Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Nikon D7100 vs. Nikon D600 low light test shots - preview


D7100-0925-201303192347.jpg

I took some test shots to compare the D7100 and D600 image quality in low light.  I haven't had the time to write them up but if you want to check out the full resolution shots *right now*, here they are:

D7100 Low Light Test Shots
D600 Low Light Test Shots




Also check out the Flickr D7100 Group for samples and the latest discussions about the D7100.

35 comments:

  1. what a teaser mic. But from what I see in your images it seems that the D600 has a slight leg up on the D7100. I just got my D600 in today, but seems to have focusing in low light (room with thin curtains during the day)..certainly not moonlight by any means. I am also certain I see oil spots in my images (but not sure if that is just paranoia from all the reading). I will take it to gymnastics tonight to see how well it performs. BTW, is there a reason the D600 would not go back f/16 with the 85mm f/1.8G? I could not seem to get it to f/22 or higher.

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    1. Hi Dina. For low light conditions, try the center AF point of the D600. It works better in low light than the other AF points.

      About the oil spots, so far I have not seen any concrete evidence of oil spots, just dust spots. You might want to check out the posts I did on the D600 spots: http://betterfamilyphotos.blogspot.com/p/nikon-d600-review-and-resource-page.html

      Nothing wrong with your 85 1.8 or D600 - f/16 is the smallest available aperture for the 85 1.8G :)

      Best regards,
      Mic

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    2. good to know. Thanks Mic. I am not sure if it is dust or oil, but it is there. I am going to play around with it some more after I get a full charge on my battery. I will probably turn this one in on Monday for a replacement D600 as someone else who shoot low light, high action has not had any issues with the D600's performance.

      Delete
  2. These are not D7100 pictures, but D5200 pictures.

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    1. These are actually d7100 shots. I had to change the metadata to import it into lightroom http://betterfamilyphotos.blogspot.com/2013/03/importing-d7100-raw-files-into-lightroom.html

      Best regards,
      Mic

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  3. After I commented, I thought that may be the case, since I knew you must be shooting raw, and I had earlier read the forum thread about a 'hack' on how to do that.

    Thanks for responding.

    I'll be buying a 7100. After saving for a long time, I'm converting from my point and shoot (with manual controls) to DSL.

    I'll be buying a prime, 35mm or 50mm, still deciding. Also getting a zoom.. Do you suggest I get the kit 15-105 (for $300)? It seems it's only mediocre. But I like the flexibility of that range. Is there a better option with similar focal range?

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    1. Hi Oscar. Wow that's a huge leap from p&s to D7100! Congratulations!

      I don't have experience with the 18-105 VR... I heard the 16-85 VR is a little sharper. I've also heard good things about the Sigma 17-50 OS. When I had the Tamron 17-50 VC I was happy with that too (it outperforms the Nikon 17-55 according to DXO).

      Best regards,
      Mic

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    2. Well, I've taken 46,0000 pics with my P&S cameras in the last 9 years, so it's time to upgrade. And I figure I'll spend 2x the amount (vs. say a 5200), and I'll get something I can continue to grow into.

      Thanks for the suggestions, I'll look at those lens options.

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    3. Thanks Oscar. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the D7100 in the hands of an experienced photographer.

      Best regards,
      Mic

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  4. Wowzers!!!! I must say the d600 have the edge though.. ^_^ but the d7100 is almost there..

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  5. You don't have a K-5 IIs on hand do you? I think a comparison between the 7100 and K-5 IIs would be interesting. The d7100 should have slightly more detail in theory.
    Here the d600 seems to have at 1 plus stop advantage in iso, its unfortunate that the camera costing an extra grand has worse autofocus. (correct me if I am wrong here)

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    1. Hi, sorry I don't have the K-5 IIs. I haven't compared the D7100 and K-5 IIs but I think part of the problem is that I don't think there are any lenses out there that are good enough to utilize the resolution of the D7100, given its very small pixel size. So, with the lens as a bottleneck, there might not be a significant difference between the D7100 and K-5 IIs. Just my speculation.

