tonybeach_1961

NIKON D500, 24mm, f/5.6, 1/2500, ISO280, shot on: 2021:05:15 12:52:32

A couple more from my front yard.

No, you are getting a different exposure to get a comparable result. Just because ACR might be handling the files differently doesn't mean they are not actually the same at the same exposure. I would want to see the actual Raw files before I would feel competent to comment on what's happening. That said, my suspicion is that this is a workflow issue and not an exposure issue.

I have to give an extra "shout out" for Mike's Barn Owl photograph!

Sorry if I'm being repetitive -- too many posts to sort through before I address this issue of Auto-WB being an accurate rendition of a sunset; it isn't, it's just the camera trying to make the colors neutral. The same applies if you use a WB reference during sunset, which makes sense because if you look at the WB reference in the light of the sunset it isn't going to be very white. I generally find the most accurate color for sunsets is based on a daylight WB, though I often push it to a higher Kelvin for the sky but might stick with daylight WB for other elements and then blend the two to get a realistic (if not somewhat idealized) rendition of the scene. OTOH, and related to that, I remember shooting a white piece of paper under an incandescent light and then using it to set the WB. Of course the resulting photo viewed on my calibrated monitor didn't look anything like what I saw with my eyes in front of me, specifically the wall and the lampshade were now neutral in the photo whereas looking at them I could see they were yellowish. Here's the thing though, the piece of paper beneath the incandescent light source appeared white to my eyes whereas if I corrected the WB in the photo to get the wall how I saw it then the piece of paper became more yellowish than how it looked to me as I sat their looking at it. Our brains do some interesting things. It's hard to say where the line between real and interpreted is, and I think it fluctuates some for all of us and to different degrees for each of us. That said, and going back to the sunset colors, I suspect there is a WB setting that most would agree correlates in the photograph with what they can see when they actually look at the sunset.

I'm thinking I should further clarify what the crops show. The three on the left are all 36 MP and the two on the right are 21 MP. The numbers displayed at the top are the original MP (I should have just written, D800, D500, and D300).

What your missing was my omission to explicitly state my approach, so my apologies for that. I wanted to arrive at equal output, so after the algorithm did just what you described I downsized the files to match the various other outputs. My assessment is that the files look rather bad fully upscaled, and besides that my goal is to prepare them for a printer at 300 ppi.

A 100% crop from the D800 on left, and to its right D500 resized to 36 MP, and in the center a D300 file resized to 36 MP. Second from the left is the native D500 file and to its right the D300 file resized to 21 MP. I also used Topaz NR set to Low for noise reduction and for enhancing. along with Smart Sharpening on all the files (then gave some of the sharpening back when I compressed the crops to a manageable file size for displaying here).

Might be excess production meets reduced demand and Sigma might have better anticipated that. It might also be that 18-35mm is more in the wide to normal range and is a 2x zoom versus the wide to super wide range that covers 1.5x and doesn't actually go wide enough for some people (my take on that last part is most people think they "need" to go wider than they probably should; about the only time I'm feeling constrained by 14mm on DX is when I'm in Yosemite Valley). I'm not sure about the utility of this sort of lens for me. I've always been a little reticent about toting around a "walk-around" zoom for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, so while I'll slap the zoom I have on my D500 when I'm walking around I don't think I can justify spending another $400 for an upgrade to it (I would lose some money selling my current lens, which makes only spending an extra $400 somewhat optimistic unless I get a beat-up copy). I'm thinking about the Sigma 50-100mm f/1.8 because that lens, like the Tokina 14-20mm, gets me capabilities on my D500 that would make it comparable to what I can do on my D800.

I think this brings us full circle back to the original topic of this thread. Whether or not there will be a D7 or not, or any Nikon DSLR updates for that matter, which isn't that relevant to me. What the migration to mirrorless represents for me is an opportunity to pick up F-mount bargains which will breath some new life into my "old" cameras. It isn't just the AF-S 80-400 zoom that's come down in price either, I see a lot of deals at KEH such as the NIKKOR 24-120mm f/4G VR in good condition for about $400 (I'm fine with my NIKKOR AF-S DX 16-85mm f/3.5-5.8G VR that weighs less and cost me about $200), or the deal I got on a brand new Tokina AT-X Pro 14-20mm f/2 for about $400 (I think the original price was over twice that), so in general I think prices on F-mount lenses are coming down.