D2H vs D2Hs - differences when shooting RAW/NEF ??

Hi,

 

I am presently contemplating either the D2H or D2Hs. The D2H has a

reputation for not handling colour (e.g., skin tones) as well as the

D2Hs, and I have heard complaints about lower saturation at high ISO.

 

I also understand from various reviews that the D2Hs has a one stop

or more advantage on the D2H noise-wise.

 

Are these potential problems present when shooting RAW ?? And IS the

D2Hs really that much better than the D2H ?? I presently shoot a D70.

 

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Soeren

 

 

P.S.: Unfortunately, neither the D200 or the D2x are options for me -

these would be second-hand cameras at a very attractive price.

Not having had the D2H I can't compare them but the D2Hs that I do own is a camera that is a joy to use. The 8 FPS capture speed is extrodinary and the color faithful. The design of the D2Hs is basiclly the same as the D2x. You will be very pleased with this pro camera versus the prosumer D70. I have a old D100 so when I got the D2h I could really appreciate all those additional features found in a pro camera. you will too. Good Luck

I own a D2H but haven't tried the D2Hs. However I'm familiar with how D2H photos are characterized. Some folks report unsatisfactory skin tones and low saturation. IMO, this is a matter of personal taste, not fact.

 

I find D2H skin tones to be very faithful with photos of whites, Hispanics and blacks. It has a little trouble with olive and reddish complexions. Olive complexions tend to go green. Reddish complexions, typical of folks here in the Southwest who have some American and Mexican Indian ancestry, tend to show excessive noise at ISOs above 200.

 

The latter is easily corrected with a good noise reduction utility like Noise Ninja. Careful tweaking of chroma noise adjustments eliminate the color noise without compromising sharpness.

 

The former, olive skin, is trickier. Reportedly the D2H is prone to greenish casts due to its unique response to infrared. I have struggled to find software that can correct differing skin tones in group photos without resorting to working in layers. iCorrect Edit Lab and Portrait plug-ins from PictoColor do pretty well, altho' it often comes at the expense of desaturating most or all skin tones in a group. But for really tricky shots it works well enough and is quick - I'm considering buying the licensed version, altho' I'm waiting to see whether Gary Fong's upgraded "Bullzeye" software, which is another version of PictoColor's software, improves the program. Anyway, it's been effective for selectively correcting too-green olive complexions and too-pink complexions as well.

 

Also, choice of sRGB mode makes a significant difference. I usually shoot NEF/JPEG-Fine simultaneously with the goal being perfect, ready to print JPEGs. As long as I need only native resolution prints, no upsizing, JPEGs are more than good enough for photos up to 8x10 from Frontier and Kodak dye-whatever stations. The NEFs are my fallback, not my main files. I usually shoot sRGB-I for people pix tho' sometimes sRGB-III provides punchier colors with good skin tones.

 

I don't want Adobe RGB attached to my JPEGs because I don't print at home and the printing stations I use have color spaces closer to sRGB. And with NEFs it doesn't matter because we're not locked in. In fact, with the more recent versions of Nikon Capture we have the options of using sRGB-Ia and -IIIa, which have been included in some Nikon dSLRs made since the original D2H. These can provide a subtle but nice alternative and appear to affect saturation of specific colors, not global saturation.

 

Anway, short story, I'm very happy with the D2H for most skin tones, other than those specific problems I mentioned.

 

Regarding high ISO image quality, this is just an effect of shooting at high ISOs. Dynamic range is limited as we push the gain and so is color saturation. Some dSLRs may be better than others at higher ISOs (the D50 looks very promising in this regard), but all of them suffer some loss of dynamic range and saturation as the ISO is cranked up.

 

Before deciding on a D2H or D2Hs, be sure you understand what you're getting into. Read Phil Askey's very thorough report on dpreview.com.

