Questions for Nikon experts and dabblers

[pine red]

Hi Nikon folks!

I'll try to make this brief... I inherited a film Canon EOS awhile back and a few lenses. When I got into digital I got myself a Nikon Coolpix 4800 and absolutely loved it. What I didn't love was not being able to print big and also not having any DOF. For my birthday, my husband surprised me with a digital Rebel XT. Long story short, I don't like it. I've never liked my EOS either. I think they're both great cameras but I really loved my Nikon. It made sense to me in a way that my Canons never have. For the record, when I was mainly hsooting film, I used a Mamiya 645 most of the time and loved it. So I have a few questions for you all if you feel like answering. Thanks in advance!

1) Is the D70 pretty comparable to the Rebel XT?

2) Do the Nikon DSLRs allow the user to set up saturation, white balance, and contrast in ANY mode? Or is it just in a few? (The XT has a very confusing parameter system that will not work unless it's in full manual, and even then...)

3) How big have you all printed with your Nikons? I'd love to see examples.


Again, I don't think Canons suck. I just really loved my Nikon and felt like it made sense.

Thanks again,
Ellen

[wh0128]

2) Do the Nikon DSLRs allow the user to set up saturation, white balance, and contrast in ANY mode? Or is it just in a few?

3) How big have you all printed with your Nikons? I'd love to see examples.

I know Nikon DSLRs allow you to switch the white balance, but I don't know about saturation or contrast. In the D50 you can switch to different optimizations such as Vivid, Normal, Soft, Sharper, Landscape, and Custom, I think these all deal with color in a sense. Some of the more professional Nikon DSLRs may have the capability to set up saturation/wb/contrast, but I would not know personally.

The biggest I've ever printed are 8x10's as that is the largest paper size my printer will hold, but in some of these threads in this forum and maybe in the more general forums on this site, I have read that people have printed up to poster size on a D70 and even a D50. I know Ken Rockwell says that he gets 12x18" prints from his D70's JPG images, so if you were shooting in RAW you might get a little more out of the print.

[tcadwall]

preface... Never used a Mamiya.

I chose my D70s hands down over the XT. Liked the feel, the controls, menus, etc. I also like the CLS (Creative Lighting System) from Nikon.

Doesn't mean that the XT is not capable of great pictures, I just prefer the Nikon D70s over it. However the D80 was not available when I was purchasing, and if I was entering the market right now I probably would opt for the D80. Next camera for me will likely be the D200 but that is not in the same price-range at all.

Often we will refer to shooting modes as 'dummy' modes, not that they don't sometimes have their place, but that essentially is what they are there for. Taking some of the work out of getting shutterspeed, aperature, ISO, color, etc all set appropriately.

Being that these modes serve that purpose, your options will be limited when you select one of those modes. That is why typically the closer you get to pro-level, the fewer modes that are available. Since the pros will have the experience to get the settings right quicker, and won't need the help from the camera. This should be fairly similar between brands.

If you are *Very* concerned about this, then you do have the option to choose the manual modes. If you have concerns on very specific settings in specific modes, you could always download the "non-printable" pdf manual from the nikonusa site - I am pretty sure that it will lay this all out for you.

PRINTS..

How big are you looking to print? I have some great 8x10 prints - but I haven't really tried to go larger. If you are looking for VERY large prints, then you might want to consider the D80 since it has a higher res than the D70s plus several other additional features. That said, I actually have some good 8x10 prints that I have sold that came off of a Fuji Finepix S5100 4mp point n shoot. I know that the same shots (from Fuji) would look even better if I would have had my D70s then.

But alas MP is not everything. But when you want to go very big on your prints it *can* be a limiting factor. There is software available that can interpolate your photos to higher res, and actually some packages do a pretty good job at this. Not the recommended substitute though.

---Added section---

Should have mentioned that I have also printed 8x10s that were cropped. Actually - crops that remove quite a bit of the image, and no-one could tell any quality issues. Typically I take a cd to a photo shop to have them printed. In practice my ink-jet prints are for 4x6 snapshots and 8x10 proof-type shots.

[rawpaw18]

I will have to second tcadwall,

that if you can swing the D80, give this one a serious look. Better noise control, more mp's, bigger brighter screen and plenty more upgrades.

[Esoterra]

2) Do the Nikon DSLRs allow the user to set up saturation, white balance, and contrast in ANY mode? Or is it just in a few? (The XT has a very confusing parameter system that will not work unless it's in full manual, and even then...)

