D800 Tripod myth

<p>Whats all the fuss that the D800 will be best on a tripod? Its ridiculous, all cameras are best on a tripod. They would probably also benefit if the world stopped turning to prevent vibration too. If you shoot your current camera handheld, you can shoot the D800 handheld with the same results.</p>

<p>Why does everyone fret this point? What makes you think that the D800 will be different from any other DSLR produced?</p>

<p><br />Why does everyone freak out about high MPs, and no one points out the benefits, like high dynamic range, better color rendition? These are the things that makes images, the highlights don't blow out as fast, the darks don't go black, isn't that worth having to buy bigger cards for? Even if you come home and immediately re-size everything to 12 MPs, that higher dynamic range and better color rendition is going to stay with the image (assuming you re-size to a RAW format).</p>

<p>Come on people. Its a new camera, it means what you are going to shoot is going to look better, sure you pay an extra price for that, but haven't we payed that same price at almost every new camera generation? Aren't we used to the drill yet after 13 years of digital SLRs?</p>

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<p>They would probably also benefit if the world stopped turning to prevent vibration too.</p>

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<p>The turning of the earth produces no vibration of interest for ordinary, earthbound photography. I think that the logic about the D800 requiring a tripod is (1) that it seems silly to use a camera capable of great detail and not make use of it and (2) that if you examine your D800 images at 100% , you'll see more pixels affected by not using a tripod than if you had used a D50.<br>

Of course the effect of the vibration will be the same with either camera.</p>

<p>I understand the poster's points of view. By some accounts, we will all need to get the most expensive glass and just about ALWAYS have a tripod for this camera to be good. Does that mean only studio and landscape photographers should bother ? If 36Mp has hit the " don't hand hold it ! " wall, then maybe we've found the end of the pixel wars and can focus on better features in the cameras.</p>

<p> </p>

<p> I have learned to grip the earth solidly with my toes. That way I will not fly off just because the earth is spinning about. It's been working pretty good so far. </p>

<p>I think the sensitivity to motion blur is proportional to the pixel ratio at any dimension of the sensor.<br /><br />The D800 is 7360x4912 compared to the D50 at 3000x2000, so its sensitivity at any axis of movement at a pixel level is 2.4 times greater than the D50, which means you'd want to be 2.4 times steadier, or use a VR lens with 2.4 times the correction speed in order not to affect blur at a pixel level. <br /><br />Given the same amount of camera movement, however, the resulting image blur would be the same regardless of pixel density - I think. </p>

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<p>I think the sensitivity to motion blur is proportional to the pixel ratio at any dimension of the sensor.</p>

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<p>I think it's only proportional to the magnification of the image. If the larger pixel count allows you to print bigger then you might see a difference.</p>

<p>The debates over the D800/800E have been fascinating. Surely Skyler is right - the improvements are exactly and simply that (though dynamic range surely remains an unknwon until serious testers get their hands on the camera). I fail to see (possibly because I'm dumb) how the image quality can possibly be worse even with handholding and 'old' lenses; it's easy to see how it can be better with big enlargement, good glass, and good technique. And there's the issue. It's made me think, is my technique good enough for a D800E? With landscapes, it's not just 'use a tripod and mirror up' - it's how well the tripod sits on the ground, wind, my ability to operate well in rain, wind and cold - so I'm the limit, not the camera. So maybe it's shoot less but better - and I'm going to work on my technique before I consider upgrading from my D700.</p>

<p>As I see it, images from higher resolution sensors are never going to be worse. Maybe like using longer lenses, it starts showing 'bad technique', rather than bad tools?</p>

<p>Regarding Pixel Blur, if increasing the pixel count makes Camera > Subject Blur worse (it doesn't), if I down sample my D800E files, are they less blury? No. Less Noisy, probably!</p>

<p>I still like Focus Magic for fixing motion blur, finding a 'spot' pixel that has become a 'line' of 3 pixels @ 65 Deg and correcting it, should be so much more fun with the 800E's 'pixel perfect' images.</p>

<p>The cost of using a high-resolution camera is in the post-processing time. If you don't make good use of those pixels your time (when you copy files, save changes etc.) or alternatively the money you spent on a massive RAID system will be wasted for nothing.</p>

