D700 in 2014

<blockquote>

<p>The D5300 has a way higher spec than the D7100.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The D5300 has the new EXPEED 4 chip, and in these days video specs are improving rapidly. So while the D5300 has higher video specs, for still capture, the D7100 is still superior with a better AF module and faster frame rates.</p>

<p>Now that UHS-2 (ultra high speed) SD cards are available, at a very high cost, of course, I would expect the next generations of DSLRs that use SD to be UHS-2 compatible. In that case, the entire issue of the D7100's buffer size is gone because you can write straight onto the memory card at 8, 9 fps with 24MP images. Whether the rest of the camera's electronics can keep up or not is a separate issue.<br /><a href="http://www.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/sd/extremepro-sdxc-sdhc-uhs-ii/">http://www.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/sd/extremepro-sdxc-sdhc-uhs-ii/</a></p>

<p>In fact, those UHS-2 SD cards are now faster than XQD. It makes you wonder whether the D5 will continue to use XQD or not.</p>

<p>And since we are talking about the D700 here, it is not compatible with the latest CF technology, let alone XQD and UHS-2 SD. Its memory write speed is painfully slow in today's standards.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>* I guess the D3S and D4 are 'current' models, rather than new models.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Since the D4S is now available, the D4 is officially discontinued according to Nikon Japan's web site of discontinued products. So are all flavors of the D3 family: <a href="http://www.nikon-image.com/products/discontinue/camera/#h301">http://www.nikon-image.com/products/discontinue/camera/#h301</a></p>

<blockquote>

<p>FPS is much less important than getting the <em>one shot</em> that captures the moment.<br>

</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That may apply to some users....for what I do, there is no '<em>one-shot moment</em>' <br>

<br>

I sell singles AND sequences and like to give my clients the choice of 3 or 4 frames as they (and horse) sale serenely over the fence. A horse travels a long way between frames even at 8fps....I very rarely take more than 20 frames on continuous. However, if a horse and rider part company I might well sell all 20. <br>

</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The D5300 has a way higher spec than the D7100.<br /><br>

</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I kinda put GPS, WiFi as better spec, and better ISO but, not by much.<br>

<br>

Shun, yup, I agree with that, but at http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/index.htm it's not!</p>

<p>Confused Corporate Messages!</p>

 

<p>I judge the high iso abilities of a camera not by the micro differences in 100% crops but by the highest iso level that still creates acceptable results for me. I have mainly owned 4 DSLRs and I judge them this way:<br>

D200 > iso800 D300 > iso3200 D700 > iso6400 D800 >iso6400<br>

I bring this up for two reasons. One is to say to you Andrew, you may be able to see differences in iso6400 photos between the D700 and D800 but for me those differences are not great enough to shoot the D800 at anything greater and therefore I find no practical difference. The second reason I bring this up is that I find over and over again that dim indoor lighting requires F2.8 1/60 iso6400. If you are unwilling to shoot at iso6400 you have to make a compromise in one of the other parameters. This is why I personally find a huge practical difference between the D300 and the D700, it gets you over that hurtle.</p>

 

<p>Shortly after I got my D800, I happened to be doing some shooting in woods at night. I was at, at least, ISO 6400, and the D800's image blew me away. There's a significant jump over the D700 at the image level - not so much if you're expecting to get 36 useful MP out of it. I shoot my D800 at minimum ISO much more than I did with my D700, because I want the dynamic range - something you don't get with a D700 no matter the ISO.<br />

<br />

I do agree that ISO 6400 is surprisingly needed. I have that set to my maximum for auto-ISO on both the D700 and D800, but I generally rely on having higher demands at the image level from the D800. Though I've seen the "blue glow" a few times recently from trying to get fur detail out of a black cat shot in a dim room. I'd like to think a D3s/D4/D4s would have done a bit better, but not much; given the reduced resolution, I'd really consider ISO 25600 to be the D4s's upper limit except in emergencies, and that's definitely enough to play with.<br />

<br />

I can certainly believe that 6400 is the critical number, though. Indoors, I tend to be between ISO 2500 and 6400 most of the time, depending on what I point at. In fact, you may just have persuaded me definitively that I should stop thinking about an original X100. :-)</p>

