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Nikon D200 Exciting Digital Photography
The Nikon D200 is not completely new anymore but is still regarding as a state-of-the-art upper end digital SLR and finally, after having tried without success, I was able to get a camera from the Austrian Nikon organization on loan for this review. In this context, I would like to thank Nikon Austria for lending me that camera and making this review possible! Austria now, well, as you might have realized, I moved back to my home country early in 2006, away from Colorado and the USA. The reasons were personal and important - anyway, Nikon is very well represented here and their people are pleasant to deal with. I wish I had a Canon 5D parallel to show direct comparison photographs, but this did not work out (yet). Some of the photographs can directly be compared as I used the same targets and same charts. I need not to repeat the technical specifications of that camera, it is well known and for all those, who are not familiar with the D200 - here is the link to Nikon´s website, there you will find all technical data which have been published: http://www.nikondigital.com/main2.html. And for those who are interested to see how my very personal review compares with the rather extensive review published in February 2006 by DP-Review, here it the direct link to the D200 review on their website: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond200. Another review can be found here : Shutterbug D200 Review. This link here leads to various reviews of several journals and groups: Nikon D200 As you can imagine, I do not have the means available to make a review as detailed and as extensive as done by DP-Review, but what I want to present is a hands-on review, showing the performance (strengths and weaknesses), if so, then also problems and of course my personal impressions based on my 25+ years of experience with optical and photographic equipment. The equipment I used was the Nikon D200 equipped with and without the optional battery powered drive-grip MB-D200 plus various lenses, mainly the Nikon 4/12-24mm AFS ED and the Nikon 2,8/17-35mm AFS ED. Already now, I would like to mention, that the Nikon 12-24mm lens is far superior to other lenses of similar focal range - I tried the similar range Sigma, Tokina and Tamron lenses and all of them did not come close to the Nikon lens regarding degree of optical distortion, which is for me and for very wide wide-angle photography of significant importance. Of course, most shots were taken using a very stable (and heavy) tripod and with an electric cable release as well.
General impressions The camera body is very handsome (if I may use this expression), it feels fine in my hands and it is not really heavy (nothing compared to the classic tank, the Kodak DCS760). The rear LCD monitor is bright and good, the buttons and control levers are placed well and a user of Nikon cameras can operate this digital SLR within minutes without making major mistakes. In the past, I was able to use the D2X for some time and I myself own a D1X, a N90S and a F100 (besides several non-AF Nikon cameras) and I felt comfortable with the operation of the camera within very short. It looks and feels like a sturdy, reliably and non-plastic professional camera - which it is also supposed to be. The idea behind the D200 seems to be to offer a professional grade camera for those people who do not need the high-speed shooting of field professionals and who do not want to spend the extra money for some additional resolution and some more features which many of us do anyway neither use nor need (even if they claim to need them, in real life, they do not - believe me). As I am not a sports photographer nor a news reporter, I do not need to shoot 8 frames per second to get the right shot and the additional 2 Megapixel resolution - well, I would like to say, 90% of the shots do not require that additional resolution. I printed shots on an HP90 Designjet enlarged up to ISO A2+ and they came out very good. Maybe the additional 2 MPX of the D2X(s) would have given a bit more details and more crispiness, but how often do you print on A2+? Back to the overall impressions - I like that camera. It feels great in my hands, it can be carried around with needing a neck massage after a few hours of photography and of course, the Nikon lenses I have can be used without limitations. One little feature, I liked especially very much - the small built-in flash. I like it because it is a very neat device to use in sunshine to brighten up faces, to add some light and the use as an "emergency" flash if you need one and did not bring your SB-600 or SB-800 with you. Nice device! When you mount the MB-D200, that battery powered grip on to the D200, the stability of the combination on a tripod is a bit less than for the camera alone without the MB-D200. Not that the camera cannot be mounted stable enough for proper photography, but I preferred the camera alone for critical tests like the resolution chart photographs. And in addition - I used the high performance photo batteries inside the MB-D200 - the weight increases quite a bit but the amount of photographs which can be taken with that device is not exciting - after a couple of days, the batteries were empty...nothing to be proud of, I guess. The rechargeable battery pack however, which fits into the camera body, is very good - it charges within a few hours and lasts for hundreds of photos - very reliable and durable. Images can be stored on CF cards - I used high performance CF cards and tried also the IBM Microdrive, all of them with good results. Due to the fact, that a RAW image is quite large, I would suggest to insert at least a 1GB card if you like to head out for some shooting - 60 RAW files can be stored on a 1GB CF card - no too much even for a normal photographic outing, right? The situation is a bit better if you store your shots in the best possible quality as JPEG files, then you can store already well over 100 files...but still, 1GB is in my opinion the lower end, better would be to use 2GB!