<p>In practice getting sharp files is not such a big deal if you know the basics and are careful, and shoot in bright light. As you get to dimmer light, and if your subjects move about, it becomes progressively more difficult to get pixel-level sharp images so a high MP camera will inevitably favour photography in bright light. Also photographers tend to obsess about technical quality and a D800 will lead to more obsession as no two shots of a person or another subject that will move will be equally sharp or equally in focus. People will do more insurance shots and duplicates to get one that is just right at the pixel level. They will shoot more at optimal apertures and studio lights. It all leads to more attention on fine technical quality and less on subject and content. This, IMO, is not a good thing, but it's inevitable.</p>

<p><em>the benefits, like high dynamic range, better color rendition?</em><br>

<em><br /></em>Those are typically benefits of high resolution cameras at low to moderate ISO, while moderate MP cameras have been giving better DR, SNR and color at high ISO for some time. According to user reports (Cliff Mauntner) this continues with the D800 and D4 although probably not as big a difference as it was with D3X and D3s. Even though a D3s has a relatively low pixel count, to suggest that it doesn't yield excellent color and DR at base ISO is a bit silly. Anyway, once the cameras become available then people can assess them for themselves and there will be a lot more fact based discussion rather than stuff estimated or guessed from looking at someone else's images and comparing results between cameras based on measurements obtained on images of different scenes. It is much better to do this in controlled conditions with the cameras tested side by side. A lot of analysis errors will disappear in a differential comparison.</p>

<p>In any case any discussion online is bound to focus on the negatives because when people are happy they will be out there shooting rather than gloat about it online (while some people do that, too). When there is a problem, forums can sometimes help. I don't see what is wrong with this - problems get solved for the most part, and people can move on with their work.</p>

<p>I remember the same discussion was going when the D2X came with its 12 MP over the 4MP in D2H. You had to put the camera on a tripod and use only the best of lenses to really get the quality the camera could deliver. Seems we did all right continuing using our lenses and cameras like we used to, worrying more about the picture than absolute sharpness....</p>

<p>One thing I don't understand : why does nobody complain about D7000 sensor (it has even bigger pixel density ) !?</p>

<p>Michael said:</p>

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<p>The D800 is 7360x4912 compared to the D50 at 3000x2000, so its sensitivity at any axis of movement at a pixel level is 2.4 times greater than the D50, which means you'd want to be 2.4 times steadier, or use a VR lens with 2.4 times the correction speed in order not to affect blur at a pixel level.</p>

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<p>Those are telling numbers. I've found that image blur, due either to camera or subject motion (or, a combination of both) had historically been my greatest "reject" culprit. Now, I employ VR and large-aperture lenses whenever possible, even though, as a handheld television camera operator, I feel that my handheld technique for stills is pretty good as well.</p>

<p>On a related, but separate topic, a few months ago, I was shooting my first paid portraiture session (using an 85mm f/1.4 on a Nikon D3s), and I was surprised how high a shutter speed was required to eliminate motion-blur from my subjects' movement alone. Motion blur occurred even at speeds as high as 1/500th (the subjects were seated). It's amazing how fast eye movements can be.</p>

<p>When shooting at extreme telephoto focal lengths for television, I hang a 15 lb. shotbag from the tripod's center column, and throw up a 4' x 4' solid to shield the camera from any wind. On critical shots, I'll bag each leg as well. Also, I'll hold the roll if a truck is going by. If I decide to buy a D800, I'll probably apply similar techniques for my tripod-ed cityscape shots.</p>

<p><em>why does nobody complain about D7000 sensor (it has even bigger pixel density ) !?</em></p>

<p>Well, I had that camera for some eight months and I didn't get to complain about the sensor (which I liked very much) because I was busy complaining about the AF which prevented me from utilizing the sensor properly when photographing potentially moving subjects at wide apertures. 36MP is not the same as 16MP in any case, it's not just about the pixel density. The FX mirror is much bigger for example and will generate more vibration. Nikon illustrates in their technical guide to D800 how even with a 14-24 and tripod you need to use mirror lockup to get a pixel-sharp result on the D800. And when you use a 36MP sensor and bigger prints you will see that the depth of field is extremely shallow at the pixel level. So if you take advantage of the high resolution and want your whole subject to be sharp at that level, you will need to stop down more than you're used to. You need to stop down more, you need to use a faster shutter speed (if the subject is moving), and you need to use a lower ISO all of this is required to get that best quality at the 36MP level. Notice how these requirements all are conflicting unless you can add a lot more light to the scene. While the picture quality is usually better than with lower resolution cameras, sometimes a lot better, the window of conditions for the best quality will be very narrow. And people will focus on that window leading to a narrowing of the breadth of photography, or at least that is what I expect to happen. Of course there will be other cameras more focused on low light and high speed photography, such as the D4, but for a lot of people 5500 EUR is too much coin.</p>

