Did the Nikon D800 change the world?

[BJL]

But again, precisely what parts of professional photography are still dominated by MF?

You probably know more than I: are you saying that no significant area of professional photography has a real need for DMF? If so, as of when? Did some previous milestone 35mm DSLR end the need? And what is your comment on all the professional photographers who both use DMF and repeatedly argue its professional necessity over smaller formats? Is it just a (rather costly) preference for how the gear feels in the hand, viewfinder image size and such?

[Peter Le]

    I think the D800 changed Canons world big time.......actually Nikon in general changed Canons world. It is no longer easy for them to give us their normal trivial update......hopefully just enough  to get us to buy a new body. We will see what the 1DX sensor pans out to be. But I`m sure they will find a way....the 5DIII is a much better camera then it's brother......but when you come to the sensor they are still clinging to not giving us to much. I`m on the fence about changing......it is not a easy move. I have shot Canon all my life and coreer....and I`m not young by any means. If I make the move it will be long term......I don't flip back and forth like some. Many of my colleges are in the same thought pattern at the moment also. If we do change we will take a monitory beating on glass for sure and Nikon does not make some of my favorite glass ether. And when I get pissed about the money I lost or the lens I don't have it won't be at Nikon....it is not their fault Canon is being inept. If Canon would come out of their ridiculous secrecy and let us know what they are planning and when may be it would buy some time....but I don't think there is a fat change at that. If I or any of my colleges change we won't be back......and I think there are a lot more photographers out there in this boat then a lot of you here understand. I don't see how a Company like Canon is taking this gamble..........although I didn't think the banks would take the stupid gambles they did and are still taking ether....Now before I get flamed about it is not all  about MP......I know I know....I am more concerned about DR at low ISOs where I am always at and there are many many photographers out there that are thinking of changing because of low IOS DR then for 36 MPs........Sorry just my rant.....it has bin building for oh about 4 years now.....

[luxborealis]

As I've said elsewhere, the vast majority of photographers earning their living in the industry are using <22MP cameras.

+1 - Excellent point! Touché!

[BJL]

Yes. MFD is invariably a choice, not a need.

OK, you are in a better position to judge than me. I will just have to keep wondering why a significant number of professional photographers continue choose to use far bulkier, more expensive DMF gear that requires more lighting support and has far worse low light performance limitations, if not for professionally benefits such as image quality advantages. Or perhaps you are using "need" in a very strict sense like "would die otherwise".

[BernardLanguillier]

I will just have to keep wondering why a significant number of professional photographers continue choose to use far bulkier, more expensive DMF gear that requires more lighting support and has far worse low light performance limitations, if not for professionally benefits such as image quality advantages.

What data are you relying on when you write "significant number"?

Cheers,
Bernard

[BJL]

To KLaban:
    My main questions and comments are simply about the extent that professionals do or do not in fact use DMF equipment rather than using a smaller format like 36x24mm. So my apologies for following the red herring about "need", which is neither particularly relevant to my point nor within my expertise. So let me focus my curiosity on the patterns of equipment choices that are actually, currently being made in various areas of professional photography.

To KLaban and Bernard:
Although my impression is that there is still a significant amount of professional usage of DMF cameras (i.e., the DMF market is not so dominated by wealthy amateurs), that is mostly anecdotal, not based on hard data. My "equipment egalitarianism and progressivism" certainly makes me hope that the actual need for such bulky and expensive gear has been reduced to a very low level by recent technological progress. I am comforted for example that a chunk of professional work can be (and occasionally is) done even with teeny tiny 4/3” format, even though that removes any gear-based excuse for my less than professional quality results.

But as one datum on actual current levels of professional DMF usage: one of the forum members who deals with DMF equipment recently indicated that rentals are a very large proportion of their DMF business, and since I doubt that many amateurs rent DMF gear, that suggests to me that there is still "significant" professional usage of DMF.

Maybe insiders like Doug or Steve or Yaya or Thierry or Stefan could add some facts here!

[ndevlin]

But again, precisely what parts of professional photography are still dominated by MF?

Fashion and celebrity portraiture.  'nuff said.

[BJL]

Perhaps you should consider channelling the time you spend here obsessing about cameras into making images?