The LCD monitor, as I mentioned before, is very good. It is bright (even in daylight) and the image is detailed enough to judge its quality well enough to decide whether to take the shot again or not. The menu is fine but pretty complex. I needed to sit down with the user manual to study the several levels of information which can be brought up. Here a minor complaint - would it not be beneficial to have maybe two levels of sophistication in the menu? One upper level for the more important functions and then the full information as second level? Maybe something like a "Standard" and "Expert" level? I was running into quite some button pushing exercises to activate some functions like the noise reduction at high ISO speeds. Nothing really major, but it would make life a bit easier. Viewfinder and Imaging Sensor Nikon seems to stick to the 1.5x magnification for their digital SLR´s - they use an APS sized sensor, similar in size to the one built into the D2X, the D70s etc. This magnification factor is not something which is a real selling feature but one can live with it I guess. Why do I not like that sensor size too much - well, then main reason were viewfinder viewing angle and existing 35mm lenses. The first one, the viewing angle of the viewfinder, means that the smaller chip size results in some kind of a key-hole viewing angle, which is not appreciated at all. The Nikon D200 offers an improvement compared to previous models of similar price/performance range - the viewfinder is already large enough to see everything under an acceptable viewing angle - not as comfortable as with the Canon 5D or other full-frame DSLR´s but it is OK. Comparing the D1X viewing angle with the D200, the D200 is (best guess) about 25% larger but still I guess about 35% smaller than the viewing angle of a full frame camera like the F100 or F5. The human vision likes a viewing angle with is just right - large enough to be covered without rolling the eyes but not too small to create that known key-hole impression. Here, an improvement would be very marketable and could be a significant competitive advantage. The other drawback of the 1.5x magnification factor is of course the fact that all standard 35mm lenses will have an increased "virtual" focal length - with other words, special wide angle lenses are necessary. Yes, there are excellent ones, especially the one from Nikon, which had been designed for this type of DLSR but they are costly (the 12-24mm costs usually well over $1000 / €1000) and it is at least another lens which has to be bought and carried around. OK, for tele-shooters, this 1,5x magnification has advantages - a 400mm lens for 35mm acts like a 600mm lens, but are these the main applications? There are on the web endless conversations, fights and discussions about these digital magnification factors - is a lens now still a 400mm lens or does it become a 600mm lens, what does it mean in real life, how to compare lenses and resolutions, etc but fact is, that because of the smaller size of the imager, the imaged field of view is smaller - period. In my opinion, when I compare a 35mm camera and its field of view with a digital camera, I need to use the same field of view and not the same focal length as some readers of previous reviews suggested. The reason is that I want to get a certain amount of information, details and field coverage on a photograph and if the imaging device is by a factor of 1,5 smaller, I need to take a lens with a focal length 1,5x shorter than the one for 35mm - and this also holds firm when comparing resolution and image quality factors. The sensor is rated as a 10,2 Megapixel sensor, the format is about APS size (23.6mm x 15.8mm), which means that the camera, if it were a full frame camera would be almost comparable to the Canon D1S MkII with its 17 MPx full frame sensor - or not? The full image size utilizes 3872x2592=10,036.224 pixel. The Canon D5, which is the closest competitor utilizes a sensor of 35.8mm x 23.9mm resulting in 4368x2912=12,719.616 pixel and the Canon D1S MkII utilizes a sensor of 36mm x 24mm resulting in 4992x3328=16,613.376 pixel. Mathematically, the Nikon sensor is superior to the Canon 5D sensor because if you apply simple math, the area of the D200 sensor is 372,88mm² and the Canon 5D sensor area is 855,62mm². The ratio between these two is 2,29:1 which means that the Nikon sensor, enlarged to the full frame area of the Canon 5D would have about 23 MPx - the test shots taken with the D200 however prove that this simple math is wrong.... I am aware that such a direct calculation is not appropriate as the pixel dimensions are different, the spacing of the pixels is different and the unused area of the sensor might be different in size as well (Canon has got larger pixels) but it shows that a numerical value of 10 Megapixel does not necessarily indicate inferiority to 12 Megapixel. The tests with the Patterson resolution chart will reveal interesting results and I suggest you to compare the respective results shown in my Canon 5D review with those of the Nikon D200. Of course, the smaller sensor size and the increased number of active imaging pixels result in one sometimes visible drawback - noise. As I shall show later on, the image noise is a bit disappointing, especially at higher ISO speeds. This is a significant advantage of larger sensors and therefore larger light collection areas - the noise of a Canon 5D is significantly lower and much less visible. Yes, there are noise reduction algorithms built-in, but still - noise is noise and it is visible at higher ISO speeds and these noise reduction algorithms do their job well, but they also soften the image and decrease its crispiness to a certain extent. All these critical remarks do not mean that I was not impressed by the D200, I was just a bit disappointed that an otherwise excellent camera reveals that much electronic noise. Picture Taking When you switch the camera on, it is on