Ellen

I have a D70s- when shooting in (A) Aperture Priority, (S) Shutter Priority, (M) Manual, or (P) Program modes you can change the saturation, and contrast and white balance. When you are using the other presets (Portrait, Landscape, Night, Macro ect.) they have the saturation, sharpening, and contrast already set, but I beleive you can go in and change it if you want to. From my experience, changing these settings is easy and has not posed any problems whatsoever!

The WB can be set in any mode you shoot in. If you shoot in RAW (NEF) then you can tweak the WB after you take the shot. If you shoot JPEG you can not change the WB after the shot is taken.

[tcadwall]

If you shoot in RAW (NEF) then you can tweak the WB after you take the shot.

Good point.

Actually, this applies to all cameras and brands that I know of. And actually also will apply to color settings as well. This includes saturation, as well as your color workspace(sRGB, AdbobeRGB, etc.), your color curves, etc.

The only thing that you can't do anything for in RAW is focus (yes I know you can sharpen, but if you took a shot out of focus, you pretty much are going to get an out of focus shot), and you are limited on fixing exposure. You might be able to recover some highlights, and recover some shadows, but you won't be able to change your DOF, shutter speed, and you probably won't get all the noise out without also discarding details if your ISO was too high.

[pine red]

Thanks so much. I just checked out the specs on the D80 and think I could probably swing that in the near future. I appreciated your(s) feedback!

I would like the option of printing 20"x24". I find the Canon menus confusing no matter how many times I use them. They are not intuitive for me. It seems like the difference between PCs and Macs. It's nice to know others "get" that also.

Was wondering how you can change sharpness in jpeg? Never heard of that. I always shoot in RAW just in case...

Not sure about the stock lens though. Looks a little soft?

Thanks again very much. I feel much clearer now.
-Ellen

[ryan112ryan]

Hi Nikon folks!


1) Is the D70 pretty comparable to the Rebel XT?

2) Do the Nikon DSLRs allow the user to set up saturation, white balance, and contrast in ANY mode? Or is it just in a few? (The XT has a very confusing parameter system that will not work unless it's in full manual, and even then...)

3) How big have you all printed with your Nikons? I'd love to see examples.


Again, I don't think Canons suck. I just really loved my Nikon and felt like it made sense.

Thanks again,
Ellen

1) the D70s is a much better camera in: Build quailty, sensor, printing results, better lenses for the most part, speed (FPS), controls, and custom settings

2)in the manual modes (M, A, S, P) you can set them to anything. that green button shouldn't ever lol

3)the D50/D70 can print a 2foot by 3foot print which is bigger than you ever need

you be very pleased with the Nikon :)

[tcadwall]

Pretty much agree with Ryan.

I'd estimate that Ryan is about right about print size based on my crops and prints at 8x10, if you are looking to print 20"x24" you probably won't have much/any wiggle room for cropping (D70s). Anything that you want to print that large should also be properly exposed, etc.

As far as sharpness, All photos taken with a digital camera need "sharpened" due to the way that the sensors work. The camera will do this when it creats jpg files, your raw converter will do this when you convert to jpg - you can control how much. You just have less control over sharpening when you leave it to the camera.

For the D70s if you are shooting jpg, and you are in P, S, A, or M modes, you have image enhancement options such as: Normal, Vivid, Sharper, Softer, Direct Print, Portrait, Landscape. Again, the manual goes into a little bit of detail with the description. Your raw image will not be affected by this setting unless your raw converter is utilizing the camera settings for the image. In Bibble for instance you can choose not to use the in-camera information during conversion.

As far as kit lenses being soft, I can't answer that, I bought body-only, and purchased the 18-200 VR II lens.

[pine red]

Wow, thanks Ryan and tcadwall.

I'm getting pretty excited but can see there is so much more to learn on the conversion side of things. I have Photoshop CS but usually import into iPhoto. Have no idea what all is happening in conversion. I think iPhoto automatically converts to jpeg from RAW but am not sure what settings it is using. I want to dump iPhoto anyway. Thanks for the Bibble tip. Are you happy with it? I'm feelign like Photoshop is overkill sometimes and iPhoto is useless. Bibble looks good!

You guys convinced me. I am going to unload the Canon gear and get the D80! Thanks. Can't wait!

:D