More Thoughts on the Nikon D5

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

More Thoughts on the Nikon D5

Okay, so the Nikon D5 has started to slowly trickle into the hands of people now (though sadly not those belonging to yours truly) and yesterday I was sent a link to some downloadable D5 RAW files.

That link is HERE for those of you that might want a look for yourself.

If you have received this post via email PLEASE view it on the blog itself.

Also, as a matter of interest, Nikon have made the D5 User Manual available HERE.

As I’ve said in earlier posts, I’m quite excited at the thought of the new AF system giving the Nikon shooter access to more Canon-esque controls, but image quality in terms of sensor output and the recorded .NEF are always paramount in my mind.

So I jumped all over the above-linked RAW files, but I have to say that looking at them in Lightroom (neutralised of course as per my previous post HERE) I’m not as overly enamoured as I thought I was going to be.

I’ve seen this camera called ‘The New Lord of Darkness’ with much play being made of its high ISO capability, so let’s have a look at that shall we. ISO range is 100 to 102,000 expandable to 50 and 3,276,800 – ISO stupid and then some!

Before we go any further, I suspect that the downloadable files are Lossless Compressed!

Want to see what 3,276,800ISO looks like?

All shots are by a user named Andy (not me) posted on NikonGear.net – thanks go to him for sharing.

ISO 3,286,800 – Image is NOT full resolution as it’s too big for WordPress!

ISO 3,286,800 or H5 – full resolution crop – CLICK to view at full size.

This image is, honestly, unusable SO WHY charge you the buyer for the ability to produce it??

Let’s have a look at the high native ISO 102,400:

Nikon D5 highest native 102,400 ISO – click for full rez view.

Okay, so in certain circumstances this image would be useful for press reproduction, and I can see the appeal for photojournalists – this level of performance will earn them money, and lots of it.

But I suspect that 75%+ of all global D5 purchasers in its first 12 months will NOT benefit from this performance because they are not in that market place. If you produce weddings shots that look like this then you’re going to get sued up the Ying Yang for sure.

What is interesting is a link on Nikon Rumours which was kindly sent to me yesterday by Paul Atkins:

Photographic Dynamic Range comparison of Nikon D4 and Nikon D5.

This is a ‘live graph’ which you can access directly via this link HERE

This is a comparison of PDR, not EDR, and you will not find the D5 listed at DXO Mark at this moment in time. If you want to get your head around the difference between PDR and EDR then click HERE or HERE. But be warned, MATHS ALERT!

Below 1600 ISO the D5 has a significantly lower PDR than the D4, putting it very much in line with the Canon 1DX at <1600ISO – see HERE.

To my mind the D5 is an all-action camera with good low light capabilities; as is/was the D3 in its time, D4 and D4s and Canons 1DX.

As such, lower ISO performance is not really important – it’s a question of ‘horses for courses’ and the right tool for the job. But the fact that the PDR is lower came as a surprise.

Time was, not so long ago, that I was ‘capped’ at sub 800 ISO for wildlife/action photography – the D3 put paid to that and 1200 to 1600 ISO became my working values when needed.

The D4 and Canon 1DX shifted the goal posts again – 3200 ISO became a standard AND both cameras had AutoISO that worked perfectly.

Nobody with a working brain chooses to work at high ISOs unless they are driven to do so by a need for high shutter speeds in low light – no matter how well a camera sensor functions, image quality will always increase with decreasing ISO.

So examination of the above PDR curves clearly indicate that the true advantage of the D5 over the D4 is on average around 1.3 stops above 1600 ISO – which is a good thing, but it’s not exactly what I’d call revolutionary. We experience pretty much the same increase with every Nikon D FX release.

If PDR increases then the Signal to Noise ratio – S/N – pretty much appears to increase by the same value, so a visual comparison of D4 and D5 images shot at higher than 1600 ISO will show around 1.3Ev to 1.5Ev of reduced ISO noise.

What I do like is the IQ improvements at 8000 ISO and above. 8000 ISO on a D4 is bad, and its top native 12800 ISO is awful. Based on the downloaded raw files, anyone could process a D5 12800 ISO image at full resolution to pass QC at ANY stock agency – just go and download those RAWS on the link at the top of the post and see for yourself.

