Nikon D100 vs. Fuji S2

[Quentin]

Robert,

You need to adapt your working methods to the tool.  

I have a lot of experience with the S2.  The dynamic range is wide, but for best image quality, you need to shoot raw, and keep an eye on the histograms to prevent your highlights burning out.  

Quentin

[Quentin]

Hello All,

Just a reminder about the dynamic range question....see above.

Quentin: why would I want to purchase a digital camera body if it cannot capture the same dynamic range as film?  

It is not like I am comparing apples to oranges here.  We compare the ability of negative film to slide film all the time in capturing highlights vs. shadows...an especially frequent topic is how much better negative film prints with an underexposed image than slide film does with the same....

People compare different slide films all the time for grain, latitude, warmth vs. coolness.  

I have worked much with a Nikon 990 camera in the last two years so I am familiar with all the technical talk about white balance, histograms (use 'em all the time since the LCDs on those 99x series cameras are lousy in daylight)...but I don't recall seeing a discussion about what medium (digital vs. slide film) captures more stops in one image.  And see the conditions set forth above.

I can spend six months on the road in SE Asia for the cost of one digital camera body...

Thanks,

Robert DeCandido, PhD :cool:

Well, Robert, it does have a wide dynamic range; its just a different method of shooting.  Just expose for the highlights.  There are many S2 shooters (no doubt D100 as well) who do this and get results with a great dynamic range.

Also, every camera manyfacturers seems to have a different approach.  I am currently uing a new Kodak 14n.  Kodak have setnup the camera and software such that it is almost impossible to get blown highlights.

Quentin, B.A., MSc., MCIArb, CNI, LRPS  

[sergio]

You probably will get charged taxes in your country for it, but you will not get charged any taxes in the US if the shipping address is out of state. Maybe that compensates a little.

[drew]

We seem to have strayed off the point a bit here. As a Fuji S2 user for the last ten months, needless to say, like Quentin (whose posts I always enjoy reading) I have a bias towards this camera over the D100. However, from what I have read, there really is not much to choose between the two if shooting RAW, except that the Fuji generates a file that requires less post-exposural interpolation. Since my interest in photography was rekindled about four years ago and my finances have been healthier, I seem to have bought and sold a lot of gear trying always to find those bits of gear that suited most my way of working. Every so often, something comes along that I really like, but when the time seems right to get rid, I find this actually quite easy. There seems absolutely no point getting sentimental about cameras when it is the photographs they take that should really matter. In the case of the Fuji, it was quite obvious to me that fully digital represented my future, it is capable of very good results. However, I am never completely satisfied! I am not a professional (cue spitting noises), I am one of those who aspires to sell the occasional print. When Nikon announced the D2H, that was the final straw as far as I was concerned and I have had a huge clear out (yep, that is reacting to a press release). People seem to agonise a lot about changing systems, but I can only relate my own experiences. I am very careful with how I buy my gear. The Nikon/Fuji outfit was sold at almost no net loss. A large Bronica GS1 outfit was sold at a significant profit and a large Mamiya 645 outfit was sold at no loss. I now have enough to invest in a Canon outfit based on the 1DS. For me, Canon makes the best D-SLR system. Even if you have Nikon, you have invested wisely as it holds its value well. The market may be awash with secondhand MF equipment, but people are still buying it.

[Alan Little]

I'm thinking of buying my first digital SLR after years of photographing with about the most Luddite outfit imaginable (Nikon FM2 & a Hasselblad 501 that's older than I am). I have a full set of Nikon lenses so Canon is out of the question.

The options in the realm of the currently affordable seem to be the D100 or the Fuji S2. I've read lots of reviews of both, here and elsewhere, but nobody seems to be saying that either is convincingly better than the other. You guys here are an intelligent and well informed bunch, so I thought I'd also ask if anybody has actually tried both and come to a conclusion.

[Robert DeCandido]

Hello,

Just a quick question: in terms of Dynamic range, which will hold the shadows and highlights better, a digital image from the aforementioned Nikon or Fuji, or a scanned image (say from the new consumer grade Minolta 5400 and not a high end scanner like an Imacon)? I am assuming a properly exposed image in both cases, and the output to something like an Epson 1280 printer (dye inks).

Perahps I am missing the info so far, but I don't find comparisons of how well digital images (from the S2 or Nikon/Canon digital bodies) capture highlight/shadow detail comapred to scanned slides (not negative film). I am also assuming that one image was taken, and we are not using layers to blend a bright sky with a darker landscape.

In other words, all things being equal, which makes a better image with a subject exhibiting a long contast range (say 5 stops)?

Thanks,

rdc

[BJL]

Alan,

   if you are a penny pinching procrastinator like me, you might want to wait for the much rumored announcement of successors to one or both of the D100 and S2 --- and then maybe get one of the existing, proven models at a nice discount, or second hand from one of those people who always trade up to the latest thing.

[Robert DeCandido]

Hello All,

Just a reminder about the dynamic range question....see above.

Quentin: why would I want to purchase a digital camera body if it cannot capture the same dynamic range as film?  

It is not like I am comparing apples to oranges here.  We compare the ability of negative film to slide film all the time in capturing highlights vs. shadows...an especially frequent topic is how much better negative film prints with an underexposed image than slide film does with the same....

People compare different slide films all the time for grain, latitude, warmth vs. coolness.  

I have worked much with a Nikon 990 camera in the last two years so I am familiar with all the technical talk about white balance, histograms (use 'em all the time since the LCDs on those 99x series cameras are lousy in daylight)...but I don't recall seeing a discussion about what medium (digital vs. slide film) captures more stops in one image.  And see the conditions set forth above.

