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Archive 2012 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?

  
 
JaKo
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p.7 #1 · p.7 #1 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


Michael, considering your shooting style, subjects, current lens and cameras selection (save for Rokkor, but I will address it soon) I think you shouldn’t have any reason to really look for more or new photographic gear.

D700 is fully capable of serving you as a great tool for taking more fabulous images. You occasionally shoot land/city scaping, but not often at f/8 + tripod/filters setup so the D700 should do just fine for hand held shots at least for another year, which BTW may bring answers to Sony NEX FF expectations. Speaking of Sony NEX/RX? FF, consider that it may be difficult to switch from bright OVF to an electronic one, at least when it comes to fast composing and framing (I hope I prove myself wrong on this as I do plan to add Sony FF to my bag).

Now for the lenses. Well, again Rokkor MC 58/1.2 aside, Zeiss ZF , Leica-R and Contax lineup available for Leitax conversion should provide enough top glass coverage already and if not, Nikkor AI/AI-s can complement the set.
As for the fast Rokkor there are few options. 1/ I am sure you got PM from one of FM members as well 2/ Keep it for now but use Nikkor 50/1.2 or Nikkor 58/1.2 (no need to respond to the later suggestion)
3/ Wait for the supper NEX FF to mount Rokkor on it.

So, my suggestion is to stick to what you have right now, at least for another year. Enjoy bright OVF on your FF cameras, shoot film more often, enjoy your great collection of lenses as I doubt there is anything better and available that you lack to take more interesting pictures.



Oct 04, 2013 at 06:44 PM
zhangyue
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p.7 #2 · p.7 #2 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


Thanks for nice word, Jack

I fully understand Philip, Dauglas's position....

By no means I want persuade anybody to follow my decision. But evaluate your need than chasing Technology is the advice I want to give.

I know what I want in terms of tool. I know the priority of my wish list.

By using more and more 'advanced' tool show up later, I don't feel any of them really necessary to bring satisfied photo.

I feel since 5Dc, the sensor tech is not really a bottle neck of "quality" of digital photo most of time. Even landscape, not rare I see a breathtaking well composed, good lighting 5D landscape outperform technical perfect D800E images. The same apply with the lens....

I am not talking about 1500mm 20fps ISO12500 photo, that is the area technology bring us

Just like whatever they say digital sound has improved every year blar blar blar, maybe since later 90s, the DAC improvement is moot point already...

As for sensor density march, I might buy D800 but personal don't feel it is a must, (well I might want it if I went to some exotic place and with hope someday I will print my wall with one of my work)

One thing I see, OMD and Fuji stopped at 16M already, Sony might stopped at 24M for APS-C and FF might stopped to 40+-M.

Photography is a vision, concept and good memory to me, I don't need 36M to give me that pleasure. but your need may vary.....



Oct 04, 2013 at 07:49 PM
AhamB
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p.7 #3 · p.7 #3 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


zhangyue wrote:
I feel since 5Dc, the sensor tech is not really a bottle neck of "quality" of digital photo most of time. Even landscape, not rare I see a breathtaking well composed, good lighting 5D landscape outperform technical perfect D800E images.


It's just when you want to preserve highlights and lift the shadows that you run into the limit of the 5D's DR quite easily. It happens a bit more often that I would like, but otherwise I'm happy with the 5D's IQ.



Oct 04, 2013 at 08:10 PM
douglasf13
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p.7 #4 · p.7 #4 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


zhangyue wrote:
Thanks for nice word, Jack

I fully understand Philip, Dauglas's position....

By no means I want persuade anybody to follow my decision. But evaluate your need than chasing Technology is the advice I want to give.

I know what I want in terms of tool. I know the priority of my wish list.

By using more and more 'advanced' tool show up later, I don't feel any of them really necessary to bring satisfied photo.

I feel since 5Dc, the sensor tech is not really a bottle neck of "quality" of digital photo most of time. Even landscape, not rare I see
...Show more

I'm certainly not saying that one needs to be on the constant upgrade cycle that we have now. I was simply responding to your comment of "Give me a good color, good DR 12-18M latest sensor D700, I am done with DSLR rest of my life (Actually D700 is close to that already)"

I can understand if one sticks with what they have, but you're talking about buying a new FF camera with a low megapixel count, and that is what doesn't make sense to me. One may not always reap the IQ advantages of more megapixels, but it doesn't hurt.

p.s. Fuji buys their sensors from Sony, so cost and availability is likely why they've stuck with 16mp, for now, but I'm sure that'll change. The OMD's pixel size is already smaller than the NEX-7's, and both equate to a FF sensor at 56mp+. Throughput for high fps sports cameras and storage space is really the only reason to keep megapixels low, and I'm sure we'll see 50mp+ in the next few years.




Oct 04, 2013 at 08:22 PM
zhangyue
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p.7 #5 · p.7 #5 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


douglasf13 wrote:
I'm certainly not saying that one needs to be on the constant upgrade cycle that we have now. I was simply responding to your comment of "Give me a good color, good DR 12-18M latest sensor D700, I am done with DSLR rest of my life (Actually D700 is close to that already)"

I can understand if one sticks with what they have, but you're talking about buying a new FF camera with a low megapixel count, and that is what doesn't make sense to me. One may not always reap the IQ advantages of more megapixels, but it
...Show more

Put it this way, if Nikon bring out a D700S with 16M full frame with no nonsense feature along with D900 56M, I will buy D700S.