      The D7100's AF is better than the D600 because of the better coverage of the frame and the better AF algorithm, but I think the D600 is no slouch when it comes to AF. See here (under "Autofocus performance"): http://betterfamilyphotos.blogspot.com/p/nikon-d600-review-and-resource-page.html

      Best regards,
      Mic

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  6. The pictures in full resolution much sharper with the D7100 then the D600. I don't know if I'm the best person at comparing these, but the picture of the shirts with the D7100, at 6400ISO, does have quite a bit of noise compared to the D600 at 1600ISO, but it also looks sharper (to me).

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    1. Hi Pr0! I think part of the apparent sharpness of the D7100 at 6400 ISO may be because the noise/grain can make a shot seem sharper even though there is actually no additional detail: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sharpness.htm

      Best regards,
      Mic

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    2. Hi Mic, but even the images with low ISO like 100 or 200 are sharper with the D7100. I don't think that applies if it's show with low ISO, does it? Also, since they seem sharper (to me), this is good since you can use bump up the noise reduction a bit more (in pp) since these are pretty sharp, if you were to shoot these at higher ISO like 3200 or 6400. Does seem correct, or am I missing something here?

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    3. Hi Pr0. To be honest, I myself have not had the time to examine these files. (I said to myself I would take a quick nap at 3am but I ended up too tired to finish the job last night! lol.) You may be right that the D7100 is sharper.

      Best regards,
      Mic

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  7. Hi,
    can you explain, why all the "D7100"-photos say that they were taken with a D5200? It seems to me, that you forgot to delet the EXIF-Files, to make your "illusion" perfect.

    ;-)

    Nice try.

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    1. Hello my friend. You have every right to be suspicious but I guarantee you these were taken with the D7100. I just had to change the metadata to D5200 to allow me to import them to Lightroom. See comment above as well. http://betterfamilyphotos.blogspot.com/2013/03/importing-d7100-raw-files-into-lightroom.html

      Best regards,
      Mic

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  8. Hi again, my comments on Part 1 of you review were for comparison between D7100 and D600, and low-light performance of D7100. So, thanks for covering both those. I can see that D600 pictures are a bit cleaner even at web resolutions. I am only worried about the dust that entire WWW is screaming about but don't know how much of a problem it is. If it just needs me to use a blower type cleaner once a month, I'll be OK with it.

    I am also waiting for more test results on the WWW to see if anyone complains about dust problems with D7100. So far I see that it has been an issue only on FX bodies.

    I like the D7100 with 16-85mm and 70-300mm FX. Together, this combination costs as much as the D600 body. My willingness to spend a little more on 70-300mm as opposed to 55-300 is that it can be used on FX camera if I upgrade later.

    I have been following your tests since Part 1. I am trying to decide whether to buy a D7100 or D7000 (if this new one doesn't offer significant benefit), or even wait for Canon's 70D (which is in eternal wait state). I was preparing for an event in May but that is postponed as well. So, I guess I have more time to wait for elaborate results.

    Thanks again for all your tests.
    Satya.

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    1. Hi Satya! About the dust issue, I would say it depends how frequently you shoot at f/16 or narrower. If you shoot a lot at those apertures, then probably you would notice the spots more often and it could become an annoyance. Otherwise, if you're like me then occasionally using the blower will probably be enough.

      About the D7100, I took a shot just now at f/16 and saw 3 faint spots visible at 1:1 - 2 at the corner and one at the top. Please note I have about 1000 shots on the D7100 and I have been changing lenses fairly frequently (usually at least once every time I use the camera). I'll take a closer look at a narrower aperture when I get home.

      That sounds like a good combination of lenses! Actually, one of my favorite photographers, Bob Krist, uses that same combination.

      As for D7100 vs. D7000, check out the discussions on the Flickr Nikon D7100 Group. Folks are generously sharing their results there.

      Thanks for your support. I will be working on part 2 of the review!

      Best regards,
      Mic

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  9. Hi Mic, I'm reading Lightroom needs a workaround to process D7100 NEFs.
    Why haven't you done with View NX?
    I guess NX might provide better noise treatment, because ACR is created via reverse engineering while NX is directly supported by Nikon.

    Seb

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    1. Hi Seb. That workaround is only temporary. I expect that Adobe will release a true raw profile for the D7100 soon.

      As for ViewNX, I really detest that software. It's extremely slow and on the d7100 files it crashes often on my computer. My laptop is not that slow (i5, 6GB memory) but with ViewNX it is very slow.

