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D3x ?

J

JackieS

Guest

Steen

Senior Subscriber Member
At the moment it I cannot see them, looks like they have been removed ... ?
 

etrigan63

Active member
Actually, the higher res you go the more hand shake becomes pronounced. This happens a bit with DMF, especially on the higher res backs. If this becomes an issue with this camera, Nikon is going to have to invest on shrinking VR technology to insert it into their pro lenses. Speed will not be enough. This is why Sony opted for in-camera shake reduction.
 

Steen

Senior Subscriber Member
They look fine to me, Jackie, I could easily do with that camera.
I believe some of the bottom bokeh in the first picture is hot air from the engine exhaust and I actually like the rendering.
But then again I'm such an ordinary human being, I could even do with the car :)
As for the lenses they seem to be the 4/500mm (1/500 sec at f/5.6 ISO 100) and the 2.8/24-70mm (1/200 sec at f/10 ISO 100) according to the Exif informations, definitely decent pro glass.
The picture in the second link you posted was obviously focused on a very close range, so I wouldn't expect it to be sharp in the background.
 
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J

JackieS

Guest
take a look at this

this is the sort of detail you should be getting from a large MP camera IMO

look at the headlight then look back at the headlight on the nikon image... not even in the same ballpark. This is wide open as well so softer than what would be normally possible.

http://www.jackals-forge.com/TMP/test__0026_prv.jpg


look at the bodywork on nikon images as well... noisy

and i get the hot air undernath the car, that is pretty obvious, I was talking about the bokeh in the background which is sharp, nasty and very grainy and broken up

removing teh AA filter from these cameras would help surely ? But also I suspect that beyond a certain MP some of this DLSR glass is way beyond its finite limitations
 

Steen

Senior Subscriber Member
Thank you for showing us these examples, Jackie. I do see what you mean, though I find it a bit difficult to directly compare images that are different with regards to subject design, light angles, distance to subject etc. etc. (e.g. the one headlight being partly in shadow and the other one being more directly exposed to the sun).
Still even these slightly different examples do leave impressions and that is definitely valuable. The more examples we see the better.
I'm looking forward to see some controlled comparison attempts hopefully also from members of this forum who regularly meet at workshops and other kinds of get-together meetings bringing along all kinds of gear.
 
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Lars

Active member
take a look at this
Meaningless comparison, I think. Not the same subject, not the same lens. The Saab is shot with a superwide lens (look at the distortion in of the face to the upper left) whereas the orange Mustang was shot with a tele. How does that make a difference? Well, first of all, DOF. Of course the entire headlight of the Saab is in focus whereas on the Mustang shot the DOF is razor-thin.

The background bokeh in the first Mustang shot is seriously distorted by hot air all around the car, not just below. The entire left side "vibrates". Why? This car is moving. If you look carefully at the left front wheel, you will notice two things: The wheel is rotating, and the plane of focus is somewhere on the wheel.

So you are comparing a parked car shot with a wideangle, in direct sunlight, with a moving car shot with a tele at dusk. Not a meaningful comparison.
 
J

JackieS

Guest
if its meaningless then don't compare then !!!

just look at the Nikon shots in isolation

yep, they still look blurred and muddy and certainly not befitting of a camer that costs 5.5k or more

at this stage, its looks like a case of blowing up a D3 image and you would be no worse off

more MP does not automatically mean more detail, more resolution , better images..

For me on the other hand, the comparison is meaningful. Ignoring pedantic absolutes (which internet forums seem so fond of), its pretty damm obvious that based on these samples, the Nikon couldn't even get remotely close to the sort of image quality we are seeing in the saab picture. Even a primate would come to that conclusion. Sorry, but its true.
 

Lars

Active member
Well, I went pixel-peeping. I took a close look at the bodywork and rims of the Mustang (D3x, 500/f at f/5.6), and.. they're clean. Very low on noise, lots of reflections of course but generally quite clean.

Same thing with the Saab image, which is from a Hasselblad H3DII-31 with a 35mm f/4 lens at f/4 ISO 100.

On both images, the JPEG compression seems to limit shadow detail. The Mustang image has much deeper shadows than the Saab image, but no conclusions can be drawn from that.

All in all, if you only want to look at technical image quality parameters, it's a pretty close match between these two images. The Hasselblad with its larger sensor and no AA filter has an edge when it comes to acuity, whereas it's not obvious which camera has the edge WRT noise and DR.
 
J

JackieS

Guest
the nikon images look terrible

Apart from AA filters and such, nikon will need to update their glass if they want to play ball in the world of high resolution. Mind you the same can be said of Canon.


If you can't see the noise in the bodywork or the awful noise in the bokeh then seriously, with the greatest respect, get your eyes tested or change monitor. Im using a Hewlett Packard 30" LCD at 2560x1600. I also have a second monitor whcih a calibrated Eizo colour edge. Its all right there to see... blurry details and all.
 

douglasf13

New member
David Kilpatrick has a D3x for testing with a 24-105 VR lens, and he is still having a tough time with shake compared to the A900. He doesn't have a formal test yet, but he has the same sigma len coming for both cameras for formal testing.
 

