Another D3 question

[joe_rych]

Heres a quick question. If you had sitting in front of you a D3 and a D300 and a good telephoto lens but needed to

reach farther than FX would let you which way would you go, lets assume night fast action sports.

 

1) Take the telephoto and slap it on the d300. I know I am giving up the low noise high ISO shooting of the d3 but

then I have all 12 megapixels for the picture which might help with enlargments.

 

2) Take the lens and put it on the D3 and put the D3 in DX crop mode. I know I will lose half the megapixels but I will

have the high ISO persormance and low noise.

 

Has anyone done really big enlargments in the DX mode? What can I expect in terms of image quality and detail

when I enlarge. I am not saying I need it to look great as a 40x60 but if someone wanted to order a print as large as

20-30 inches or 24x 36 can I do it without it looking horrible?

 

You see I am trying to figure out if I need a dx body at all. It's kind of like this have a few FX bodies and a D300 as

the dx body (if needed) or no DX body since the D# will do just fine to get me the range I want.

 

3) As a third option would you just leave the D3 in FX mode and pop on a TC-14e instead to get the extra range?

[anthony_valvo]

Best quality is going to come by using the D300 with the tele and maybe cleaning up some noise in post processing.

[elliot1]

Interesting question but perhaps of little importance!

 

I am guessing that you are going to be shooting professionally, and as such, you need to evaluate the two cameras

based on their features and image quality. Chances are you can come to the right decision for you intended

photographic purpose based on the merits of each camera (features or lack thereof). If you are shooting

professionally and I believe you mentioned you were, the 2nd card slot in the D3 should be enough to help you

make your decision.

 

Getting back to your original question...

 

I assume you are referring to high ISOs like ISO 3200 or higher. You would expect the D300 image to have a bit

more noise but with a bit less detail than a teeny tiny 5mp D3 DX crop file which you would expect to have more

detail but less noise. The real answer to your question will surprise most because most people tend to think

more (megapixels) is better no matter what. More is better, but it takes a lot more than a little bit to be

noticeably better (contrary to popular opinion). And while the difference from 5mp or 6mp to 12mp or 13 (or from

12mp of the D3 to lets say 24mp of the soon to be released D3X) may SOUND like a lot, in terms of print quality

it is almost insignificant in practical use (I know I am going to take a lot of heat for that statement!).

 

There truly is very little difference from a 5mp file to a 12mp file. I have stated this many times before in

previous posts. I have conducted tests and posted results on this subject many times. And always come up with

the same results. Additionally, you can usually upsize a file by about 25% and maintain detail, such as taking a

5mp file up to 12mp. You end up with virtually the same quality file.

 

In any case, the answer to your question is... well, look at the results of the testing I just did and decide for

yourself.

 

I took identical shots of a piece of artwork with a D300 and a D3 (DX mode) using Nikon's 80-400mm lens. I shot

at 400mm, VR on, handheld, ISO 3200, SB-800, camera set in manual mode at 1/250, f8, RAW compressed. Here is a

link to the full frame:

 

Original Shot (entire frame):

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/7773041

 

I opened the images in CS3 at default settings, cropped a very small section of the original image and then

upsized the D3 image in CS3 to the same size ad the D300's.

 

Crop Comparison (D300 on top, D3 (DX mode crop) on bottom:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/7773046&size=lg

 

Please note: the small differences you are seeing in color/contrast are due to slight differences in Picture

Control settings (the D3 was set at Neutral, the D300 was at Standard). I had forgotten to check the Picture

Control settings prior to taking the test shots.

[lightsmith1]

With any action shooting I prefer the D300 over the D3 as the AF sensors cover a much greater percentage of the viewfinder. Actually for action shooting I prefer the D2x over either camera. I was doing a commercial shoot of helicopters and linemen and found it much more effective to have the 70-200 zoom on the D3 and the 200-400 zoom on the D300.

 

I shoot weddings and make use of the D3 for the wide to normal range shots and the D300 with either the Sigma 50-150 f2.8 or the 70-200mm f2.8 for the long range shots. I get an effective FOV from 14mm to 300mm with 3 lenses that all provide f2.8 and are easily hand held.

[Jerry_]

The 300mm lens reaches the same on both camera bodies. The D300 has a 'crop' which removes a bit of the image all around, but the center portion remains the same. If you shoot in FX mode on a D3 and crop away the edges, you'd have the same image as taken with the D300 body. Nothing would be more 'telephoto' with the same lens.

 

 

It's just difficult to get the D300 to operate at ISO 12800 some of the time... _- :]

[chamyat]

Get the D3, as you would have FX, 5:4, and DX at the same time in single camera.

[richard_driscoll]

The D300 may have 12 mp and the D3 crop mode only 5 mp but when heavier noise reduction is applied to the D300 some of that advantage will disappear. There may be some of this effect in Elliot's pictures.