25,600 ISO – well I might be tempted to down-res those by perhaps 1000 to 1500 pixels on the long edge to help with noise reduction a bit, and chucked onto A3 or A3+ print you would never really notice the noise.

Do I like what I see – yes I do!

Is the D5 the new ‘Lord of Darkness’ – no it bloomin’ well isn’t! Lord of Low Light – quite possibly. The ISO H1 to H5 images go from questionable to crap in my opinion.

Like the Canon 1DX, I’m not impressed at lower ISO values than 1600 – I can get the same or better performance with a D4 or 4S – admittedly though with a lower pixel count.

So overall Andy, does the D5 impress? Well, still being in a hands-off situation I’m not going to commit to a full answer there. When all is said and done, the AF performance will be the key issue for me – a high DR/low noise image of an out of focus subject in no use to me – or anyone else for that matter!

The Way I See Things As They Stand At This Very Moment.

The KING of low ISO with high resolution DSLRs is the Nikon D800E – but it’s not without its limitations. And before you start screaming 5DS at me – it’s a nail, go away..

The best all-round VFM DSLR is the Nikon D810 – a proper jack of all trades who’s only weakness is the occasionally questionable Nikon AF.

The best DSLR autofocus for action is without doubt the Canon 1DX – fabulous AF, crap ergonomics, crap sensor.

The best DSLR sensor for action is the Nikon D4 or 4S – great ergonomics, great sensor, sometimes dubious AF.

But, going on the raw files I’ve downloaded, I strongly suspect that the D5 is going to have the best action sensor title stitched up and dethrone the D4/4S.

Will it dethrone the Canon 1DX in the action AF department – no idea is my truthful answer. I suppose anything is possible, but if it did, would the soon-to-be-released 1DXMk2 take the throne back – quite possibly.

Become a patron from as little as $1 per month, and help me produce more free content.

Patrons gain access to a variety of FREE rewards, discounts and bonuses.

Canon 1DX MkII

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Canon 1DX MkII versus Nikon D5?

700x350

Holy Smokes – I’m getting inundated with questions since yesterdays launch announcement regarding the Canon 1DX MkII.

Everything is hypothetical at the moment because I’m not expecting to see a D5 until mid-March, and the 1DX Mk II around mid-April to May.

Trying to compare, or do an ‘X versus Y’ is really something of a pointless excercise, even if the two bodies were ‘on the shelf’ right now, and I say this because:

Most potential purchasers of either body are already heavily invested in one system or the other.
A direct comparison is only of real use to someone who isn’t heavily invested in glass from one system or the other – in which case you shouldn’t be looking at either camera body because both of them will chew you up and spit you out in bubbles.

Remember, a good camera is only as good as the glass that feeds it AND the twat that’s doing the driving!

But the perenial Canon v Nikon question will always be there like the elephant in the room, so here are the general specs for the two camera bodies:

Sensor Format

Canon 1DX MkII: Full frame
Nikon D5: Full frame

Megapixels

Canon 1DX MkII: 21.5 megapixels (20.2MP effective)
Nikon D5: 21.33 megapixels (20.8MP effective)

Max Resolution

Canon 1DX MkII: 5472 x 3648
Nikon D5: 5568 x 3712

Aspect Ratios

Canon 1DX MkII: 3:2
Nikon D5: 3:2 and 4:5

File Formats

Canon 1DX MkII: JPEG, RAW for stills. MJPEG, MOV, MP4, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 for video.
Nikon D5: JPEG, RAW, TIFF for stills. MOV, MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 for video.