      Regarding the quality of the raw conversion, check out iShootShows' comparison between Capture NX and Lightroom: http://www.ishootshows.com/2010/01/22/lightroom-3-vs-nikon-capture-nx-2/ That comparison was a few years ago. LR4 is even better than LR3.

      Honestly, I don't buy the logic of supposed incompatibility due to reverse engineering. That is true sometimes but I just evaluate based on results. So, for example, the Sigma 85 1.4 is faster at autofocusing than the Nikon 85 1.4G (according to Ryan Brenizer). I don't care if the Sigma got there through reverse engineering or through elves in their workshop. If it's faster, then the fact is that it is faster. :)

      Best regards,
      Mic

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    2. Hi Mic,
      yes, it's true, facts are more important then how you got them :)

      Some time ago I had tried for a period LR1.2 and beta LR3, with my still owned "old" D70s NEF. What I could see was ACR/LR "altered" the colors respect to View NX, expecially purples (like flowers') and the skin tones.
      It was the time I understood it wasn't only a matter of Adobe RGB/sRGB profile but of how the colors where "rendered".

      At Nikon IT forum they said it was because NX read the NEF in the "Nikon's way", so I supposed NX was better :)

      Anyway, I can see the D3 files are developed without any error, or color shift.

      Thanks again, Seb

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    3. Hi Seb. The D70s!!! cool. I sold my D70 a few months ago and I miss the unlimited sync speed. Anyway, getting back on topic, that's true about ViewNX and CaptureNX. Their colors are exactly the same as what you see on the LCD preview screen.

      Adobe's standard profile is a little different (not necessarily worse, just different). Lightroom also includes profiles to emulate the Nikon picture styles (standard, neutral, portrait, etc.), but aren't exactly the same as the Nikon colors. So if you don't mind waiting a while to process files, ViewNX and CaptureNX are fine.

      Best regards,
      Mic

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    4. Hi Mic, can you provide the NEFs for download?
      I'm curious to see them in View NX. I updated it today :)

      Seb

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    5. Hi Seb. Good news: Imaging Resource has uploaded their D7100 samples, including NEFs
      http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/nikon-d7100/nikon-d7100A7.HTM

      Best regards,
      Mic

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    6. Hi Mic, thank you ;)

      Anyway, I'm not sure if my conclusions are right or not but it sometimes seems to me the focus is not exactly the same in all the images.

      I've downloaded several JPEGs (all referring to NEFs):
      D600hSLI03200NR1.jpg, D600hSLI03200NR2D.jpg

      D600hSLI06400NR0.jpg, D600hSLI06400NR1.jpg, D600hSLI06400NR2D.jpg


      D700hSLI03200.jpg, D700hSLI06400.jpg


      D7100hSLI01600NR1.jpg,
      D7100hSLI03200NR0.jpg, D7100hSLI03200NR1.jpg

      and compared on my laptop monitor at the same view size (that was the maximum 100% of D700), so to "simulate" how a print could be.

      Well, there are some parts of the test image that seem to me better still in D700 files, while ther are other that look better in D600 and D7100. I'll tell you my impressions.

      ISO 3200.
      The D700 looks "cleaner", may be a little softer (less details) but more usable, expecially in "all days photography" or portraits. For example in "D700hSLI03200.jpg" the pink and orange tissues (above the bottles) look rich of details and without noise.
      D7100 provides about the same details but more noise.

      But on the bottles the results seem to reverse a bit. I can see more details in D7100 @ ISO 3200 in "Fiddler" bottle than in D700, but about the same details in D600.

      But D600 seems to miss some detail boosting the ISO speed to 6400, but really a little bit of them. It seems D600hSLI06400NR2D.jpg gives the same of D7100hSLI03200NR1.jpg, but in a different way than D700hSLI03200.jpg.

      ISO 6400
      D700 looks to me better than D7100, or I can say more usable. Yes, on the "Samuel Smith" bottle I can see more details in D7100 @ ISO 3200 than in D700 @ ISO 6400, but it seems to mee I cannot see more in D600 @ 6400.

      So, I suppose D7100, D600 and D700 (still on the game!) have different behaviours to light (and poor light).

      D600 seems to be the best among those three, but in average light it seems to have less than 1 stop of "gain" against the D7100. In poor light I think only ISO 1600 on D7100 is comparable to ISO 6400 of D600/D700.