within fractions of a second - very pleasant! No waiting for the digital camera to power up, to run the start-up routines - on is on and that comes immediately. The AF is fast and accurate, very fast - especially when using silent wave lenses like I did with the 12-24mm AFS and the 17-35mm AFS. The exposure is accurate and can deal with difficult lighting situations as well - no problems observed. A minor problem for my liking is the Auto White Balance. It works, yes, it does, but it is not great - especially when using incandescent light or other artificial light. To get this right, I used again that little "ExpoDisk" which I have described in another review - not expensive and very useful. Use it to set the white balance in the manual mode and then take the images - they turn out a bit cooler than maybe wanted but much better than with the automatic mode. I liked it very much that all important information is visible on the small LCD screen on top of the camera - much more than one usually can find. This makes like really easy - no cumbersome checking of many parameters with push-button menus to find out what is set to which value or not. One feature, I like very much - the "help" function. There are so many different settings which can be changed, many features which can be activated or not - and I bet with you, you do not master all these functions perfectly, not even after several days of learning. Just press the "help" button and on the rear display you will see a short description of that function, what it does and how to handle it - well done, Nikon, very well done! When you shoot serial images - say 18 or 20 RAW images (or over 35 JPEG´s) without interruption, the D200 can cope with it. The buffer is large enough and the writing speed is fast, very fast. Even in RAW mode, you need not to take a lunch brake to let the camera write the 20+ MB files to the disk (maybe take a very quick coffee brake when you write Raw files with noise reduction, high sensitivity compensation and some more functions activated). JPEG files are written very fast and the compression mode which allows to optimize for best image quality works very fine - no recognizable visual artifacts most the times. Vibrations coming from the mirror swinging up and down are minute and with a reasonably good tripod you should not see any shaking artifacts in your images - not even at usually critical exposure times like 1/8 or 1/4 sec. Mirror/shutter noise is existing but still not too disturbing - I took many images inside of very quiet churches and the noise of the mirror and shutter was not disturbing other people. The default setting for picture sharpness is too low in my opinion - the pictures look at first glance too soft and almost out of focus. It can be corrected easily with some additional sharpening and/or a different setting of sharpness in the camera's menu, but I think that default setting should be slightly different - more sharpness would create subjective a better first impression, especially with newcomers. Something else I liked is battery life - I have mentioned this before but to repeat, the camera with the rechargeable battery can shoot hundreds of images without the battery needing to be recharged. This is very pleasant, especially if you are out in the middle of nowhere and you have got two fully charged batteries as the only power supply and no charger and no mains outlet within reach. The battery grip MB-D200 however was a bit disappointing - I filled it with six high performance batteries but they were indicating half power already after only not even hundred shots. This grip looks very similar to the one which comes as option for the Canon 5D, even the battery chamber is so similar...I wonder why? Anyway, that battery grip is an option and not a necessary item - if you like, fine, if not, don't get it, it just adds weight and size to the gear. Is it a pleasure to use this camera - overall yes, no question. I like it, it feels very fine, it works like a professional grade camera and it is a professional grade camera, just not as bulky and heavy as others are. For all those readers who are interested in a very detailed description of all its features and functions, I would suggest to go to the before mentioned websites for this information which I do not want to repeat just to have it written down as well. Images and Results What I want to show are some results and some pictures taken with the D200 and I do not claim to make a fully comprehensive nor complete presentation of the camera and its performance. I wanted to see how this camera performs under certain lighting conditions, how good it resolves details, how good its color algorithms are, how good it is regarding contrast rendition, noise and similar topics, all related to shooting under normal everyday's conditions.
First, I would like to show a screenshot of one of the many photographs I took during the time I was able to work with this camera
As you can see, all interesting and important information is contained in the file - just to note, I usually shoot raw files only as I do not need to shoot a large amount of photos within very short and the raw files allow me to get the best possible results from a digital camera. Of particular interest for me is the color/definition performance - not in the center of the image, but towards the edges. Many digital cameras show colored fringes in the outer areas of the image together with other deteriorating artifacts. This shot below was taken with a pretty simple lens, a 24-120mm Nikon AF zoom in raw mode (120mm FL, 1/250 f:8)
I enlarged two areas out of this image - the first one is on the very left side - where you can see the blue cross and the second one is from the center of the image - the first one to check for colored fringes and the latter one for the overall definition of this shot. All shots have been taken from a stable tripod to eliminate vibrations as much as possible.