<p><em>worrying more about the picture than absolute sharpness....</em><br>

<em><br /></em> 12MP was just about the beginnings of good image quality, 36MP is a whole another matter. If you look at photography that is made with medium format cameras you will see it is focused on studio, landscape etc. subjects. It's not because you can't shoot candid portraits with MF, you can, but because of the extra expense people didn't use it for those applications. The extra expense with the D800 will be in terms of cost of storage (and high-speed storage, RAID, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA, not USB 2.0 which most now use for storage) and it will still be possible to use it for classic 35mm applications - no doubt about it, but I think people will focus their efforts on conditions which lead to the highest quality. It's human nature, to want more and more.</p>

 

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<p>One thing I don't understand : why does nobody complain about D7000 sensor (it has even bigger pixel density ) !?</p>

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<p>"Complain" is probably not the most appropriate description, but a lot of us have noticed that the D7000 is very demanding on lenses. We have been discussing that since the D7000 first became available a little more than a year ago.</p>

<p>However, the issue is more like total pixel count rather than just density. Otherwise, those small digicams (Coolpix and other brands) have far far higher pixel density than any Nikon DSLR since the digicams have much smaller sensors, in terms of sensor area. When you cramp 10MP, let alone 16MP, 18MP into a tiny area, they are extremely dense.</p>

<p>I started taking yoga classes a few months ago in anticipation of the D800 unveiling. My balance, posture and steadiness has improved to the point where I don't think I will need a tripod, except maybe for some low light night shots etc. There is more than one way to skin the proverbial cat I say. </p>

<p>Tim, next you'll be doing Tai Chi for that super smooth, Fluid Head night-time video pan..... :-) Good Luck!</p>

<p>One hes to wonder how the medium & large format photographers managed over the years. Use good technique & take pictures. Now as for processing those large files...</p>

<p>Skyler, I'm not following the link you're making between a higher megapixel count and dynamic range. The D800 still "only" uses a 14 bit A/D converter, which limits its dynamic range to 14 stops theoretical maximum. The D700 already manages a measurable 12 stops in real life, so where's the big improvement coming from?</p>

<p>If Nikon <em>seriously</em> wanted to improve dynamic range it could be done quite readily by: (1) Increasing the A/D bit depth to 16, and (2) applying a gamma curve in hardware before the A/D conversion stage.</p>

<p>WRT resolution and handholding: The maximum resolution of the D800 will still only be approximately 100 line-pairs per millimetre, and users of fine grain B&W film used to regularly achieve that level of detail many years ago. Nobody ever complained that film had "too much" resolution or fretted that they had to bolt their cameras down onto concrete blocks to make the sharpest pictures. Of course a tripod will help, <em>under some conditions</em>, <em></em>but other things beyond our control often conspire to rob us of the utmost image sharpness - like wind, atmospheric conditions and subject movement.<br>

There's no point in packing the camera and tripod away simply because we know that image sharpness might be compromised. Otherwise we'd all have to take pictures of totally static subjects on those few perfect (but boring) days when there's no wind, dust or mist in the air and when it's also cool enough to prevent heat turbulance. Then we set our (very expensive and cherry-picked) lenses to their boring optimum aperture of around f/5.6, adjust our compendium hood for optimum flare reduction, throw another sandbag on the near-impossible-to-carry tripod and shoot our totally boring pictures.<br>

Yawn!<br>

I think I might risk a handheld shot or two if nobody minds.</p>

<p>BTW, large aperture lenses are no real substitute for a tripod. You'll simply be swapping fuzziness due to camera-shake for fuzziness due to lens aberrations.</p>