Lars

Active member
If you can't see the noise in the bodywork or the awful noise in the bokeh then seriously, with the greatest respect, get your eyes tested or change monitor. Im using a Hewlett Packard 30" LCD at 2560x1600. I also have a second monitor whcih a calibrated Eizo colour edge. Its all right there to see... blurry details and all.
Jackie,

And my setup is two 1920x1200 color-calibrated displays, one NEC and one Philips, but that's irrelevant. Of course I never trust my monitors or my eyes for technical analysis, there are better ways to look at noise levels. You dig in to the darker areas in the background of the Hasselblad shot, you find a similar noise structure. It's of course not exacly the same, but it is at a comparable level. Still that doesn't mean much as we don't know anything about postprocessing or jpeg compression, or what the production D3x will be like (that Mustang shot is over three months old).

Sure, you might not like the Nikon 500/4 (or the busy background bokeh of the Zeiss 35/4 for that matter - take a look at the highlights in the street sweeper truck in the background and you'll see those typical bright edges of specular highlights that generate an unnerving background rendering), but that's subjective. Yes Nikon needs to update its glass to match higher resolution and in some cases improve bokeh, like the 50/1.4D which is/was horrible in that sense.

To be honest though, once you sink your money into lenses and accessorires a Hasselblad setup is more than double the investment of a Nikon/Canon setup. Just because the resolution is in the same ballpark doesn't mean they should necessarily go head to head on all aspects. So when you say "this is the sort of detail you should be getting from a large MP camera IMO" are your expectations at all related to cost?

So why don't we wait with drawing conclusions like these until reviews and comparisons of actual production cameras are available.

Lars
 
J

JackieS

Guest
the price difference of the body only in the uk is 5500 versus 9200 so not quite as big a difference as you think !

also in the UK the DX3 is rumoured to increase in price in jan, almost as soon as its available because of the falling cost of the pound. That will narrow the gap even further. People like me are proof that if you have the budget for a DX3 then you will quite possibly be able to afford a digital medium format camera as well. A few jobs will pay for the difference in cost and when the time comes to move on or upgrade, the Hassleblad gear will hold its value way better than the Japanese stuff (who seem intent on upgrading their cameras every 12 months and brainwashing the whole world that they need this or that newfangled widget or gadget). In the long run the nik/canon route will probably cost you more. Put another way, I have 12k of leica kit here and if i sell it all tomorrow (which i might well do), I guarantee you I will show a healthy profit ! My noctilux alone is worth 3500 and I only paid 1700 for it :)


Anyway, my very first post wasn't a direct comparison to anything... just a statement that those images are very poor IMO and doubly worrying as they are officical nikon release files on the nikon website so their purpose is entirely to advertise and sell the DX3

forget the H3D for a second... at the very large price of this new camera, the Dx3 files need to prove themselves as way better than upscaled D3 files and given the blurry noisy test shots I don't see that happening at the moment

lets wait to see some more tests and samples though

personally I'm beginning to think that DSLR's hit a wall somewhere below 20mp and they will all need updated glass, 16 bit output etc.. if they are to actually improve by any real world measure

at the moment.. the japanese market just seems to be responding to consumer driven megapixel wars rather than actually truly evolving their cameras and their resultant images

gadget freaks and the aspiration and bragging rights of big numbers drives the market these days ... shame. Good photographers and good pictures doesn't come into it anymore.
 

Lars

Active member
the price difference of the body only in the uk is 5500 versus 9200 so not quite as big a difference as you think !
Prices differ a lot between countries of course, especially with the exchange rates going yoyo these days. The UK list price on D3x seems to be higher than in the rest of Europe. Today's pricing here in Stockholm is €11995 +VAT for an H3DII-31, vs €5343 + VAT for preordering a D3x. the Hasselblad "kit" lens 80/2.8 is about €1340, so taking that into account it's pretty close to 2x around here. But that's right now, Hasselblad has dropped its prices to a level that's just not sustainable, whereas Nikon's intro price is a high watermark. It's reasonable to expect to see D3x street prices 20-30% lower within the next year.

Looking closer at the pricing you quoted, I think the £9200 price on the H3D you quoted is before VAT, whereas the D3x is listed at £5500 including VAT.
 
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T

TimF

Guest
Looking closer at the pricing you quoted, I think the £9200 price on the H3D you quoted is before VAT, whereas the D3x is listed at £5500 including VAT.
For what its worth, Robert White's price on the H3D II-31 is £9750 + VAT (at 15%), which includes the 80mm lens for the time being.
 
J

JackieS

Guest
For what its worth, Robert White's price on the H3D II-31 is £9750 + VAT (at 15%), which includes the 80mm lens for the time being.

various discounts across the board.... been offered 9270+vat from various people
 
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