Thursday, February 24, 2011

Photography fun: The Nikon D700

Shutter 1/100 Aperture f/1.4 ISO 800 Tungsten 50mm
I am on the cusp of making my next camera purchase. To help figure out which one to buy - I'm considering the D7000 and the D700 - I rented the latter for the weekend from Pro Photo. Let me just say, the full frame is nice. Really nice. A fair chunk of the above photo would have been missing if I had taken the same shot using my D40. I set the vignetting in the camera so I didn't have to add it in PSE later during editing (note: the above photo wasn't edited). The extra weight doesn't bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. It feels like a solid camera and the controls are super handy, particularly the ISO setting, which on the D40X is buried in the menu. In good lighting, however, the results are remarkably similar, excepting the full frame vs. cropped difference.

Shutter 1/80 Aperture f/3.5 ISO 200 D40X
Shutter 1/80 Aperture f/3.5 ISO 200 D700

3 comments:

Abcdpdx said...

nice!!! ooh, I wonder if our camera does vignetting? did not realize your old camera is not full frame. it would be hard to go back to non-full-frame, for sure. I always think of my semi-pro. friend who does most of her personal shooting with her little point-and-shoot, though. not that you'll ever see me doing that when I can use Mr. Fancy pants camera.

Rachele said...

so is the D700 Henry comparison picture a higher resolution than the D40x comparison picture? I.e. could you crop the D700 to the area shown in the D40x and have just as good detail? Are these with the same lens?

I'm just asking because otherwise, it just seems like "a few steps forward" to get the same result with either camera.

Christie said...

Zozo - When I went up to Seattle with Hen, Megan, and Avery I only took my little point-and-shoot as an experiment. I would say one of my all time favorite shots of Hen that I took last year was one I caught using the manual mode on that camera.

Rachele - The D40X has 10mp and the D700 has 12.1. Neither of these is remotely close to the Canon 5D Mark II, which has a whopping 21. If you crop you should have better detail with the D700 than the D40X. Both shots were taken with the same lens from the same sitting position on the floor. (I didn't use a tripod but close enough for the purposes of this shooting moment.) I'm not so sure I'd see a huge difference shooting in my house. The real "greatness" of the D700 comes from its ability to shoot awesome photos in low light. And the full frame sensor (much like the old 35mm) vs. the cropped sensor.