Old vs New Nikon DSLR - Will there be a difference on the WEB?

[NickTrop]

Just to give an example of what those of us in the "of course there's a difference" camp are saying, here's a shot taken with the D700 this afternoon in town - this is a straight Jpeg with no processing except a small S curve and a resize. No noise reduction, nothing done to the levels, no photoshoppery. Shot at, get this, ISO6400!

Extremely impressive. Question. Is this scene actually overexposed? In other words, the brighness levels in the scene look something like 2.8, 1/30th, 400 ASA to my eye. Do you know what I mean? Was the actual scene in reality much darker than the picture and in effect this shot is way overexposed (though pleasingly so...)?
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[Steveh]

Extremely impressive. Question. Is this scene actually overexposed? In other words, the brighness levels in the scene look something like 2.8, 1/30th, 400 ASA to my eye. Do you know what I mean? Was the actual scene in reality much darker than the picture and in effect this shot is way overexposed (though pleasingly so...)?
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Thanks Nick.

Yes, it does look quite a bit lighter than it did in real life - I think it was actually about 1/50th at f5.6 at ISO 6400. You get a lot of light in from the huge windows but it was rainy outside, and the camera has slightly overcompensated for the amount of dark wood in the bottom two thirds of the frame. I thought it was a good illustration of the amazingly clean files you can get out of a D700/D3 at silly ISOs, but I agree it needs some atmosphere adding back in PP.

This one was at ISO 1600 and is closer to the actual balance of light and shade in the chapel - again pretty much straight out of camera, with just a tiny amount of dodging to the latticework and the pillars:

 

[MaxElmar]

No difference in resolution. Big difference in noise for low light shooting. If all your shots are well-lit - no biggie. Available darkness, anyone?

I, for one, have not been impressed with the noise performance of the APS size sensors since 6mp went to 10 (D80) then 12.8mp (D300), but D3 and D700 are in a different universe. With the D80, D200, & D300.... the in-camera NR sucks the life right out of a photo. When you turn it (the NR) off, you get the detail back, but it's 2004 again as far as noise is concerned. IMO.

I use D300 daily on a professional basis... love it, but it's a back up once D700 arrives.

Chris L.

 

[NickTrop]

Yes - the low light work is very impressive. Incredible, really. Nod to the digital world here. But the 700 and cameras in this class are more than I want to pay for a still camera. And - hell, I just love, love, love film and shooting the vintage film cameras 🙂 At the end of the day, that's what it really boils down to. I used to rationalize over costs. Even at the low end, a few years ago, DSLR entry was like $1500 on the lower "Digital Rebel"/D70 end. Now? It's like $500. On the used market you can get one for $250-ish it seems? So I can't even use price as an excuse anymore.

Might as well come clean...

But when this low light performance is put into a camera the size of - say, an M3. And it costs in the $500 range???? That will be a very tempting day indeed for this film diehard.

Why would you even want to use a flash with low-light performance like this?

 

[Kevin]

The D700 does do High-speed flash sync? According to Nikon it does - up to 1/8000

Not in manual (off camera) it doesn't. The CCD sensor of the D70 will sync using off-camera radio-triggered flash at 1/1600. It will sync even faster when using a spliced cable. This is because the physical shutter of the D70 doesn't go any faster than 1/250. Faster than that and the electronic shutter controls the shorter exposure.

AFAIK the D700 has a completely different sensor and doesn't do this trick. The 1/8000 sync you are referring to is on-camera high-speed sync, which is a different thing altogether. For this reason alone the OP should actually keep the D70 if he decides to purchase the D700.

Personally, if I really need to shoot some images at ISO 6400, I'll bring along one of my p&s film cameras (Natura, Minilux or CM) and push a high ISO film.

 

[ZeissFan]

The D700 is much larger (and heavier) than the D70. Keep that in mind as well, because weight can become an issue if you'll be carrying several lenses with you for a day's outing. The body (no lens) is 995 grams, or 35.1 ounces.

There probably are instances where the D700 will give you a clear advantage. But for most outdoor daylight photos, the difference begins to narrow when the final destination is for Web display.