Well what an interesting afternoon! This will be another short post as I have soooo much work to do after today’s shoot and tomorrow’s all-dayer, but… For my avid readers (or those of you who know how to scroll down to the last blog post!) you will know that today was the day when I got to try out the Nikon D700 for the first time in a live situation; in this instance it was during the catwalk shows at the Every Woman Expo which was held at the Perth Exhibition and Convention Centre.
I was very eager to find out how the D700 would stack-up compared to my old faithful Fujifilm S5 Pro. And I have to say I am more than surprised with the results. You see the S5 Pro has been around about 18 months longer than the D700, which as you know is a long time these days in the world of… well anything electronic really. In fact, the S5 Pro is now a discontinued camera – it’s even been removed forever from the Fujifilm website. Whereas the D700 is still an, albeit oldish but still current model in the Nikon line-up.
Now I don’t want the following couple of paragraphs to sound too biased. I have only been using the D700 for a day and a half whereas I have been using my Fuji’s for years. Maybe I just don’t know the intricacies of the D700 menu system or how to drive the camera properly to extract the absolute best out of it. But where I was expecting the D700 to leave the S5 eating pixels – it just didn’t seem to turn out that way.
Sure the D700 is a joy to use. It really is. As I said yesterday, I love the way it handles, and I love the way it feels balanced no matter if I have my 24mm f/2.8 prime which weighs about 100g attached to the body or my 70-200 f/2.8 telephoto which weighs about 1.5kg– it just feels right. I love the hearty thud the shutter makes, and the speed to which it makes it. The auto-focus works really well for the most part. The metering is on par with the Fuji (probably because they are exactly the same!) Everything about the camera oozes quality. It inspires me to get off my butt and get out there and take more photos.
But the proof is in the pudding – or pictures as the case may be. As you saw at the top of this post are a couple of example images taken with each camera body. Both are zoomed in to 100%. Both have similar camera settings to try and make the end result as even as possible. Yes they are totally different images with different subjects. But they were taken in the same venue, on the same catwalk, and the ambient lighting in the venue did not change for the entirety of the show. They were both taken at about 70mm focal length. Have a look and see what you think. Click on the images to get a larger preview.
The levels of noise are very close; but with the D700 there is less of it than with the S5 Pro, and what noise there is looks more like film grain. This is to be expected though from a camera with a full-frame sensor and big fat juicy photosites whereas the S5 Pro has to make do with it's APS-C sized sensor. But the image from the D700 is a lot softer and also a bit, well – yellow. As expected the Fuji has great skin-tones whereas the D700 doesn’t get the colour quite right. But there again “skin tone” is a relative term on a fashion show as all of the models are spray tanned to resemble walking tandoori popsicles!
That aside though, I have to say that I am keen to give the D700 another thorough workout tomorrow, which is the “all day” shoot. And I am looking forward to it. As for the big question asked yesterday though, am I finishing this blog post and heading straight to eBay to list my 4 Fuji bodies to make way for a stable full of D700’s? No. But, I have re-affirmed to myself that one D700 will certainly find it’s way into my camera bag, and I will have to evict one of my Fuji bodies to do it… but I don’t think I will have too much trouble doing that.
The D700 is an awesome camera body hands down. I can’t wait to get one. But I still love my Fuji S5’s more than ever too. The end.
Hmm, I'm not convinced that the Nikon is not front-focusing.
ReplyDeleteNah Michael I don't recon it is front focussing at all. Both those images were taken with my 70-200mm f/2.8. The focus is spot on in the S5 image. So the lens is fine. If anything, there might be a tiny bit of motion blur in D700 but that's about it. I had the D700 set to 3D "Tracking" Continual Servo focussing mode for both days. While it struggles when there were 5 or 6 girls on the catwalk all going in different directions, for the most part it did really well. But anyway, I really don’t think it is a front focussing issue – more likely me just not being totally familiar with the operation and nuances of the D700 whereas I know the S5 like the back of my hand – so to speak.
ReplyDelete