 

The D2H was primarily designed for photojournalists, most of whom shoot JPEGs for quick, print-ready turnaround. (And before anyone disagrees, read the survey on sportsshooter. I was also surprised at how many photojournalists shoot RAW and JPEG or JPEG only.) So the image processing in the D2H is biased toward this working style. In camera sharpening is higher than with some dSLRs, including other Nikons. Acuity is very high. Anti-aliasing is relatively low. This makes for sharper looking photos out of the camera but comes at the cost of certain compromises: jaggies are sometimes visible in hard edged diagonal lines; and moire, which can sometimes be seen in certain fabrics and in regularly spaced receding lines such as fence posts. At a certain point moire becomes visible. As the lines become more closely spaced, moire disappears. There are filters designed to minimize moire but I haven't seen dramatic improvements.

 

So, be sure the image characteristics of the camera suit your needs or decide whether you're willing to adjust your working style to accomodate the strengths and weaknesses of the camera.

 

I shoot JPEGs with in camera sharpening set to the second highest level, which provides excellent sharpness without objectionable artifacts in prints at native resolution. The highest sharpening setting can sometimes produce halos. I use a custom curve for flash photography which helps minimize contrast problems and boosts gamma slightly, which is flattering to skin tones.

 

And I white balance very, very carefully (and not always successfully). This is a must when shooting JPEGs for prints straight from the camera. But don't overlook the importance of accurate WB for NEFs. Despite the fact that we're not locked into a WB with NEFs, it's still essential to color balance carefully during the exposure in mixed lighting. For example, using flash in a room illuminated with greenish fluorescent lighting will cause fits no matter what WB setting you apply during post processing. That's why the SB-800 is supplied with two gels, one for greenish fluorescents and one for tungsten. Gel the flash, white balance the camera for the room lighting and color casts will be minimized. Additional gels are available from Nikon and other sources such as Roscoe for a variety of artificial lights but, frankly, you'd need a color meter to use them effectively.

 

The D2H is a big, heavy camera. But the fast framerates and autofocus make it worthwhile. The camera can autofocus in very dim lighting without an AF assist lamp. The built in AF motor is strong enough to drive older AF screwdriver lenses almost as quickly as an AF-S Nikkor. The viewfinder is bright and crisp with good eye relief, equal to my F3HP finder. Yes, it's smaller, which is completely irrelevant. My Rollei 2.8C TLR has a huge viewfinder and it's crap - dim, with heavy corner and edge darkening.

 

Noise gets high at 800 and above but it's easily corrected with noise reduction software. I don't object much to luminance noise because it resembles film grain. Chroma noise - nasty reddish and greenish splotches - are easily corrected with little or no effect on sharpness. There's some reduction of color saturation in the reds with high chroma noise reduction, but not bad. Image quality is very good up to 1600.

 

While the gain is increased at Hi-1 and Hi-2 (3200 and 6400) the camera becomes very, very picky at these settings. Exposure must be perfect - even slight underexposure produces banding (not the striping seen in some D200 complaints, but an entirely different type of artifact). Dynamic range goes right down the drain - I'm guessing it's a four or five stop range. Sharpness suffers. But the purpose of these settings is to make it possible to shoot photos in circumstances that would otherwise be impossible. It's no worse than pushing Tri-X to 3200 or 6400.

 

Anyway, be sure to read the dpreview test. About the only things Phil doesn't cover are empirical observations on autofocus capability, high ISO performance and mixed lighting/flash use in practical applications.

I have a D2h and D2x, but not a D2hs. The D2h has serious noise problems in shadows, even at low ISO settings. The color is better than a D1x and resolution is nearly as good in practice. The D2hs has allegedly fixed the noise and improved the color, although the resolution is the same. It is supposedly as good with color and better with noise than the D2x, which is a lot better than the D2h in my experience.

Soeren,

I realize that is difficult to evaluate color and image quality when looking at images on a monitor , but if it helps, about 75% of the photos on my Photo.Net Gallery were shot with a D2H-in most cases almost all of the people images were made using the D2H.

Regards

Thanks for all responses so far - Especially Lex for taking so much time. In the meantime, I managed to borrow a D2H and get the image below. It was shot in RAW at ISO 1000, but I had to lift it a full stop in RawShooter Essentials, since I managed to underexpose it somehow :-)

 

RSE has a "Color Noise Suppression" feature that really kills off what Lex calls Chroma Noise very nicely, thank you. The "Noise Suppression" feature, on the other hand, does seem to smoothen out fine detail.

