Pages: 1 2 3 [4]   Go Down

Author Topic: Why the D800 is not at all a Milestone  (Read 26507 times)

t3hh

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 9
  • Marek T3hh
    • Flickr
Re: Why the D800 is not at all a Milestone
« Reply #60 on: May 20, 2012, 03:49:17 pm »

And you would know it after five anonymous comments?
sure. and i know now the quality of your 2047 non-anonymus comments.
Logged

hjulenissen

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2051
Re: Why the D800 is not at all a Milestone
« Reply #61 on: May 21, 2012, 03:29:55 am »

The same could be said about most car manufacturers having done little to go beyond our current engines technologies.
...
So unless you consider Canon and Nikon to be research entities, I am not sure they can be blamed for the way they conduct their business.
Companies like IBM and Intel seems to focus a lot on basic research. I like to think that this is a conscious effort to be able to sell products that no other companies (or governments) have the capital and stamina to produce. This means that shareholders have to be in it for the long run.

A favourite story of mine on this subject was about Japanese vs Western manufacturers of electronic musical instruments. Yamaha wanted to get into the market, and from the early 70s onwards, they started introducing interesting, but commercially unsuccessful products. What they did was gather experience and build a name. At the same time, a number of exciting US and European manufacturers had creative and commercial success, but they had one problem: their investors were in it for the short profit. Every new product had to be a success, or else the company would go belly-up. Consequently, most of them (over time) disappeared, and those that survived tended to focus on safe, evolutionary products.

Then in the early 80s, Yamaha hit gold with the DX-7, based on research at Stanford. What it did was fundamentally different from what the competitors did, and it was a great success. Every 80s ballad has the DX-7 electric piano sound all over it.

Could this story happen today, with "landscape photography" as the product and Chinese/Indian manufacturers as the "underdog"? Does Western (and Japanese?) manufacturers walk the safe path of moderate evolution for each camera generation, while some revolutionary concept just awaits the right manufacturer to change the market? I think this is what the thread starter wants to discuss? My reply is perhaps, probably. But such advances tends to come from a radically unpredictable angle. Of course Canon and Nikon & Friends have a staff of PhDs that constantly think about S/N-ratios, Dynamic Range, MTF50, color accuracy and such. If there is a free lunch anywhere, chances are that they have simulated it, calculated the cost/risk etc. I dont think the potential from ditching Bayer is all that large. If we see such a product, I am guessing that (just like the DX7 in my story) will be more fundamentally different, and perhaps not "the ultimate high-quality". Perhaps it will allow flexible usage of multiple (cheaper) sensors/lenses, more room for dsp/raw development to play with stuff. Imagine being able to distort the sensor shape (or lense) to do local phocus/DOF adjustement .
-h
« Last Edit: May 21, 2012, 03:40:24 am by hjulenissen »
Logged

JohnBrew

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 868
    • http://www.johnbrewton.zenfolio.com
Re: Why the D800 is not at all a Milestone
« Reply #62 on: May 22, 2012, 07:37:14 am »

After a well-known blogger has made copius side-by-side tests between the D800 and it's E cousin, one has to wonder why Nikon went to the trouble of building the E. The differences appear miniscule and with proper PP non-existent. Now that Leica is coming out with a camera body which has no AA filter and no Bayer array solely for bw, I wonder why didn't Nikon, if they really wanted to do something totally different for photography, do something similar. I feel the original statement of this thread, now that the hype has worn off, is entirely correct.

MarkL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 475
Re: Why the D800 is not at all a Milestone
« Reply #63 on: May 25, 2012, 06:55:38 am »

After a well-known blogger has made copius side-by-side tests between the D800 and it's E cousin, one has to wonder why Nikon went to the trouble of building the E. The differences appear miniscule and with proper PP non-existent.

Because it makes good business sense. Nikon have staid they wanted to challenge the medium format market and a lot of those guys would have dismissed the D800 outright if there was no AA filterless option or dismissed at unsharpened sample images. Few people pay for online subscription sites or do extensive testing like that, it's more about perception or attracting people to look in the first place.

Oddly it seem the people that may benefit most from the E version are people that shoot a lot at high iso rather than the landscape and studio guys.
Logged

dhale

  • Guest
Re: Why the D800 is not at all a Milestone
« Reply #64 on: July 02, 2012, 08:35:04 am »

I will disagree.  You, apparently, do not own a D800e or a D800.  When the sensor plus the auto-focus system, and the camera as a whole are considered, this is a revolutionary camera.

Name another camera that rendered all but the very best lenses useless.  Only the sharpest highest contrast lenses allow owners to realize the body's potential.  The list of DSLR bodies the can do that is very short.

I had been waiting since 2009, when I decided to replace my Nikon F3, for a camera that could achieve what I was getting from film like Kodachrome 25 or Fuji 50 in a DSLR.  Nikon has done that with these two bodies.  I opted for the D800e.
Logged
Pages: 1 2 3 [4]   Go Up