<p>Well, we are used to read everyday on internet forums lots of complaints about lens/camera sharpness... most of them due to poor techniques.</p>

<p>The tripod thing is adressed to that so common kind of user, that after buying this highest resolution product, have to know how to take what they are supposedly looking for... that maximum resolution.<br /> The Nikon tech guide just point out several aspects to take into account; it is the minimun knowledge for serious photographers. I`d say an extremely useful guide for many photographers, not only for D800 users.</p>

<p>I don`t see myths anywhere; just misinformation, or miscommunication maybe.</p>

<p>Those experienced photographers who "managed over the years", don`t need to know that to get the ultimate sharpness at pixel size not only the latest high resolution camera is needed; even so, I`m pretty sure there will be obvious severe cases of motion blur, camera shake or even badly focused shots in threads titled "My D800 is not right, should I return it?", or "DoF charts doesn`t work with my D800", etc...</p>

<p><em>"Those experienced photographers who "managed over the years", don`t need to know... "</em><br>

I wanted to mean that they doesn`t need to be teached in that techniques because they <em>already </em>know them....</p>

<p><em>The D800 still "only" uses a 14 bit A/D converter, which limits its dynamic range to 14 stops theoretical maximum.</em></p>

<p>It comes from averaging those pixels. When you make a print of a given size, say 8x12 inches, from a 12 MP and a 36MP camera, three pixels of the latter will occupy the area of one pixel from the former. Thus the tonality, SNR, and dynamic range of that area will be obtained by averaging those three pixels.</p>

<p><em>approximately 100 line-pairs per millimetre, and users of fine grain B&W film used to regularly achieve that level of detail many years ago.</em></p>

<p>The D800 takes color images. While it can be used for black and white imaging, obviously, I think most photographers and users prefer a color image and even 12 MP FX is way better quality than any 35mm color film because of the high SNR of the digital image and the relatively visible grain of film. 24MP FX is better than 6x7 color film in overall print quality because of the cleanness of the image (tones may be richer in film but the details are so much affected by grain that overall I'd give the nod to FX). For black and white film I think 6x7 100 speed film scanned on an LS-9000 is better than 24 MP FX though. In practice details are resolved with incredible clarity with high resolution FX sensors of even three years ago (D3X). Because the SNR is so high and focusing with live view can be superbly accurate, and because the substantial quality loss in scanning is missing from the digital capture, compromised stability of the camera is more obviously seen in the final image.</p>

<p><em> the near-impossible-to-carry tripod</em></p>

<p>Life is hard. I went to Venice for a week with a 3kg tripod, a D3X, six lenses and walked with the camera every day at least 12 hours. I didn't carry the tripod when I was photographing people but for the architecture it gets used because it allows precise alignment, setting of the shift, and base ISO for better quality and especially greater dynamic range so the sky and the dark alleys can all be pulled in from a single file if needed. One of the nice things about the high pixel count cameras is that you can do a lot from a single exposure. And the tripod makes sure every frame is identical as there is no foul-up due to heart beat, focusing etc. And because of the tripod people give me room to work in and some respect.</p>

<p><em>large aperture lenses are no real substitute for a tripod. You'll simply be swapping fuzziness due to camera-shake for fuzziness due to lens aberrations.</em></p>

<p>I don't disagree that fast lenses substitute for a tripod - they're used in different situations. Fast lenses allow high shutter speeds to stop subject movement (a tripod does nothing to help with that) and to isolate the main subject from the visual clutter that often exists where large numbers of people gather. What I do disagree about is aberrations. The latest 35/1.4 and 85/1.4 give outstanding image quality on a D3X even at the widest apertures (particularly, the 85mm). So do the 14-24 and 70-200 II. Old fast glass (such as my 135/2 DC) do have lots of aberrations at wide apertures but these are gradually being phased out.</p>

<p>Nikon is busy introducing new lenses that are more affordable and that meet the new demands. E.g. 50/1.8, 85/1.8 AF-S look like excellent performers at affordable prices. </p>

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<p>One thing I don't understand : why does nobody complain about D7000 sensor (it has even bigger pixel density ) !?</p>

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<p>There you go: The D7000 sensor is terrible! In fact Nikon has ceased production, so that is why the D7000 is not available anywhere ;))))))</p>

