The Final Word...

Amongst everything else that has been happening over the last week and a half, I still had floating around in the back of my mind the outcome of the Nikon D700 vs. Fuji S5 Pro “shootout”. I also thought that this would be a great opportunity to throw in a gratuitous plug for my “Portrait of a Phone Box” images. So here goes.

Have a look at the image I have posted with this blog. I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that the only retouching done on this image was a slight horizon correction and I cloned out a couple of distracting lights in the background. I have not applied any noise reduction filters, nor applied any curves adjustments on any part of the image. Colours and saturation are as shot. The histogram is the same as it came out of the camera – and all captured as a fine JPEG too – no RAW files here.

Now, think about the dynamic range of the image. We have blackness surrounding the scene; with the lights coming from the booths themselves coming close to clipping but stopping short thanks to the wonderful sensor in the camera. Can you see any colour banding? I can’t. Can you see any luminance noise? Nope. How about chroma noise? None of that either. Sadly I cannot upload the full size (6.2 meg file) image because Google will not let me, but I wish you could see it at 100%... I would stop short of saying it is medium format quality because that would be stretching it a little too far but it really is glorious. Sadly I will make you read the rest of this post before I reveal which camera took this image. I made a point of testing both the Nikon and the Fuji in this scenario to see which one handled the scene with the minimum of fuss.

From a handling standpoint, I’ll quickly break this down into a few categories;

Focussing
With its 51 auto-focus points, and 15 of them being “cross type array” the Nikon D700 won hands down. The Fuji is still very good with its 11 points, but when the action was happening on the catwalk and there were models going every which way – the Nikon didn’t skip a beat. The Fuji would lock –on, but it would take a second or so sometimes, by which time the shot had disappeared from my viewfinder.

Under normal circumstances though, both cameras are great. After all, the Fuji does have the exact same auto-focus system found in the Nikon D200.

Metering
This is a very close call as both camera bodies have exactly the same 1005 pixel RGB sensor used exclusively to meter the image and utilise 3D Colour Matrix Metering which Nikon is famous for. Sorry Canon guys but even you must agree here! Getting back to the metering, it is only fair to say that the D700 does have the “2nd Gen” 3D Colour Matrix Metering but I believe it is still the same hardware, only the cameras firmware applies a slightly more forgiving algorithm than the Fuji. In hindsight though, from my experience at EWE 2009 the D700 did produce more, much more blown out images than the Fuji – but this is probably due to my lack of experience in driving the menus compared to the Fuji.

To summarise – a lot of the fashion parades looked like this; black catwalk – black carpet on the catwalk. Black backdrop. Models dressed in black with black shoes. The models however only had black singlets on, so their arms and faces stood out like the proverbial, and they were wearing either brightly coloured accessories or sparkly jewellery – or both. That’s quite a scene for ANY camera to meter well… Once you dialled in enough negative exposure compensation things settled down a bit but it was still a challenge.

Speed
Again – no brainer here. The D700 can pump out 5fps, or 8fps with the MB-D10 battery grip on. That’s 3fps short of the giant killing D3! You also get about 25 fine JPEG’s (or Raw files I am lead to believe) in the buffer, but they move along rather quickly. I do not recall having to stop shooting once with the D700 and wait for the files to write to the memory card. Fantastic. Well done Nikon.

The Fuji on the other hand – oh dear. In its defence it is doing a heck of a lot more in camera processing than the Nikon if you are using any of the Film Simulation modes in the S5 Pro. But let’s face it; if you have a S5 you only ever shoot with the film modes turned on, they are that good! Add increased dynamic range into the processing; another Fuji trademark – it gets worse. With everything turned off and shooting a “plain” JPEG or Raw file, expect 3fps for 7 frames. Then put the camera down for a little while and wait. Then shoot some more, then wait. With in-camera image enhancement on, that dreadfully slow 3 fps all of a sudden drops to 1.3! All this seems not to matter though when you see the gorgeous image appear on the little LCD screen.

In the real world as a portrait, modelling and sometimes wedding photographer I have never needed 8fps on more than a handful of occasions… but I can certainly see the benefits.

Menu System
In the D700 everything is in the one place, spread over one very large scrolling menu. Major functions are colour coded in similar groups though so that helps to find your way around a bit better. More than once though it took me ages to scroll through 14 sub-menu’s to eventually find what I was looking for. As with anything; the more you use it the more familiar it becomes. You get to know where things are - but it still takes 28 button pushes to get there.

The S5 Pro however has 2 separate menus, accessed by different buttons on the rear facia of the camera. One is only for current shooting options such as Film Simulation modes, colour space, white balance, image recording, ISO etc., whereas in the other menu you can find every other option you would otherwise require. Does this make a difference? I think it does, but that’s just my opinion. From having to use both cameras in a pressure situation, I preferred the Fuji.

Wow, I just looked back on how long this blog post is, I had better start wrapping this up! Both the Nikon and Fuji are great D-SLR bodies in their own right. Both produce great images. But one is newer and much much faster. Also the Nikon has a full-frame sensor which really does perform exceptionally well in low light and that is a very important factor that carries over into just about any shooting situation you may find yourself in. But at the end of the day, if you are shooting 11fps or just one, really it comes down to the images that the camera produces, right? Isn’t that what it’s all about? Great images with a minimum of fuss?

The phone booth shot was somewhat predictably taken with the Fuji S5 Pro. The same shot from the D700 simply could not record the same dynamic range of the Fuji. They still look like fine images, but the Fuji’s look exceptional – consistently. And that’s enough for me.

As I said in an earlier post, I will still be buying a D700 - and soon too, I can’t wait. But I will only ever replace my Fujifilm bodies when the shutter mirror falls off and the lenses start dropping off for no reason. Oh, the Canon 5D MkII does that already. Oops – better luck next time Canon. :o)