      I suppose the differences are about less then 1 stop between D7100 and D600 in average/good light at high ISO, but more than 1 stop (1.5? 1.7 stops?) between D7100 and D600. Also it seems to me that comparing to D700 the D7100 is more noisy and with some more grain (more like high ISO films than high ISO digital noise in Fx sensors) and is about 1 stop worse in all light conditions.

      What do you think about? I hope this is only due to the fact Adobe hasn't released yet the specific codecs to properly develop D7100 files.
      In fact, I feel strange the photografic industry has not decided to stay at 16Mpxl on Dx improving only the responsiviness of sensors to low light and hight dynamic range. It wouldn't be a good news to know we can have more Mpxl but less usability, would it?

      Bye, Seb

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  10. For the ISO 100 images, it appears that the D600 is better at texture reproduction on the "models" cheek/skin, but it is hard to tell because the depth of field and focus points look a little bit different on each image. So maybe the D7100 is better at processing out the noise that would otherwise exist, but some detail is lost as a result?... or perhaps it's due to the smaller pixel size of the D7100? Any thoughts on the texture reproduction of an FX versus a DX? The eye shadow colors also looked a bit more vibrant on the D600 images. The D7100 still looks pretty great through! Thanks for the comparison images!

    Greg

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  11. After examining both sets of images very closely, you quickly begin to see that the Nikon D7100 takes after it's older brother the D7000 in lot's of ways. Yes high iso's are better but this is at the price of poor colour as a trade off at high iso's. The D7100 still also seems to retain those cold colours from it's predecessor and the images almost look sterile in comparison to the D600. With the D600 the image takes on a feeling of life, the image is more three dimentional, colour is well controlled in the high iso's with far greater detail and the colour is just so much more convincing.

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  12. ma sono foto fatte con la D5200 NO 7100!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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    1. Translation: "but these images were made with D5200 not 7100!!!!!!!!!!!"

      Reply: Ho cambiato i metadati a D5200 in modo che possa importare D7100 prima in Lightroom. Vi garantisco queste immagini sono da D7100.

      I changed metadata to D5200 so that I can import D7100 raw into Lightroom. I guarantee these images are from D7100.

      http://betterfamilyphotos.blogspot.com/2013/03/importing-d7100-raw-files-into-lightroom.html

      Ciao,
      Mic

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    2. Hi Mic, you speak a very good italian :)))
      Bye, Seb

      Delete
  13. There's no question that colour and iso performance is better on the D600, that's to be expected from a full frame camera. However, when viewing some of the images in their original size the D7100's are considerably sharper. It's apparent in the shirt photos but also the plant and light photo. With the D7100 you can actually see the grain of the leaves, where they're somewhat faded on the D600...I guess the lack of an AA filter clearly has a noticeable effect. I'm trying to upgrade from a D3100 but having trouble deciding between the two. Kind of leaning towards the D600 though.

    Thanks for the uploads,
    Jason

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  14. Hi Mic

    I just got to your blog while doing search on D7100 low light performance. This has been very useful in making a decision for me. Currently I have a D80 with 18-200 VR lens. I am thinking of getting D7100 body only. What other lens would you recommend, as I plan to keep my 18-200 VR.

    thanks in advance

    mahen

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    1. Hi mahen. The best lens for you depends on what you shoot. I don't know what kinds of photos you like to take but if you are interested in low light performance, I recommend looking at the Sigma 17-50 OS. I don't have one myself but according to DXO it is the sharpest standard zoom lens for Nikon DX cameras.

      If you might upgrade to FX in the future then you might be interested in the Nikon 28-70 2.8D, the 24-70 2.8G, or possibly the 24-85 VR. I was very pleased with the performance of the 28-70 and 24-70. As for the 24-85 VR I again don't have it but friends who do have been happy with it.

      If you shoot at longer focal lengths then I recommend the 85 1.8G. Mine was very sharp on the D7100. If you want a telephoto zoom then probably the sharpest one that doesn't cost a ridiculous amount of money is the Nikon 70-200 f4 VR. Another possibility is the Tamron 70-200 2.8 VC which Roger Cicala recommends (he found it almost as good as the Nikon 70-200 VR II).

      You may be interested in this thread: http://www.flickr.com/groups/nikond7100/discuss/72157633031077056/

      Hope this helps!

      Best regards,
      Mic

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