 

I think it's a very nice result - had I shot it on 1600 ASA print film, I would probably have gotten even more grain...

 

All in all, I will try to get the D2Hs, since I really am a High ISO/wide aperture kind of guy, but the D2H would definitely do well, I think.

 

Thanks again - and more input to the thread is, of course, welcome.

 

Cheers,

 

Soeren<div></div>

Soeren, I have mixed reactions to RawShooter. On the one hand it's very fast and efficient even on a modest computer. The workflow is logical. Some of its adjustments are very effective. For example, chroma noise reduction is pretty good altho', as you've noted, it's not very effective at luminance noise reduction. And batch processing is quick and convenient.

 

On the minus side, RawShooter is too aggressive at reducing noise that isn't noise. For example, it will turn the multicolored highlights on a sparkling sequin gown uniformly white. It assumes that all randomly distributed multicolored specks that are only a pixel or so in size are chroma noise or chromatic aberration. And there's no way to reduce this aggressive action.

 

Also, RawShooter produces conversions with ugly artifacts and exaggerated facial blemishes such as tiny capillaries under the skin of a baby or older person with thin skin. When the detail extraction feature is turned off the results are too soft. There's no happy medium.

 

Nikon's own NEF conversions have been the best so far in my experience with the D2H. I'm hoping the upcoming Capture NX will be more efficient.

 

Meanwhile, here's a sample from an image adjustment program I've been experimenting with (hence the "PictoColor" watermarks superimposed on images produced with the trial version), iCorrect EditLab Pro from PictoColor. A nearly identical version of this program is sold by wedding photographer Gary Fong as "Bullzeye." Some folks give PictoColor software a bad knock because, well, because it isn't Photoshop. But for quick editing it's promising. Very much like RawShooter except it works with JPEGs and TIFFs as well as NEFs. It's very effective for quickly correcting skin tones, especially in groups of people who have wildly varying skin tones ranging from pale to olive to ruddy. It offers very effective chroma noise reduction, but nothing for luminance noise. Its real strength is in editing batches of JPEGs. I see no image degradation when high resolution JPEGs are opened in EditLab, tweaked and resaved as JPEGs, and I've compared the before and after versions side by side at maximum magnification.

 

It's a bit expensive for what it is, comparable in price to Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro X and Picture Window Pro, with fewer features, but it's much quicker and easier for tweaking photos of people that have minor problems with exposure and even some fairly major color problems.<div></div>

Hi Soeren,

I have about 6000 clicks on my D2hs and maybe 200 or so on Hi1 or Hi2. The impression I get is a lot like using Royal x pan or Tri x. The shadows are thin but I have not seen any banding with hi ISO shots like Lex has seen.

The shots I made were when I was trying to find out how the body worked so I would take a shot with a 35mm 1.4 MF or a 55 1.2 MF and then with a 24-120VR at Hi2 of my Amateur radio gear from across the room and see which lens would allow me to read the front panel data the best. The 1.4 had the best contrast but the grain was not an issue. The grain seemed to be OK until I went above 100% and then the panel data would be slightly fuzzy. If I went into Noise Ninja the grain got better but the image suffered and appeared less sharp. I found I could go to auto ISO when shooting small birds and had trouble telling the different ISOs apart between 800 and 1600. I guess I save the Hi 1 & 2 for available light. I also use Raw Shooter but agree with Lex's assesment of its capabilities and find Nikon View does better and its limited so I will be going to Capture NX when it comes out. In any event I like my D2hs so much I bought a 2006 Corvette convertable to use as a gadget bag. Its got a big trunk that holds lots of stuff.

Thanks again for your efforts. I primarily chose RSE because of its speed in browsing, but I will reconsider Nikon Capture - maybe just using it for the "important" pictures. And maybe NX *will* be faster :-)

 

In any case, it's fabulous to be able to go back and redo my NEFs, since my post-processíng skills have improved significantly over the last two years.

 

I'll post a color/noise comparison between the "new" camera and my D70, if the deal goes through...

 

Cheers,

 

Soeren