Considering the enlargement factor, this detail is very clear and almost no color artifacts are visible - maybe very faintly, one can see a slight orange tint on the right side of the tower and a tiny bit of a magenta tint on the left side - but this is so little that it does certainly not disturb the overall impression. Now the detail taken out of the center portion of the image - again, I was positively surprised by the image quality - do not forget, this camera is not the top of the line, it is priced in the medium range of the DLSR´s.
It is a really impressive quality - not only that the 10 Megapixel sensor shows and impressive resolution but also the overall color rendition is impressive. What you might note is some noise which is visible above the pixel level. I have read before that one of the few critical remarks which were made about the D200 was its noise level - later on, I will show you what I found out about the noise. I agree that the day was not a perfect one - it was a bit hazy and the shot was taken with 120mm focal length, but still, I would have expected less noise-like artifacts in these details. To keep in mind - these details are very small ones, cropped out of the image, so please do not panic - in "real life", it is almost not visible under these circumstances. To check for these often occurring colored fringes on the outer limits of the image, I took another shot which contains an element of higher contrast - an iron gate. I cropped a small part on the right side of the image out to see how the camera performs
Here the before mentioned crop - quite impressive again, right?
White Balance Another topic of interest is the white balance - the D200 offers several modes - automatic, manual and various settings for predefined color temperatures/environments. I have tried all of them and concluded that the automatic white balance setting is working well for non-incandescent environments but for incandescent light, the manual setting, especially when optimized with the ExpoDisk, is much better. Here some results - all images taken without flash (auto-flash white balance works quite well), in the early evening - daylight still outside and incandescent light switched on (on 3 of the 4 images shown).
Resolution (Film vs. Digital) My next target is a very stable one - the inside of the Mariahilfer Kirche in Vienna - rich on details, easily accessible for me and photography is permitted if you do it in a decent mode. First a shot taken with the Nikon 12-24D mm AFS lens - a superb lens, which I do not want to miss anymore. As I mentioned before, I have tried similar lenses from Tamron and Sigma but their geometrical distortion was (for my applications) unacceptable. I did some perspective correction work in Photoshop before resizing the image to fit a web environment. Of interest for me was the comparison with traditional film based cameras - first a comparison which I must admit is unfair - I compared the quality of the 10 Megapixel DLSR with the image quality of my Rollei SL66SE with the Zeiss Distagon 40mm. It is a clear win for the Rollei - but this was to be expected and is not really fair. However, the difference is not anymore as mile-high as I thought it might still be. To show you what part I used, here a shot of the inside of the church - I have marked the small section with a black square which has been taken out for the comparison in the second image below:
And here the detail - left side the Rollei SL66SE and right side the Nikon D200:
Overall, a very impressive result for a (currently priced at) 1700-1800 Euro digital SLR! Of particular interest for me was a direct comparison of the resolution and overall image quality of the D200 with 35mm color film. I have several Nikon cameras and for this comparison I used my N90S with the AFS 2,8/17-35mm Nikon lens equipped with a Fuji ISO 100 color negative film. The images had been taken at the same time with the two bodies on a tripod and I think, the results are quite interesting. In earlier times, I was always of the opinion, that digital SLR´s cannot compete with a properly set-up 35mm film camera but now I have to revise this statement - as you will see, I rate the digital images better than the ones taken with 35mm film. The first shot is the entire image as taken with the 35mm Nikon N90S (the camera model does not have any influence on the result and I used for both shots the best available lenses - the AFS D12-24mm Nikon for digital and the AFS D 17-35mm for film). Both images contained the same field of view, this means that the film shot was taken with 18mm focal length and the digital shot with 12mm because the Nikon D200 has a sensor size factor of 1,5 compared to the film camera. Here the 35mm shot
And now here the digital shot with the D200
To eliminate influences from optical correction, lens aberrations etc (if existing..) and endless discussions about the performance of lenses in the outer areas, I used two crops from the center of the image - the first one is the inscription above the altar centerpiece and the second one is the plant pot in front of the altar Here the digital shot left and the 35mm film (scanned at 3200dpi on an Epson 4870) shot on the right side
Here the second set of shots, first again the digital crop on the left side and again the 35mm film shot on the right side