<p>Jokes aside, the D7000 benefits quite a bit from putting on a tripod, at least in my shaky hands. Luckily, razor sharpness is not always a requirement for a good image.... and now I'll wait until someone has actually handled a D800 and starts complaining....</p>

<p>Looking over all the responses my general feeling is, there is the old rule, on FF your shutter speed should at least equal your focal length for sharp pictures. I don't see why this would change with the D800, and after speaking with someone who has shot the D800, he backed that up 100%.</p>

<p>Many people point to Nikon's "D800 guide" that suggests you use a tripod. I note that in there tripod example the shutter is set to 1 second. I just don't see how you can argue Nikon suggests using a tripod when the example they give is at 1 second where no sane photographer would attempt hand held. If they were shooting on the 14-24mm with a 1/200th of a second shutter and suggesting you use a tripod, that would be different.</p>

<p>The idea of great dynamic range comes at the pixel level, the higher the pixel density the greater the dynamic range and color space. According to DxO optics, the D3x has 1.7 stops greater dynamic range than the D3s. Judging from what Cliff Mautner says, it seems like the D800 has an extremely wide dynamic range.</p>

<p>Storage. All you photographers are lucky, you only have store pictures. I work as DIT (Director of information Technology) where its not uncommon to shoot over a 100GBs of video in a single day, and we keep 3 separate backup copies at all times. No we don't use big expensive RAIDs on set, we use portable USB 2.0 hard drives. Yes when we get to the editing side we do use RAIDs, but we have to play uncompressed HD video and the sheer size of our projects; I literally have film projects that exceed 1.5 TBs on my video RAID. That's where a RAID is required, but for still photos? An internal drive should be fine to edit on and then store them on a USB 2.0 drive. I see from best buy you can get a WD 1TB external HD in USB 3.0 that includes a USB 3.0 card for your computer. Whats a $110 to a $3000 camera? Gosh the battery pack has an MSRP of $615 with B&H listing it for $450, that's over 4TBs of storage space just for the cost of the battery pack!</p>

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<p>"It comes from averaging those pixels." and "..the higher the pixel density the greater the dynamic range and color space."</p>

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<p>How, exactly? Dynamic range is <em>totally different </em>from colour depth, which is what might possibly be improved by pixel averaging. Even so, the colour depth of each pixel will be limited to 14 bits in the RAW image and so an averaged colour depth will still be 14 bits. (N+N+N)/3 = N.</p>

<p>Dynamic range is defined as that range of brightness that can be accommodated without saturation and is discernible above the noise floor. Averaging does nothing to increase that, except to lower the noise floor very slightly. Theoretically, we could get one extra stop by averaging four pixels to halve the noise, but in practise there simply aren't sufficient digital bits defining the lowest shadow levels for that to work. When you get down to pixel values of 3 or 4 it's all over - there simply isn't enough useful information to average. That's why 14 bit digital data can only yield around 12 stops dynamic range in reality. The only way to improve matters is to increase the A/D conversion depth, or to preferentially amplify the lower levels of analog signal before digitisation, or both.</p>

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<p>"The latest 35/1.4 and 85/1.4 give outstanding image quality on a D3X even at the widest apertures..."</p>

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<p>Are you saying that those lenses are diffraction-limited wide open? And that there's no discernible improvement in image quality on stopping down? Because if you are, I simply don't believe you, since nothing I've seen from those lenses convinces me that their open aperture performance is anywhere near perfect.</p>

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<p>The dynamic range in the D800 is also something people may overlook. With my style of shooting- sometimes in very harsh light- by choice- I’ll be able to hold more detail than ever before. File size alone wont do that. However, the file size accompanied by the increased dynamic range will make for some stunning files in dramatic light.</p>

<p>The dynamic range speaks for itself&. Detail in the veil, detail in the gown, and her face is well exposed. In my eyes, there is absolutely improved dynamic range with this camera. I'll be able to maintain more detail in these conditions that ever before.</p>

 

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<p>That's what Cliff Mautner had to say about the increased Dynamic range. I didn't make it up, here is what someone who used the camera had to say.</p>

<p>How did the people over at Dxo Optics get 13.7 stops out of the D3x, which has a 14-bit A/D?</p>