I can spend six months on the road in SE Asia for the cost of one digital camera body...

Thanks,

Robert DeCandido, PhD :cool:

[Dale_Cotton]

Robert: glad to see I'm not the only one who considers DR to be as important as resolution.

Last spring I asked a good and patient friend in Ann Arbor named Michael Murphy to do a DR test for me with his new Canon 10D. I asked him to take a shot with a large range of brightnesses; to spotmeter specific locations in shadowed, midtone, and bright areas within the scene and to record the meter readings. He used a Sekonic handheld spotmeter, not the in-camera meter.

I uploaded a large crop from the frame he sent me. I converted this frame from RAW to TIFF using BreezeBrowser's Combined conversion method (Normal + Linear), then graphically marked the spotmeter readings on the frame, cropped off the unused lower half of the frame, then converted to JPEG at Photoshop compression setting 5. (The compression affects sharpness but not DR.)

The resulting 300 KB jpeg can be found here.

In case it's not clear in the jpeg, there are details both in the shadows and in the white wall on the right.

[Alan Little]

Thanks for all the advice. You can always wait for the next great thing to come out, but sooner or later you need sometyhing to take pictures with, and I'm sick of the constant struggle to get decent colour out of scanned negs. (I know I could just shoot more slides, but that wouldn't solve the problem of the hundreds of rolls of negative film I shot in my "negatives can capture more dynamic range therefore they must be better" phase.)

I'm aware of the issues with mf lenses, thanks, and some of my lenses are AF-D, including the 28mm which I was going to sell, but I now realise would probably make good "normal" lens for one of these cameras, and the *lovely* 180 which will make a marvellous 300 f2.8 equivalent. I will miss having usable wide angle lenses (can't afford any of the new super-wides just now), and also my Series E 100mm - very nice portrait lens. But I suppose an AF-D 50mm would make a decent & cheap portrait lens.

[Alan Little]

Dan,

thanks for the B+H tip. I'm in Germany though, and would probably get crucified by EU customs & sales tax if I had anything shipped from the States. Or maybe not - I guess B+H are probably used to that sort of thing & would knwo if I asked them.

[Ray]

In case it's not clear in the jpeg, there are details both in the shadows and in the white wall on the right.

Dale,
One thing I'm not clear about. There are 7 stops from F2 to F16 inclusive. Would you therefore describe the 10D as having a 7 stop dynamic range? Seems to me the interval, or range, is actually 6 stops and that this would be the correct interpretation, which is also in line with most comments regarding the DR of this camera.

[Ray]

Ray: I count 6 stops. But one can easily pull at least another stop out of the image file, without revealing unacceptable noise

Dale,
Now here's where the subjective element blurs the results. We're into problems similar to those defining the resolution of systems. Where does one draw the line?

Is it possible to use the same methodology to compare the DR of sensors and film, and if we do use the same methodology, are we reduced to making a subjective assessment of detail obscured by excessive grain, as opposed to detail obscured by excessive digital noise?

If you 'pull out all the stops', use curves in PS and noise/grain reducing programs such as Neat Image, does this change the comparison in favour of one or the other?

It's getting rather complicated, I guess. But at least one should be aware of the problems and difficulties in arriving at a standard - because we sure need a standard.

[Alan Little]

Michael's link to the Olympus E1 samples settled the D100 or S2 issue for me.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/olympuse1/page12.asp

... not that I intend to make a career of shooting test charts (I don't, in fact, ever intend to shoot any) but I haven't seen D100 and S2 samples conveniently side by side before, and the S2 shots are so clearly sharper and less noisy than the D100 ones and fully on a par with the 10D.

S2 here I come, for the time being, and then I can hang on to my Nikon lenses at least until I see what the D2x is going to look like.

[Ray]

Incredible! At 400 ISO the Fuji S2 appears to have less noise than at 200 ISO (in 6MP mode) and barely more noise than at 100 ISO - - and I thought the 10D was the lowest noise camera around  

First impressions of the 4/3rds Olympus E-1 are a bit disappointing!  

My observation is that the Nikon has a slightly better built body while the Fuji produces better image quality.

The Fuji takes AA batteries, which is a plus for some who work away from AC, but a downside for others. It also uses a seperate battery to power the flash.

You won't go wrong with either camera.

Michael

[flash]

Alan,

If your lenses are manual focus Nikkor lenses then you will need to check if they are in fact compatible with the digital SLR's. Many of the newer Nikon cameras, film and digital will not meter at all without electronic (not mechanical) lenses. This is certainly true of the F(N)80 on which both these camera are based.

Gordon

[Dan Sroka]

Sorry, I haven't tried both, so I can't answer your specific question. I've been a happy D100 owner for a year now though. I switched from a Minolta 800si combined with a Minolta Dimage Elite film scanner to the D100 and Nikon Capture. For the work I do (lots of close-up, abstract stuff), the image quality is comparable, but with much less hassle and work (scanning film... argh!!.. what a pain!).

I just wanted to point out that you should check B&H's used department (and others): with so many people switching camera systems at the drop of a press release, there are a lot of deals out there. I got a barely-used D100 from B&H for over $300 off.

[Dale_Cotton]

Ray: I count 6 stops. But one can easily pull at least another stop out of the image file, without revealing unacceptable noise, by using curves in Photoshop or exposure comp in the RAW converter. Try it with the jpg I uploaded - and that's after dumbing down to 8-bit. Perhaps that headroom disappears as one shoots at higher ISOs; I wouldn't know.

[Quentin (out of office, sans pas]

A large Bronica GS1 outfit was sold at a significant profit

I once owned a Bronica GS1.  Heck of a camera for the money.  Pity about some uneven film flatness.  All gone now...