Perhaps you could spend some of the time you spend responding here by channelling your expertise and experience with MF and professional photography into answers to honest questions about what is actually going on in professional photography? (Or better yet, simply ignore forum posts and questions that do not interest you!) I do not see why it would bother you that I am curious about trends amongst professional photographers and their equipment choices. What happens there can effect the direction of equipment options and choices for the rest of us enthusiast amateurs in a few years' time.

By the way, I have no reason to disagree with your apparent assessment that higher resolutions (>22MP) are little needed for most professional photography. But strangely, some categories of amateurs seem to desire far higher resolution than a lot of professional photography. (How much of that desire is rational or a real "need" is a separate question.)

[Petrus]

What data are you relying on when you write "significant number"?

Cheers,
Bernard

I work for a magazine publishing company with 18 in-house photographers doing both photojournalism and studio photography. After 1Ds and 5DII (and later D3x) came out nobody has used MF cameras and backs anymore. Now we are moving to D800 for those who want them. Not much industrial or architecture, but I still think this shows the trend. After all, even the first EOS-1D in 2002 with 4.7 Mpix images looked better than most 35mm Provia, even full spread...

[BJL]

Are you quite sure? Are you sure you haven't got that arse about face?

I agree that it is also quite common these days for technological innovations to arrive from the bottom up; that is why I said "can effect", not "does effect". For example, decisions by Canon and Nikon about what technology to offer in 35mm format gear interacts with what is offered in APS-C formats from the same makers.

Oh but the weather is getting better, and it is past time to go outside!

[Ray]

I just did an exercise comparing the DXOMark D800 results with a few MFDBs of similar pixel count. I think the closest in pixel count would be MFDBs such as the P645D, P40+ and P45+.

Those are all around 40mp, but if cropped to the 3:2 aspect ratio of the D800, the pixel count should be almost identical and therefore the resolution from all sensors compared should be the same, excluding any significant differences in lens quality, especially if we use the D800E.

I have to admit I was a bit surprised. I expected at least one or more of these DBs to have some qualitative advantage over the D800 in at least one or more parmeter, such as SNR at 18% for example. In fact, on all the graphs the D800 was either the equal, marginally better, or in the case of DR, significantly better.

There was just one instance of the P40+ having an insignificant 1dB better SNR at its less sensitive base ISO of 46. Needles to say, the D800 DR is way better, ranging between 1.3 and 2.5 stops better than all 3 DBs, depending on ISO.

The P40+ is a 2009 camera and the 645D, 2010. That we can get this level of performance from a $3,000 DSLR just 2 or 3 years after these very expensive MFDBs were announced, is very remarkable.

[douglasf13]

I just did an exercise comparing the DXOMark D800 results with a few MFDBs of similar pixel count. I think the closest in pixel count would be MFDBs such as the P645D, P40+ and P45+.

Those are all around 40mp, but if cropped to the 3:2 aspect ratio of the D800, the pixel count should be almost identical and therefore the resolution from all sensors compared should be the same, excluding any significant differences in lens quality, especially if we use the D800E.

I have to admit I was a bit surprised. I expected at least one or more of these DBs to have some qualitative advantage over the D800 in at least one or more parmeter, such as SNR at 18% for example. In fact, on all the graphs the D800 was either the equal, marginally better, or in the case of DR, significantly better.

There was just one instance of the P40+ having an insignificant 1dB better SNR at its less sensitive base ISO of 46. Needles to say, the D800 DR is way better, ranging between 1.3 and 2.5 stops better than all 3 DBs, depending on ISO.

The P40+ is a 2009 camera and the 645D, 2010. That we can get this level of performance from a $3,000 DSLR just 2 or 3 years after these very expensive MFDBs were announced, is very remarkable.

  In those terms, even some of the better aps-c cameras out there are remarkable, at this point.  In DxO's tests, the K-5 and NEX-7's DR tests higher than the 645D, and it isn't all that far off in most of the other categories.

[BJL]

I have to admit I was a bit surprised. I expected at least one or more of these DBs to have some qualitative advantage over the D800 in at least one or more parmeter, such as SNR at 18% for example. In fact, on all the graphs the D800 was either the equal, marginally better, or in the case of DR, significantly better.

Ray,
   you should be surprised, because the DXO numbers seem to violate some basic physics in the realm near base ISO sensitivity, where noise at 18% is dominated by photon shot noise. The explanation is something that I mentioned in another recent post, and tried to explain to you a while ago: this is one case where the misguided DXO calibration of sensitivity is completely unjustified, and effectively pushes the SNR 18% curves of the DMF back about two stop left of where they should be.

