I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I'm thinking most of what you're seeing is a result of the new Expeed processor, and not a magical sensor breakthrough. Don't get me wrong, I'm still daydreaming of what the D400 will look like.
Who said anything about "magical sensors"? The EXPEED processor in any Nikon camera is programmer to work with the specific sensor being used. It's a whole package.
Flash? Yes. The little pop up flash.. Lens was the kit lens (18-105?) this is either the third or forth frame I shot with the camera after unboxing it and charging up the battery. Don't judge sharpness of lens from this photo as I still need to see if I need to micro adjust the AF setting for this individual lens on this individual body.
Since Imaging-Resource kindly has provided a new set of NEF's for the D7000, here's a direct comparison to the D5000 and the D700...
Method:
DCraw -h (means "half-size" - no interpolation was done, only colour correction)
-This removes the raw-converter from the equation, all the individual pixel values in the picture comes directly from the raw file. No software tampering after the camera saved the file.
D7000 downsampled to same-size (~12MP)
Crop to keep image size down a bit...
They're still pretty large, but I think most peoples' internet connections can stand the load... (2.7Megs of picture in the post)
-Note that the D7000 has a 1/3Ev handicap regarding sensor illumination, probably due to a different AE base setting in the camera (OR a slightly higher real ISO value!)
The D5000 is at least as good as the D90/D300s in static situations at higher ISO's, so you might consider the D5000 a "proxy" representing the level of the D90, D300 and D300s.
Noise in [blue] directly from the sensor is of the same magnitude as the compared cameras; the D7000 will scale in noise as light-temperature sinks in about the same way as the older cameras.
The newer Expeed fw versions seems to handle chroma noise a bit better though, so jpg's straight out of camera will benefit from this.
Judging just by these samples, I would say the D7000 is ~1/3 to 1/2 Ev better than the older crop cameras. It's good - but mind the exposures. Smaller pixels will clobber your neck if you expose too low... (electronic noise will then swamp the base photonic noise quicker than in a larger cell sensor).
So, as with all crop cameras (and small-pixel FF/FX cameras) - if you want to shoot high ISO, mind that you expose properly. Often that means overexposing according to the cameras metering - especially at very low light temperatures...
Those shots look quite different from the results I was getting. Not sure if its the exposure difference between the 2. But the D700 looks markedly better than the D7000 from that test.
vchowdhary wrote:
Those shots look quite different from the results I was getting. Not sure if its the exposure difference between the 2. But the D700 looks markedly better than the D7000 from that test.
It could partly be the difference in resolution, I doubt they've resized the D7000, just moved the camera to get the same FOV.
Also were seeing a lot of chroma noise, that would be cleaned up with SOOC jpgs or if you had the RAW converter use its default chroma NR. (which most have turned on by default).
vchowdhary wrote:
Those shots look quite different from the results I was getting. Not sure if its the exposure difference between the 2. But the D700 looks markedly better than the D7000 from that test.
Yes all the results from Thom Hogan to image resource are different from yours. I am not counting my results but they are too different from yours. Do some real life low light shots that really require high ISOs. Your results will correlate with others.
svenjosh wrote:
Yes all the results from Thom Hogan to image resource are different from yours. I am not counting my results but they are too different from yours. Do some real life low light shots that really require high ISOs. Your results will correlate with others.
Svenjosh
The problem with these 'real life shots' is that people are using a 16mp camera and comparing to a 12mp camera. If you take a D3x shot and compare it properly to a D700 the results are extremely similar, same principle. Braniac has had long threads arguing this exact thing on other forums here.
The best analogy I can make, which is flawed, is if you take a shot with a 35mm camera with an ISO 200 film and another shot with a 645 camera on ISO 400 film, the 35mm shot is going to look better when viewing the negatives with a loop. When you make actual prints though, the 645 will be better.
In an abstract way, that's how digital sensor resolution works. Expect of changing the negative size, we're changing the negatives resolving power which has a direct effect on the final output, but that effect is negated when viewing at 100%.