<p>I'm happy to have just saved you money Andrew ; o )</p>

<p>I find some restaurants I visit to be very dark, far dimmer than my living room, for example. If I capture an image of two children sitting next to each other, they are not necessarily on the same plane, and I need some depth of field to make them both sharp. Suddenly we are talking about f4 and perhaps preferably f5.6. In those occasions I can easily use something beyond ISO 6400.</p>

<p>Worse yet, when I shoot night sports or indoor sports, I want to use 1/1000 sec or perhaps even faster to freeze the action, and my lenses are limited to f2.8, e.g. the 70-200mm/f2.8 or a 300mm/f2.8, again, having ISO 12800 and 25600 would be very helpful.</p>

<p>The problem is that we are now spoiled. The D3 and D700 provided us great high-ISO results as of a few years ago, but we (at least some of us) want to push the envelop even further.</p>

<p>Phil - not so much. It may mean I'm committed to an X100s... :-)<br />

<br />

Shun: Agreed. I spend enough time in dimly-lit pubs that, even with fast lenses, I struggle. So I can certainly use more, but I do agree that for a lot of indoor situations, 3200 wouldn't cut it, but 6400 does.</p>

<p>Indoor showjumping is, if I'm lucky, D700 + MB-D10 1/650 ISO 6400 f4 (maybe!!) on my 80mm f1.4 AF-D...</p>

<p>I'd like another 2 stops for a little more DoF and a bit faster shutter speed.....but not give up 8fps....:-)</p>

<p>Tough crowd to please.</p>

<p>Indeed, the envelope is there to be pushed.......and I suspect, always will be...:-)</p>

<p>Here is an example during a night match at a tennis tournament. The time stamp shows 8:47pm so that it was dark outside, but the stadium had pretty good floodlights. I used none other than the D700 at Hi 1, ISO 12800. With a 300mm/f4 AF-S, I was limited to 1/640 sec.</p>

<p>With sports action, my preference is 1/1000 or faster. It would have been nice if I had a 300mm/f2.8 instead of an f4. But it should be clear that I could have taken advantage of ISO 25600 should that be available. But I was already using Hi 1 and didn't want the quality to drop further.</p>

<p>If you shoot sports inside those dimly lit high school gyms, you may need even higher ISO.</p><div></div>

<p>I'd like to point out that IME noise levels are more dependent on the amount of light available than on the ISO setting of the camera. Had the light for Shun's shot above, for example, required an exposure of 1/30th at f/4 and Hi-1, then the noise would undoubtedly have been much more visible. To me an EV of 13.3 is hardly a low-light situation at all, even if the ISO has to be pumped up to get it. That's still EV 6.3 @ ISO 100. Put another way, that's enough light to give a quarter scale deflection on an insensitive old Weston V meter. I'll take that amount of "low light" any day.</p>

<p>The quality of light in terms of CT looks quite good as well. Having to wind down the Kelvins to get a good white balance also increases noise considerably.</p>

Picked up the camera for $1000. It's in great shape, all functions seem to work. Tested it against d300 at iso 1600 and

3200 and I think that it is way better. I try not to use iso higher than 3200 anyhow but looks like with d700 I might:)

I also noticed that shutter is a bit louder than d300.

<blockquote>

<p>Picked up the camera for $1000. It's in great shape, all functions seem to work.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> If everything is fine, I think $1000 is an excellent deal.</p>

<p>Took my God daughter to her swim class today. The location has an outdoor pool and an indoor pool, side by side. Since it started raining, they moved indoors so that they wouldn't get wet :-), and I ended up capturing her swimming indoors.</p>

<p>I had the D4S with me and a 200-400mm/f4 AF-S VR. So I used the opportunity to try the D4S' top 25600 ISO, with the lens wide open at f4 and 1/1000 sec to stop motion. The result looks very respectable. Please keep in mind that this is a JPEG original. I still don't have a RAW converter for the D4S yet, so I have been shooting RAW + JPEG medium for the time being.</p><div></div>

<p>Out of curiosity, I have been comparing this latest Shun`s pic with some of my pool pics, in in similar conditions; I`d say the D700 show similar noise levels at 3200 ISO (grain size wise), but maybe with a softer, more pleasing, less "artifacted" feel. Don`t ask me why.<br /> BTW, the highest ISO I use on the D700 is 3200, as an "emergency setting" only, if I still want to keep a minimum image quality, my "top" is at 1600 ISO.</p>

Without a RAW converter, it is a bit premature, but I can confidently say that the D4S has at least a two-stop advantage over the D700/D3 in the ISO 3200, 6400 range, maybe even 3 stops. I need to have a RAW converter for an A/B comparison. A 2-stop difference means you can go from 1/250 sec to 1/1000 sec indoors or at night. That makes a big difference in sports photography.