What is happening there is that some DMF backs with 16-bit ADC output use that extra latitude to allow more of a safety margin in the highlights by positioning the mid-tones at an ADC output level that is further down from the (four times higher) maximum numerical level, which can be done while still keeping all the numerical level high enough that discretization noise does not harm to signal because it is still well below the noise of the analog signal: indeed, the absolute numerical levels need be no lower. DXO then declares that the "true" ISO speed is based on the placement of mid-tones in the raw file relative to maximum raw level, which is neither specified by any of the ISO12232 definitions of sensitivity nor relevant to comparisons of noise levels with equal lighting conditions and equal exposure level.

As a simplified illustration of the problem imagine a DSLR and a DMF tested with equal exposure index setting, equal f-stop and equal shutter speed with equal lighting on the test subject, and both producing an output level of 2000 for the 18% gray card mid-tones ... the catch being that for the DSLR with 14-bit output, this is level 2000 out of 16,384 whereas for the DMF back with 16-bit output, it is level 2000 out of 65,536, so that the placement relative to maximum level is 1/4 as much, so two stops lower. As a result the "DXO ISO speed" of the DMF back is two stops lower than for the DLSR: that is absurd! (And no, it cannot be explained by the need to correct for the discrepancy between t-stops and f-stops on the prime lenses that DXO uses for testing!)

But the good news is that, as you said a while ago, the ISO sensitivity values given by the cameras are also available with mouse-overs, so you can read them, adjust the curves horizontally and get a more accurate comparison. The offset is about 1 1/2 to 2 stops. When I read the graphs that way, the DMF backs do have roughly the expected advantage in 18% noise level when rescaled for pixel count in the "print" values.

[Doug Peterson]

I just did an exercise comparing the DXOMark D800 results with a few MFDBs of similar pixel count. I think the closest in pixel count would be MFDBs such as the P645D, P40+ and P45+.

Those are all around 40mp, but if cropped to the 3:2 aspect ratio of the D800, the pixel count should be almost identical and therefore the resolution from all sensors compared should be the same, excluding any significant differences in lens quality, especially if we use the D800E.

I have to admit I was a bit surprised. I expected at least one or more of these DBs to have some qualitative advantage over the D800 in at least one or more parmeter, such as SNR at 18% for example. In fact, on all the graphs the D800 was either the equal, marginally better, or in the case of DR, significantly better.

There was just one instance of the P40+ having an insignificant 1dB better SNR at its less sensitive base ISO of 46. Needles to say, the D800 DR is way better, ranging between 1.3 and 2.5 stops better than all 3 DBs, depending on ISO.

The P40+ is a 2009 camera and the 645D, 2010. That we can get this level of performance from a $3,000 DSLR just 2 or 3 years after these very expensive MFDBs were announced, is very remarkable.

I misread this post, initially I read:
"I just did an exercise comparing D800 results with a few MFDBs of similar pixel count."

I was understandably glued to my seat and, frankly, shocked at your statements. But having followed your posts for a long time I take them seriously.

Then I caught my misread that you didn't actually compare real-world photographic results, you compared dXo graphs. This is of far less interest to me.

[Ray]

  In those terms, even some of the better aps-c cameras out there are remarkable, at this point.  In DxO's tests, the K-5 and NEX-7's DR tests higher than the 645D, and it isn't all that far off in most of the other categories.

True! But in those cases the MFDB sometimes has an SNR at 18% advantage, which translates to smoother midtones and smoother skin tones. Also the higher resolution of 40MB and the greater sense of 3-dimensionality, or 'je ne sai quoi', as a result of the lack of an AA filter, can make a noticeable difference, when compared with 16mp sensors.

What surprises me in these comparisons I made is that those three 40mp DBs would appear to have zilch performance advantage in any respect whatsoever, not even in resolution, color sensitivity nor tonal range, and presumably when compared with the D800E, not even with regard to that mystical 3-dimensionality. They've become dinosaurs.

[Ray]

I misread this post, initially I read:
"I just did an exercise comparing D800 results with a few MFDBs of similar pixel count."

I was understandably glued to my seat and, frankly, shocked at your statements. But having followed your posts for a long time I take them seriously.

