Photography BLOG

I have been a 5D shooter since almost the day it came out. I simply love the full frame, and never looked back at the 20D, XT and 300D I had before that.

I always preferred Nikon bodies though, and was hoping someone would release a D200 body with a 5D sensor in it.

Well, that didn’t quite happen, but the new D3 had me intrigued since the day it was announced.

Last week I saw an ad on a public forum where an established member was selling an essentially brand new D3 for a very good price, so I jumped on it. I figured the way it’s backordered everywhere, if I don’t like it I won’t have any problems reselling it for the same or even a higher price.

So the D3 arrived, and the first thing I did was to put it up against my 5D to see what the hoopla is all about. I only have a 50mm 1.8 and 35mm 2.0 Nikkors, so I compared those with 50mm 1.4 and 35mm 2.0 Canons.

1. Handling and build quality

Well, there’s no contest here. While 5D is nice, it feels like a snail and 2 generations behind the D3. One thing though, although I much prefer the resolut and snappy shutter action on the D3 than the kla-chunk of the one on 5D, the D3 shutter is a lot louder.

2. Autofocus in good light.

Again, no contest. D3 will just snap in place. With a 50mm 1.8, 19 out of 20 shots will be spot-on, with 1 maybe slightly off. With the 5D and a 50mm 1.4 at f/1.8, around 10 out of 20 will be spot-on, with another 5-6 slightly off and 3-4 quite a bit OOF.

And this is all with the screw driven 50mm 1.8. Can’t wait to try some of the AF-S models.

3. Autofocus in low light.

The 5D is actually slightly better here. The center point will lock on things in low light that the D3 has a problem with, and will hunt quite a bit. 40D smokes them both in this regard.

4. AA filter

5D has a much weaker AA filter. The RAW files straight out of the camera are noticeably crisper from 5D. I used the 50mm lenses, f/10, tripod mounted, mirror lock-up, remote release. 5D shots were slightly sharper at all ISO’s, from 200 to 6400. D3 files DO sharpen better though, you can apply stronger sharpening without introducing artifacts or noise.

5. Shadow noise at low ISO

D3 is a lot better here. One thing that was a bit annoying from the start with the 5D was that even at low ISO’s, if you push the shadows too much, you’ll get noise. So for a very contrasty scene with deep shadows, if you try to bring the shadow detail out you’ll get noise in shadows even at ISO 100. Not so with the D3, you can push the shadows and sharpen and they’ll stay smooth.

6. High ISO noise

Well, this is what the big hoopla was about since D3 was announced. To be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed at first. I tested the 5D and D3 side-by-side in low incandescent light, and in low natural light. Used ACR to process both. D3 looked better, but not by much. Half a stop maybe. It had a lot less chroma noise, but I didn’t pay much attention to that, since chroma is not that hard to remove. Luma noise was around half a stop better on D3. Not bad by any means, but not spectacular either. And, as I mentioned before, the 5D files are a bit sharper at all ISO’s. But then the next day I took some real-life shots with the D3 and changed my mind:

7. Usability of high ISO shots

With the 5D, my rule of thumb was that up to ISO 800 I always used the same workflow regardless of the ISO. ACR for RAW conversion, working mostly in Lab, local contrast, CMYK shadows/highlights, selective sharpening on Luma channel in Lab, e.t.c. At ISO 1600 I had to be more careful and tone down the sharpening not to increase noise, and at ISO3200 I had to be a lot more careful. If I was very, VERY careful, with selective noise reduction and very careful selective sharpening, for some good light (but still low light) shots, I was able to get excellent ISO 6400 (ISO 1600 pushed 2 stops) with the 5D.

With the D3 the situation is better, by a stop or more. I feel like I can take an ISO3200 shot and apply my regular workflow and it still comes out looking great (no noise reduction at all). I took some ISO 6400 self-portraits and with no noise reduction and a toned-down workflow (sort of what I was doing before with ISO 1600 shots with 5D) they came out looking great. Only at ISO12800 I have to do the very careful post processing to get a good looking image. ISO12800 (ISO1600 pushed 3 stops) is pretty much useless on the 5D. The main difference is the color accuracy and color noise, high ISO shots with D3 still look great, with accurate colors and no annoying blotchy color noise. Now I can say that I am VERY impressed.

8. LCD monitor

I don’t know what the big hoopla is here. Yes, D3 LCD is nice and big and bright and it has lots of pixels. But I’ve worked with the 1D Mark III and the 40D and honestly I can’t tell the difference between the LCD’s of those three. They are all great.

9. Viewfinder

Reading the reviews and all the gushing on the Nikon forums, I was expecting something spectacular. In all honesty, the viewfinder on the D3 is maybe slightly better than the 5D, which is nothing special by FF standards. 1D Mark II looks quite a bit better to my eyes than both.

10. Live view

Well, obviously the 5D doesn’t even have this, but like I said I had a chance to play with the 1DIII and I have a 40D, so I can at least compare the execution from Nikon and Canon. I have to say that I prefer the Canon implementation. The live-view image on the D3 gets choppy when you move the camera. Non- AF-S lenses require you the move the switch on the camera to allow manual focusing, so that’s a bit clunky. But what baffles me is that once you do get the focus, when you take a shot the mirror flaps back down, then flaps back up and takes a shot. Just as loud as when you take a regular shot, and a lot more vibration from mirror slap than in the Canon implementation.

There you have it. First-had experience with both cameras. Take it for what it’s worth.

So will I make THE SWITCH? I don’t know yet. I really like the D3 but I also have an excellent collection of hand-picked outstanding quality Canon lenses (50L, 85L, 135L, 70-200IS, 16-35II, 24-105L, Tamron 28-70, Sigma 15mm FE) that will be hard to match on the Nikon side. But the outstanding optical quality of the $100 50mm 1.8 Nikkor gives me hope. I DID order the 14-24 2.8 Nikkor (it’s on the UPS truck on the way to my house as I write this, yay!), so the first thing I’ll do is compare that to the excellent 16-35 II I also have. If these new nano-coated Nikon zooms live up to the hype, I just might jump to the other Dark Side (they are both dark as far as I am concerned).