D7100 vs D7200 at ISO 6400

[ShunCheung]

<p>Not quite at Barry's ISO 6400, this is an ISO 640 sample. Since Adobe's RAW converter doesn't support the D7200 yet, for the time being I am shooting RAW + JPEG, and this is from a JPEG original. For these bird images, I am using auto ISO to maintain a decent high shutter speed to freeze motion.<br>

<br />You can see some noise in the seriously underexposed background area, but the D7200 clearly has better high ISO results than the D7100. However, IMO ISO 25600 on the D7200 is not very useful; that is a way overly optimistic setting. The D4S also has a 25600 top ISO setting, and on the D4S, ISO 25600 is useable.</p><div></div>

[sener]

<p>I think that 24mp dx sensor is suited more for nature photography than birding. It can also be used in architecture or close up photography, certainly not for wildlife, action photography. High mp enables more detail and heavy crop availibility is misleading. The 24mp dx sensor is so dense that it generates too much noise. In the cropped images, the noise is very apperant even at low iso values like iso 200, or iso 300. The sensor technology has been evolving at a fairly slow pase, thus the incremental noise suppression improvements are largely due to embedded-in-product noise reduction softwares rather than the sensors itself. The images posted in this tread look too good to me. I don't know if they are 100% crops or downsized pictures. Even so, one should post the non-processed images. The images posted here look like they have been processed in terms of noise reduction by the Capture-NX software. If you remove the software effects, and look at the same shots, you can see the difference.<br>

In bird photography, light coming from long distances tend to diffuse more. If noise is added on to the diffused light, the picture is very diffult to recover. Such problems can be minimized by using larger pixels. Companies have been producing higher and higher mp cameras in demand from the market of amatures. What should have been done is to keep the pixel numbers the same, and improve the quality. This way, faster cameras with high quality outcomes would have been possible. It looks like the only cameras that fit into this category is the pro-level cameras such as d3s, d4, or d4s in the Nikon line-up, which is what it should be used for action, birding photography. Don't waste your time and money with these 24mp dx line-up unless you need them for specific purposes, IMHO. In the long run, they make you lose more.</p>

[Barry Clemmons Photography]

<p>Goker, All of my images of the "Toy Story" watch can are 100% crops. As I indicated, the first two ISO 6400 were jpegs straight out of the camera with no post-processing applied. Someone then asked that I post the shots from the ISO 6400 NEF files converted to jpeg with no post-processing applied which I did. I agree that the images look very good, in fact better than I expected. But they are in fact non-processed images as indicated. I prefer a DX body for my bird photography but understand that not everyone agrees.</p>

[martin_glazer]

<p>Interesting thread, I have the Nikon D7200, I like it. I understand that the new Nikon J1 v5 uses the Nikon Expeed 5a. With over over 100 focus points, and many other improvements. I wonder why Nikon didn’t use that Image processor instead of the expeed 4 ?</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Finally I have an example where auto ISO on the D7200 picked ISO 6400. It is outdoors, under overcast light, not exactly something I consider dim.</p><div></div>

[Barry Clemmons Photography]

<p>Shun, that is still very good results in my opinion. I don't know what Nikon has done to get these results at ISO 6400 with the D7200, but I really like it. </p>