Make no sense or not to buy that is arguable as individual need is night and day different. If there is no need for high pixel for individual, why they need add it to chase theoretic advanced tech with lots of additional burden? I fail to understand this logic.

There is no right or wrong about individual's choice, just give the choice, let customer to choose.




Oct 04, 2013 at 08:38 PM
douglasf13
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p.7 #6 · p.7 #6 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


zhangyue wrote:
Put it this way, if Nikon bring out a D700S with 16M full frame with no nonsense feature along with D900 56M, I will buy D700S.

Make no sense or not to buy that is arguable as individual need is night and day different. If there is no need for high pixel for individual, why they need add it to chase theoretic advanced tech with lots of additional burden? I fail to understand this logic.

There is no right or wrong about individual's choice, just give the choice, let customer to choose.



Nikon isn't going to let the customer choose, because making a 16mp D700s doesn't make sense, which is my point. Even downsampling a 36mp to 16mp yields a better image than a native 16mp sensor, so there's no reason to go backwards, in terms of IQ, unless they need to make a very high fps, sport shooting camera like the D4. If Nikon was going to make a lower megapixel, FF camera, the D600 would have been their chance.



Oct 04, 2013 at 09:06 PM
Jorgen Udvang
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p.7 #7 · p.7 #7 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


douglasf13 wrote:
If Nikon was going to make a lower megapixel, FF camera, the D600 would have been their chance.


The D600 is an amateur camera, the D700 a professional tool. Big difference. I know photographers who prefer the D700 to the D800 because the latter fills up the hard disks much faster (42 vs 14MB RAW files) and requires a much faster computer to handle the files. The 16MP D4 is the sweet spot, but it's expensive.

As for the reasons why Fuji and m4/3 use 16MP sensor, I think it's about more than pixel density and what suppliers can offer. Very few photographers need more than 16MP, and by staying at that level, the need for internal processing power in-camera is kept within limits while at the same time making high frame rates, fast internal processing etc. possible. While I agree that we will probably see 35mm sensors with 50+ MP sensors soon, the market is rather limited and the real advantage vs. a D800 approaches zero. The difference between 36 and 50MP is roughly the same as between 12 and 16MP, around 15% linear increase in size, I believe.



Oct 04, 2013 at 10:00 PM
douglasf13
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p.7 #8 · p.7 #8 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


Jorgen Udvang wrote:
The D600 is an amateur camera, the D700 a professional tool. Big difference. I know photographers who prefer the D700 to the D800 because the latter fills up the hard disks much faster (42 vs 14MB RAW files) and requires a much faster computer to handle the files. The 16MP D4 is the sweet spot, but it's expensive.

As for the reasons why Fuji and m4/3 use 16MP sensor, I think it's about more than pixel density and what suppliers can offer. Very few photographers need more than 16MP, and by staying at that level, the need for internal processing
...Show more

We're saying the same thing. The only reason to prefer lower megapixels is data throughput speed and hard drive space. If Nikon were going to bring a lower megapixel FF camera, why not bring it in the amateur D600?

I agree that 50+mp will be a marginal improvement over 32mp, but it's just the next step. It would certainly be an improvement over 16mp.



Oct 04, 2013 at 10:32 PM
sebboh
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p.7 #9 · p.7 #9 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


zhangyue wrote:
After wet my feet in Canon, I can safely answer my question now. The best Camera for Manual focus is Nikon D700. I don't realize I use their focus confirmation more than I thought. Especially at Night, I can't judge focus by eyes clearly, the focus confirmation given good enough result for 'mood' shot. 90% of time, absolutely accurate focus is not required for ultra low light.

The reason choose D700 over D800 is pixel density. 36M is overkill if not landscape or studio....12M is enough for 18X24, how often I print bigger than that? I feel shamed even ask myself.
...Show more

sounds like your good then, and you don't need another camera till the d700 breaks or becomes incompatible with modern computers. too bad there's no ZF option with focus rings that turn the correct way, but it seems like you've been very happy with the leica Rs instead.

i mostly agree with you about the lack of need for more megapixels, i wouldn't buy a new camera if all it offers is more megapixels. in my direct comparisons more mp do make even smallish images look better, but the difference is smaller and smaller as we keep increasing. sadly, i'm still looking for a camera i'm happy enough with that ergonomic improvements couldn't motivate me to buy a new camera. hopefully one of the FF NEXs will be a final solution for me, but i suspect the cameras will have something that really bugs me (as most digital cameras do).

oh, is the m9 shutter lag really that bad?




Oct 04, 2013 at 10:36 PM
zhangyue
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p.7 #10 · p.7 #10 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


Douglas, I can understand your point, why is so difficult to understand mine?