Bit Depth

Canon 1DX MkII: 14-bit
Nikon D5: 14-bit

Memory Card

Canon 1DX MkII: 1 CFast and 1 CompactFlash
Nikon D5: 2 XQD or 2 CompactFlash

Autofocus Points

Canon 1DX MkII: 61 phase detection points, with 41 cross-type
Nikon D5: 153 phase detection points, with 99 cross-type

Viewfinder

Canon 1DX MkII: 100% coverage and ~0.76x magnification
Nikon D5: 100% coverage and ~0.72x magnification

Rear Display

Canon 1DX MkII: 3.2-inch touchscreen with 1.62 million dots
Nikon D5: 3.2-inch touchscreen with 2.359 million dots

ISO Range

Canon 1DX MkII: 100-51200 (50-409600 when extended)
Nikon D5: 100-102400 (50-3280000 when extended)

Metering Methods

Canon 1DX MkII: Evaluative metering, partial metering, spot metering
Nikon D5: 3D Color Matrix metering, center-weighted average metering, spot metering, highlight weighted

Continuous Shooting

Canon 1DX MkII: 14FPS at 20.2 MP for up to 170 RAW photos (16FPS with mirror lockup)
Nikon D5: 12FPS at 20.8 MP for up to 200 RAW photos (14FPS with mirror lockup)

4K Video Recording

Canon 1DX MkII: 4096 x 2160p at 59.94 fps, 50 fps, 29.97 fps, 25 fps, 24 fps, 23.98 fps
Nikon D5: 3840 x 2160p at 30 fps, 25 fps, 24 fps

4K Clip Length

Canon 1DX MkII: 30 minutes
Nikon D5: 3 minutes (though rumour has it this will be extended).*

Weight

Canon 1DX MkII: 3.37 lb (1530 g)
Nikon D5: 3.11 lb (1415 g)

Price

Canon 1DX MkII: £5199
Nikon D5: £5199

*Nikon have been denying this being down to weather-sealing and over-heat problems, but the D5 uses the power-hungry H.264 video codec – 30 minutes record time might result in an overheat problem similar to Chernobyl.

The Canon 1DX II uses the motion jpeg (MJPG) codec – easier on the camera but needing BIG transfer bandwidth, hence the need for those rather expensive C-Fast 2.0 memory cards!

But from a stills photography PoV there isn’t generally a lot between the two cameras in terms of image size and megapixel count.

Both cameras are more than capable of shooting long continuous burst of RAW files at very high frame rates – useful for the long-lens sports photographer where depth of field even wide open is measured in meters. Any marginal errors in the predictive autofocus calculations made by the camera become masked by the available DoF – even with wide open apertures. see HERE for more explanation!

But when it comes to wildlife photography, birds in flight, and birds flying directly at the camera in particular, one does need to ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts’….

As I have pointed out many times in the past, two of the biggest contributors to poor AF performance with fast moving, closing subjects at sub 25 metres are:

High Frame Rate
Too many active AF points

So unless I’m shooting a ‘manual focus trap’ like this:

wildlife photography, common Kestrel, photography technique

Common Kestrel Landing
©Andy Astbury/Wildlife in Pixels

I’m not really interested in shooting at 3 trillion frames per second – buy my AF Guide for Nikon and Canon for further explanation!

The Canon 1DX II is described as having new predictive AF algorithms working with the new EOS Intelligent Tracking and Recognition AF – this might increase the effective ‘sharp capture’ frame rate in AI-Servo from the 1DX Mk1 sweet-spot of 5 or 6 fps with an f4 lens; then again it might not! The sooner someone lends me one then the sooner I’ll be able to find out and let you know…..

I’m also pleased to see an increase in frame coverage of the 61-point High Density Reticular AF II system – this seems to be up by 24% on the original 1DX.

The overall mark changes to the 1DX stills AF system are not quite as radical as those between the Nikon D4/4S and new D5 – I’m still trying to get my head around the idea of all those AF points.

So before we all get too excited I’ll just say this: 90 percent plus of people who take pictures using autofocus DON’T actually know how it works.

Predictive AF is exactly what it says on the tin – it ‘predicts’ where the subject WILL BE when the shutter opens for the NEXT frame; and while the mirror is DOWN the AF controller/motor MOVE the lens focus to THAT PREDICTED position.

For a closing subject, the lens focus is physically AHEAD of the subject prior to the shutter opening – that’s right, a bird flies into the plane of focus….and don’t confuse plane of focus with focal plane either!

So there’s a lot going on when we shoot in Canon AI-Servo or Nikon CF, and to get a sequence of sharp continuous frames….

