All Things (Sort of) Equal
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I’ve had two official shoots now with my new camera. I’m loving it! But here’s my problem. I took the photo above with the new Nikon D3 this morning before worship began. Take a look at the meta data below. ISO 3200! With my old camera, a Nikon D200, any image taken above ISO 800 would have had so many ugly digital artifacts, or noise, in the picture (way uglier than film grain) that I would have spent quite a bit of time messing with the image in Photoshop in an attempt to “fix” it.
ISO 3200. 1/100s at f/5.6. 14-24 mm lens. Focal length: 24 mm
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The youth choir was singing this morning. I’m thrilled that I was able to take this picture, and in the high resolution version, the beautiful faces of our young singers are sharply in focus and there’s no troubling graininess to deal with. Plus, because I can use such a high ISO, that also means I can shoot with a much more narrow aperture, allowing for a much larger focal plane. This means that the faces in the front row will be as sharply focused as the faces in the back row. Awesome!
ISO 3200. 1/100s at f/5.6. 28-70 mm lens. Focal length: 35 mm
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So what’s the problem, you ask? See how nice that picture looks? I did practically nothing to it except give it a very slight saturation bump. (I always do that with RAW files because the camera expects that the photographer wants a custom level of saturation in RAW mode).
ISO 6400. 1/100s at f/5.6. 28-70 mm lens. Focal length: 62 mm
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Here’s the problem: to contrast, this is a picture from Christmas Eve of the Christmas Pageant cast taken with my old camera, a Nikon D200. If you compare this picture with the one above it, you might think they look reasonably similar, and they do, but KNOW THIS: for the top three pictures, I spent virtually NO time tweaking them on the computer. For this one, I spent at least half an hour on that one image. And it still looks yucky! Admittedly, the lighting conditions are not the same, so it’s a flawed test, but it’s such a vast difference in usable camera settings that I now know that next year’s picture of the pageant cast will be SO much clearer!
In the high resolution version of the picture above, the faces are blurry and there’s noticeable grain noise. I removed as much noise as I could in Photoshop, but when you remove noise, sharpness decreases exponentially. Plus, there is some layer masking in that shot to try to even out the light and dark areas, and yet it still looks uneven.
I give up. Thing is, I have lots of pictures from Christmas Eve (before I got my new camera) that I still need to edit. *sigh*
(Nikon D200) ISO 800. 1/100s at f/3.5. 17-50 mm lens. Actual focal length: 36 mm. (Focal length equivalent to full frame camera: 54 mm)
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But I still love the pageant pictures! If you go to my church, be sure to check the bulletin board outside the education office next Sunday for some prints! Above, I love this picture of Sophie as baby Jesus! Isn’t her family adorable?
This is not the first time we’ve seen Sophie on the blog. I was so happy when the church staff asked her family to be in the pageant. First of all, I’m the director, and secondly, I’m the resident photographer AND I’ve been documenting Sophie’s first year since her mom’s maternity session. These pictures from the pageant will add so much to Sophie’s “First Year” book! Keep watching this space for her family’s Christmas card design coming soon too.
(Nikon D200) ISO 800. 1/80s at f/4.5. 17-50 mm lens. Actual focal length: 34 mm. (Focal length equivalent to full frame camera: 51 mm).
That’s it for today’s D3 vs. D200 discussion. Bottom line: I am so excited by the places my new camera will take me! Woo hoo! And SO much less time tweaking on the computer! Yay!
Oooh! Here’s one more of Sophie and her mom and dad.
So cute! (She’s smiling at her grandma!)
I love my church family!
Congrats on landing a D3. Ours is in transit and I got to touch one at Imaging USA. What’s so cool is that it extends the possibilities for shooting in low light without having to make those tradeoffs. The sad thing is that it will make our other cameras sad and feel neglected
I hope all is well in this early new year!
Comment by Damon — January 9, 2008 @ 12:56 am