) defies any reasonable explanation.

I’m hoping the D810 review is being pushed back by the far more interesting Lumix GM5! I’m probably the only one, though …

@ Ben Lazar - you clearly know more about the structure and priorities of our team, and our audience than me. That must be why you're comfortable saying

'to take this long to review several important cameras [...] defies any reasonable explanation.'

Big cameras take a long time to review. And the D4/S and 1DX aren't as high a priority for our readers as high-end enthusiast models. I'd love to review them (and I really hope we don't have to skip any more pro models) but despite good intentions we can't do everythingallatonce.

And to add to that, it's not about just pushing out reviews, it's about pushing out content that adds to the canon of work out there. That adds authoritative & technically sound value. There are literally reviews out there that test ISO performance of cameras under uncontrolled lighting, uncontrolled exposure, rendering comparisons between cameras meaningless. Or reviews that say unqualified things like 'AF is pretty good', whereas we're trying to work on videos and photos and 1:1 crops & stats that actually give you an idea of performance with evidence.

Or an idea of what monstrous DR ratings of cameras like the D810 mean in the real world, compared to the competition, or compared to even medium format. Give some real-world, visual meaning to 1, 2, 3 EV differences in DR.

These things take time to do right. Not to mention constant re-checking to make sure everything was done right (you wouldn't believe how many times we reshoot for technical accuracy).

Hope it's worth it to you.

@Barney

I wouldn't and don't claim to know about the structure and priorities of your team. However, I would assert that for DP Review to take over four months to review a camera as important as the D810 is, for lack of a better word, absurd. The camera has been available to the public since what--July? Really? It takes 4+ months to write the review? Perhaps the answer to that question makes sense to the DP Review staff, but to more than a few of your readers, it sounds like an excuse. "Big cameras take a long time to review," in my opinion, doesn't justify a lot of the wait times that have become endemic to your reviews.

And in regard to the D4 and 1DX, it's not about doing "everythingallatonce." It's about doing it at all.

OK, let's try this: it's my fault. I accept all blame. Happy?

Barney and Rishi, its interesting that Ben Lazar posted the following four (4) months ago on the D810 Preview:

"I sold my D800 to a friend and got the D810 over the weekend."

What more does he need to know about the camera? I agree with your review priority. Most of us are far more likely considering a D750, than a D810.

@Ben
Have some respect for the work DP review do rather than flaming them publicly after them publish more outstanding work.

@ Ben - "The camera has been available to the public since what--July? Really? It takes 4+ months to write the review?"

You're missing the point. Obviously it does not take that long to write the review if it was the only thing we had to do. The point is that (and you'd know this if you've been watching the camera market over the past six months) a HUGE amount has happened in 2014, and we've seen major releases from pretty much everyone, which need to be written about.

Do you see what I'm getting at? We prioritise based on what our readers are looking at, what they're most interested in, and the resources we have at our disposal. I'm sorry we've let you personally down so badly this time. And that's not being facetious - I really wish we could have reviewed the D810 earlier, it's just proven impossible to do given everything else that's going on right now.

@Barney

Got it. Thank you for the responses.

You produce great content; often definitive, in my opinion. There is a very large element of my frustration with the timeliness of the reviews that is actually a compliment to you and your staff; I really want to read the damn things and am excited for them.

"...your knowledge and pleasant delivery is a cut above the other video reviewers out there..."
+1

Thats not really true. Even with a crappy lens, full frame sensor gets better picture out of it compared same lens on crop sensor. As long as lens is made for Full frame.Just look the lens comparison tool there are often same lenses tested on different bodies.. And there are loads of cheap G primes with fantastic quality on FX

Yep. The Nikkor 85mm f1.8 is a lot bang for the buck. The other f1.8 primes aren't too shabby either and offer a way to go cheap without sacrificing IQ (too much) in FF.

But I also agree the Nikkor f1.4 primes and the constant aperture zooms are pricey. Luckily there's some competition and one can save some cash and buy equivalent lenses from Sigma or Tamron. The Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art is amazing, albeit chunky.

You're almost always gaining ISO performance by stepping up to full-frame, and a lot of the time dynamic range as well (unless sensor performance is limiting). Larger sensors tend to offer better noise performance, and ISO performance & DR are, or course, related to noise performance.

If we are light limited and have shutter speed at a certain threshold, than FF advantages are mainly through shooting shallow DOF and soaking up more light for greater DR SN, etc. Otherwise you can also shoot at a slower shutter speed for a FF system and soak up more light that way and preserve highlights, etc.

If you are not light limited than yes it is possible to get a smidgen more out of the FF system in DR and get a few stops better noise performance in the darkest tones, etc.

But in real world usage I think its more complicated than that especially if you account for the fact that in some of these examples the highlight retention amounts to a small pixel amount relative to the entire scene and that it is possible that PP software also applies heuristics to interpolate or apply best 'guesses' for clipped channel data. So it is possible that someone shooting an APS-C high DR sensor has some few pixels clipped, but overall image is very similar in print and screen.

Another example of highlight retention...sun in complicated cloud structures vs sun in clear skies...it is likely the case that heuristics will do a good job with the latter for highlight recovery in many PP software, but have difficulties with the former. From the video I saw mostly clear skies. In addition if we are talking about tripod and the ability to extend exposure time that is also when bracketing has the least side effects. IMO single shot DR is best for shots involving moving subjects...so things like passenger shot in a vehicle with window or interior + exterior shots involving moving subjects. I'm convinced that the next generation of iOS or Android smartphones will auto-bracket anyhow (iPhone already 'brackets' for digital stabilization for example, it is just another step to use bracketed shots for HDR optimization). With Apple bragging about their improvements in local 'tone' mapping optimizations and where they are with their bracketing...I think its upcoming.

Jpgs out of the camera are getting better and better... I dream of the day when shooting RAW will just be a bad memory. And the beauty of the normalized jpg is that it allows you to look back at older reviews and decide whether new gear is enough of a step forward that it's worth buying. Standards are everything.

I think jpegs are here if you don't do postprocess. Since I post all my shots in Lightroom I don't shoot jpeg at all. OK I did when I fine tuned lenses he he.

@Timbukto - loved your thought process there... we've pretty much had exactly the same thinking/conversation many times!

Especially that high ISOs should always be compared with the cameras getting the same exact amount of light/exposure, to show how cameras perform when light-limited (and to, e.g., reward a camera for having higher efficiency, which an ETTR method wouldn't reward). ETTR for low ISO makes sense, but rather than change our protocol mid-ISO, we're working on an entirely new dynamic range test that will do exactly what you say - ETTR just short of clipping a brightest region.

And, yes, we brightness match JPEGs for the reason you say.

@Artpt - no, JPEGs still have considerable work done to them, not the least of which is a tone curve application that throws away a good amount of the DR available in the Raw simply to give a punchier image on today's low DR/dim output devices.

Huh?

You can pair this with the Tamron SP 24-70 2.8, the whole package is about 3.5K while the NX1 is 2.8K For $700 extra, you have a FF body, a sensor that don't snap until 25600, proven focus tracking system.....and much more.

Looks like Samsung propaganda from Smartphones moves to photography? Damn it...