Then I caught my misread that you didn't actually compare real-world photographic results, you compared dXo graphs. This is of far less interest to me.

     . I would also be glued to my seat if you were to show me real-world comparisons between, say, the P45+ and the D800E. Unfortunately, my experience in the past has been, on this forum, when such comparisons are made between MFDB and 35mm, by MFDB afficionados, I usually sense some sort of strong bias going on. The DoFs may be different, or the focal lengths used are not quite equivalent, or the focussing is slightly different in both shots, or the exposures are not equal in terms of ETTR, and so on. Sometimes even, the scenes compared are different.

Whenever I compare the performance of my own cameras, which vary in sensor size and image quality to perhaps an even greater extent than a modern FF 35mm compared with some DBs, I'm always extremely careful about possible bias. I bracket exposure in 1/3rd stop intervals from obvious overexposure to obvious underexposure, to ensure that I end up comparing equally exposed shots. I use either LiveView for critical focussing, or select a target with a pattern that will produce aliasing in the viewfinder, indicating 'spot on' focussing.

Whenever I perform such comparisons, I find my results almost exactly match DXOMark's. Not actually exactly of course. One always has to allow for a small margin of error, which may be due to the methodology or may be due to manufacturing QC variations in the cameras tested. Any variation of less than 1/3rd of a stop in DR or SNR would fall into that category.

I look forward to your comparisons, Doug. 

[Ray]

Ray,
   you should be surprised, because the DXO numbers seem to violate some basic physics in the realm near base ISO sensitivity, where noise at 18% is dominated by photon shot noise. The explanation is something that I mentioned in another recent post, and tried to explain to you a while ago: this is one case where the misguided DXO calibration of sensitivity is completely unjustified, and effectively pushes the SNR 18% curves of the DMF back about two stop left of where they should be.

What is happening there is that some DMF backs with 16-bit ADC output use that extra latitude to allow more of a safety margin in the highlights by positioning the mid-tones at an ADC output level that is further down from the (four times higher) maximum numerical level, which can be done while still keeping all the numerical level high enough that discretization noise does not harm to signal because it is still well below the noise of the analog signal: indeed, the absolute numerical levels need be no lower. DXO then declares that the "true" ISO speed is based on the placement of mid-tones in the raw file relative to maximum raw level, which is neither specified by any of the ISO12232 definitions of sensitivity nor relevant to comparisons of noise levels with equal lighting conditions and equal exposure level.

As a simplified illustration of the problem imagine a DSLR and a DMF tested with equal exposure index setting, equal f-stop and equal shutter speed with equal lighting on the test subject, and both producing an output level of 2000 for the 18% gray card mid-tones ... the catch being that for the DSLR with 14-bit output, this is level 2000 out of 16,384 whereas for the DMF back with 16-bit output, it is level 2000 out of 65,536, so that the placement relative to maximum level is 1/4 as much, so two stops lower. As a result the "DXO ISO speed" of the DMF back is two stops lower than for the DLSR: that is absurd! (And no, it cannot be explained by the need to correct for the discrepancy between t-stops and f-stops on the prime lenses that DXO uses for testing!)

But the good news is that, as you said a while ago, the ISO sensitivity values given by the cameras are also available with mouse-overs, so you can read them, adjust the curves horizontally and get a more accurate comparison. The offset is about 1 1/2 to 2 stops. When I read the graphs that way, the DMF backs do have roughly the expected advantage in 18% noise level when rescaled for pixel count in the "print" values.

Can't make head nor tail of your post, BJL. You seem to be stuck in some antiquated methodology relating to the film era.

I mentioned in some other thread my experiments in shot noise which would be relevant to your claim that noise at 18% grey is dominated by shot noise.

It so happens that the Canon 50D has an unusual characteristic. The camera appears to produce the same image quality at ISO 100 as it does at ISO 200. DXO don't even mention test results at ISO 100 for this camera, yet ISO 100 does require double the exposure of ISO 200.

What's the effect of that extra light, one might wonder. My tests indicate that it doesn't improve DR by any significant degree, nor does it improve noise in the midtones by any significant degree.

To demonstrate my point I attach 200% crops of highlights and midtones, plus a 600% crop of midtones and lower midtones. Judge for yourself. Theory is fine. Practice nails the issue.