Of course I know the advantage of oversampling because of my job background, but for someone no need for dealing with tens of Meg pixel everyday even for my Family diary type of shots, what exact 36M downsampled file advantage to my D700's ISO200 shot? There is simply no noise in D700's file at ISO200, period. What this 1/sq(1.7) noise performance improvement give me?

If I have to zoom 50% and edit that way 98% of my images, then why I can't have a Camera with 16M clean pixel at first place? Why I need pay for all those grand total 50M at all? dealing with slow down everything, backup tons of images, for me might be OK, how about professional shooting 3000 images a day....?

Why can't they bring a D800S with 16-20M pixel, price it at $2500 and just sell it like hot cake? (well, maybe, I don't know.) There is high percentage of Nikon fans forced to pay more than they need for pixel...(as pixel count increase, yield exponentially decrease, price up)

They are going down hill in terms of build. Nikon D700 is like Digital F6 and you could live with it forever... (though I dream D700s/D800s...)

Derek, I agree with you, as a tool, there are many more important factor than pixel... and The reason I love D700 so much is exact that, especially after use some recent introduced FF DSLR.

As for M9, it is hard to qualify 'that' bad, but you never know what exact time shutter happened after you push it.....Not everyone have the same feeling, but for me, It is an issue, not big, not small, but it is there.



Oct 04, 2013 at 11:11 PM
douglasf13
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p.7 #11 · p.7 #11 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


zhangyue wrote:
Douglas, I can understand your point, why is so difficult to understand mine?

Of course I know the advantage of oversampling because of my job background, but for someone no need for dealing with tens of Meg pixel everyday even for my Family diary type of shots, what exact 36M downsampled file advantage to my D700's ISO200 shot? There is simply no noise in D700's file at ISO200, period. What this 1/sq(1.7) noise performance improvement give me?

If I have to zoom 50% and edit that way 98% of my images, then why I can't have a Camera with 16M
...Show more

I understand your point, and I totally understand why you and others would stick with the current D700. I'm just saying that we're at a point where image quality is so good that increasing resolution for larger and larger prints is the only direction for Nikon to go and still sell new cameras. Are there really a lot of D700 owners who haven't already purchased the D800 or D600 that would be willing to spend $2500 on a 16mp D700s?

Maybe Nikon should go for some kind of raw binning or something, instead?



Oct 04, 2013 at 11:27 PM
philip_pj
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p.7 #12 · p.7 #12 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


It is best to be responsive to your needs, of course, rather than succumb to the GAS treadmill. When I start seeing a slowdown in the large jumps in IQ for my output it's time to do like you are, zhangyue, so I envy you.

Alas for me, I see the latest FF sensors powering ahead regardless of Mps. Tonal gradation, colour handling, low ISO DR and greater sublety so they let the lenses show their worth more fully. You can keep shooting in very high DR scenes with confidence. Perhaps some of the advantages are seen only after some usage though.

There is the matter of cropping for when an image stubbornly refuses to be captured to your vision in 3:2 aspect ratio. 12Mp can turn into 8-9Mp that way. High Mp cameras are more flexible in other ways, such as giving good file sizes with APS-C lenses in crop mode.

Modern PCs probably work faster/easier with high Mp files today than their 2008 predecessors did with the then new D700's 12Mp output.

Back then it was a DSLR world, almost exclusively. The D700 is 35% heavier than my DSLR, so it should have good build quality. It might just have the lowest megapixel to gram ratio of all quite recent cameras.



Oct 05, 2013 at 12:18 AM
0jjcpa123
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p.7 #13 · p.7 #13 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


I am using Leitaxed C/Y on S5PRO and considering a FF frame Nikon body. Can anybody confirm that D700 is better than D610/D600 for MF only lenses (focus confirmation, OVF, etc)? Please do not compare video, build quality, Megapixel, and other features. For them I know D610/D600 is better. Thanks, JJ


Oct 08, 2013 at 01:34 PM
f.hayek
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p.7 #14 · p.7 #14 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


It's not so much as "better" but the focusing screen on the D700 can be switched out for one better suited for MF, such as one with a split circle. Katz Eye makes a very good one, quite bright. AFAIK, none are available for the D800 or D600. Or D4, for that matter.


Oct 08, 2013 at 02:30 PM
zhangyue
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p.7 #15 · p.7 #15 · Which DSLR for manual focus, Why?


0jjcpa123 wrote:
I am using Leitaxed C/Y on S5PRO and considering a FF frame Nikon body. Can anybody confirm that D700 is better than D610/D600 for MF only lenses (focus confirmation, OVF, etc)? Please do not compare video, build quality, Megapixel, and other features. For them I know D610/D600 is better. Thanks, JJ

I have used D800E and D700, they perform about the same in terms of focus confirmation. But at the time I had D800E, I don't have type S screen.
I guess D600 will be about the same as D700 in terms of focus confirmation, but really not sure as I remember my D300s definitely have poorer focus confirmation performance than D700. You need find this out yourself or maybe post the question in Nikon Manual thread or Nikon Sub-forum.

as for screen, try this:

http://www.focusingscreen.com/index.php?cPath=22_137

They have focus screen for all Nikon other than D3 series.



Oct 08, 2013 at 03:35 PM
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