GX2R1981 GX2R1985 GX2R1989 GX2R1990 GX2R1991 GX2R1994

we have to regulate the amount of subject information that the camera tries to handle. And the commonest error people make is to supply TOO MUCH of that information by using too many AF points. That mistake is often further compounded by allowing the camera to ‘decide’ what it thinks it needs to focus on by using some form of auto-area focus mode.

This ‘overhead’ of information takes time to process. And the only time the camera has available to process this information AND move the lens focus is that split second when the mirror is down between frames and the shutter is closed. So the general and fairly fool-proof way of working is to use as few AF points as you need to cover the part of the subject you want sharp focus on; and then help the camera out further by giving it that extra bit of processing time/ more mirror down-time – lower frame rate!

So some of what these two cameras are offering isn’t exactly beneficial on the face of it.

But time will tell!

Become a patron from as little as $1 per month, and help me produce more free content.

Patrons gain access to a variety of FREE rewards, discounts and bonuses.

Nikon D5

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Andrew Astbury

Nikon D5 – My Initial Thoughts

Nikon D5

My initial thoughts/questions about this much-awaited offering from Nikon have always revolved around ONE item – AUTOFOCUS.

For a long time Canon have had the march on Nikon in the AF department – simply because of the “customisation” of the cameras AF operating criteria Canon give their users.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the speed machine Canon 1DX in comparison with Nikons D4/D4S.

Nikon have only ever allowed a customisable Focus Tracking with lock-on (FTLo):

_D3C6345

Whereas Canon give us:

_DSC3994

Nikon FTLo equates directly with Canon Tracking Sensitivity (TS), but Canon gives you custom control over Acceleration/Deceleration Tracking (ADT) – something that Nikon have consistently failed to do.

On the D4S etc there are two ADT presets, but you can’t access them directly because they are hidden inside the Dynamic Area AF modes.

I’m not going to explain in detail what ADT and TS/FTLo do – for that you’ll need to obtain my AF Guide HERE – but in very simple terms Canon TS/Nikon FTLo control the autofocus system resistance to MAJOR CHANGE and Canon ADT controls its resistance to MINOR CHANGE – two massively different variants that can effect huge differences in autofocus performance on moving subjects.

And it’s this lack of control over resistance to MINOR change independent of MAJOR change resistance settings on Nikon that is responsible for the superiority of the Canon system.

So, Nikon had the opportunity to draw level with Canon on this front with the new D5.

Have they done so?

Well, they won’t lend me one to test, and I can’t afford to order one, but after doing some digging around I find the answer (in principle anyway):

Nikon D5 and D500 Autofocus customisable settings.

YES – they have (as long as it works in practise that is!).

The FTLo menu now has two variables – Blocked Shot Response; which is the conventional Nikon custom control though under a name/title that’s more indicative of its function.

But now Nikon offer us Subject Motion too – and it’s this control function that I’ve been crying out for. This equates to Canon ADT or Acceleration/Deceleration tracking.

My experiences with Canon have always led me to discount -2 and +2 ADT settings, as in my own Bird in Flight photography terms they bring nothing to the table. So perhaps Nikon have really done their homework for once.

The other improvement I like is the 2x XQD slot option for the Nikon D5 – that would make my life a heck of a lot easier for sure.

Nothing else really excites me about the new Nikon D5 – and the touch screen on the back might prove to be less than a fun thing when wearing gloves in -20C conditions.

But the potential for the new Multicam 20K AF system is what excites me the most; it theoretically puts this DSLr body at the top of the pile for wildlife photography.

It’s not often I see a new body that I wish I could get my hands on immediately but the D5 is different – I want one NOW!

ADDENDUM

It would appear that there is a short-coming on the D5 4K video recording facility – see here.

For recording stock clips this wouldn’t be a problem for me, but a maximum of 3 minutes of 4K recording might not suite everyone. Is there a sensor over-heat problem?

Strangely the D500 can do 30 minutes with a cropped sensor – which should run hotter you’d think.

If there are things “wrong” with the D5 now, and they are not corrected by the time they hit the retailers, or by the first firmware update BE CAREFUL…

This is where D4 buyers got caught out – they wait 12 months and bring out an S-version.

Become a patron from as little as $1 per month, and help me produce more free content.

Patrons gain access to a variety of FREE rewards, discounts and bonuses.