<blockquote>

<p>A 2-stop difference means you can go from 1/250 sec to 1/1000 sec indoors or at night. That makes a big difference in sports photography.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Yup, those are the couple of stops that would make a difference.</p>

<p>Obviously better noise control is an endless search...<strong><em>but</em></strong> to actually be able to use the other 2 components of an exposure, namely Aperture and Shutter Speed to be 'the same' as in a moderately bright day is a very worthy aim. You could leave it on Auto Iso with your preferred DoF and Speed and let it choose what works, whatever the weather or time of day. The available ISO range in Sensor EVs is approaching the EVs present 'Outside' with available light.</p>

<p>For Outdoor Sports that's ideal....for Studio Use...not so much!</p>

<p>On the dpr sample picture comparator the D4S doesn't even have a 2-stop noise advantage over an APS-C sensor 70D in raw for high ISO, never mind the D700. It's easy to go and find out for oneself.<br>

Many of the jobbing pros are sports veterans who shoot wide aperture lenses with blurred backgrounds and judge the noise performance by the quality of jpegs in such flat color areas.<br>

I've never seen image smoothing <em>not</em> at the expense of sharpness.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>On the dpr sample picture comparator the D4S doesn't even have a 2-stop noise advantage over an APS-C sensor 70D in raw for high ISO, never mind the D700. It's easy to go and find out for oneself.</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

When someone else's test differs from mine, I would much rather trust my own tests. As far as I know, DPReview tests different cameras at different times. Therefore, the settings are not necessarily identical from one camera to another.<br>

<br>

Yesterday morning, I did an A/B/C/D test among the D4S, D800E, D700, and D7100 at the same indoor location, using the same lens (a 24-70mm/f2.8 AF-S @ f5.6), under the same condition within a few minutes of one another, among ISO 1600 to 12800 and beyond. The D4S' high-ISO results is easily two stops better than the D700's, perhaps more. I need to test them under other different conditions before I draw a final conclusion.</p>

<p>Be nice if you could add a Df to the 'experiment'!</p>

<p>I can believe the 2+ stops. I've never been truly impressed above ISO 1600 with my D700.</p>

<p>Mike, I no longer have the Df on loan. Nikon does not like to loan out too many items to one organization at one time. Therefore, part of the deal was that I needed to return the Df first and then they sent me the D4S. Additionally, someone else is reviewing the D610 for photo.net and as far as I know, that loaner D610 is still with that reviewer. Therefore, photo.net has somewhat exceeded our quota already.</p>

<p>However, when I had the Df, I did make an A/B test against the D800E at that same location, using the Sigma 35mm/f1.4 lens. Therefore, we can still compare various results, but I won't be able to test the Df and D4S side by side under identical lighting conditions.</p>

<p>Finally, I am still waiting for Adobe to add the D4S into their RAW converter for PhotoShop and LightRoom. I know I can manually modify the EXIF data to make a D4S NEF file to look like one from the D4, but I would rather not go through all that trouble at this point.</p>

<p>ISO 1600 on a D700 looks okay to me --<br />https://www.flickr.com/photos/nathantw/13792813295/<br /> <img src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7453/13792813295_0b9e4b3eed_c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="532" /></p>

<p><img src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7357/13792815493_6e1fc746c5_c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="640" /><br /> So does ISO 3200<br /> <img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2916/13793144624_71869afb01_c.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="532" /><br /> <img src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7304/13792807315_ffdd1db868_c.jpg" alt="" width="532" height="800" /></p>

<p> </p>

<p>I know considering 2 months, this is an old post and I didn't read them all...but is the D700 a gray market or a Nikon product?</p>