Looking carefully at the details, one can see that the limit of resolution in the digital image is visible - the pixel structure and in the analogue image, one can see the grain structure of the film - the digital image being superior to the 35mm film. That means that a 10 Megapixel DLSR has become superior to 35mm film - nothing unexpected, just pretty impressive to see the direct comparison side by side. Interesting is certainly also to compare the Patterson resolution chart - taken with the D200 and with an N90S with lenses of comparable optical performance - again the 12-24mm Nikon for digital and the 2,8/17-35mm Nikon for film. Here are the results- First a standard scan of the resolution chart itself to show how it should theoretically look like - if the imaging system would be "perfect" (the image of the chart was significantly compressed to fit the requirements for images on the web - therefore you cannot see all the details in this scan here)
And here the interesting B&W detail - scanned in higher resolution on an Epson 4870:
The Nikon D200 performs very well, as expected from a 10 Megapixel semi-professional DSLR - here the same entire chart, photographed with the D200 (12-24mm AFS-D lens)
And here the same crop - as you can see, the resolution limit is in the region of 40-42 lpm:
And now to compare with this result the same crop, taken on film (Nikon N90S, AFS-D 2,8/17-35mm, ISO100, 28mmFL, f/11)
The main difference is not so much the resolved line-pairs but how much the grain can disturb the entire image - looking closely, 36 lpm are resolved and 42 lpm are not anymore fully resolved - this indicates that the D200 and a comparable film based camera have similar resolution abilities however, the images from film suffer from the grain whereas the images from the digital camera suffer from noise and artifacts but in most scenes still look better than the film images.
Long exposure on Film and Digital Now the next set of images - I have used a "Jugendstil" vase which has got pretty but difficult colors and a sterling silver stand - lighting came from bounced 3200K Tungsten light. Interestingly, the digital image shows the colors of the glass pretty accurate whereas the film image cannot cope with these colors - they are not accurate anymore. Both images taken at f16 at several of seconds exposure time. In addition to the color problems (reciprocity failure) on the film image, the film image shows quite some grain (200 ASA Fuji). Once more, the digital image is far superior to the film image. Here first the entire shot, taken with the D200 (f/16, 5sec, 40mm FL, preset-WB)
Now the comparison of the two shots - left the digital and right the 35mm film shot (24mm FL, 2.4sec, f/16) - the difference is very visible, even on a webpage:
IMATEST Results Color is one of the important aspects of a sophisticated digital camera and there is a very useful software available to test the color performance (and other topics) of digital cameras, IMATEST. In the following, you can see the results of the ColorChecker test, all done with IMATEST and the standard Gretag-Macbeth color chart. The D200 performs very well and, quoting my friend Norman Koren, the author of the IMATEST software..." the D200 could almost be used as a scientific color measurement tool - the best I have seen until now..." IMATEST results are objective and do not depend on the visual interpretation of the examiner - this allows it to directly compare results between cameras. Below now the results of the D200 tests: The first graph shows the location of the color as reproduced by the camera in comparison to its theoretical position
The second graph shows the exaggerated color and white balance errors
The graphs below shows the gamma value of the gray wedge, density response and noise. As mentioned, the noise is a bit more than I would like to see it in such a camera.
The rather low Gamma value of 0.458 fits very nicely to a Gamma of 2,2 system which is more or less standard for image processing and printing in these days.
As of today, I have had only one DSLR camera (not talking about professional digital backs for medium format cameras) for testing, which was better - the new Nikon D2Xs, but this is not only a different class of camera but also a different review.
Noise Reduction Another important parameter for a top end DSLR is the amount of noise it produces when taking images in darker environment. The Nikon sensor of 10 Megapixel is rather small compared to the 12 MPx sensor of the Canon 5D which means that theoretically the Nikon could reveal more noise because the light sensitive areas are smaller and less light can be collected under comparable parameters. I have found that this is the case - first to show are two photographs taken in Zurich/Switzerland at night time, showing part of the Old Town. The first photograph shows the entire image as I have recorded it.
The second set of images shows a detail of that first image - about the middle left center - and the difference in noise is very visible at that high magnification. Of course, an image at ISO 1600 is doomed to reveal noise - film images at ISO 1600 with be full of grain - but what disturbs is the fact, that a lot of the details are buried by the noise reduction algorithm which has been activated. And without that algorithm, the ISO 1600 image would look pretty grainy.
I wanted to see how the noise reduction for high ISO settings works - it has got a few different intensity settings from none to high - the image composition below shows three crops of a larger image which had been taken with no noise reduction, low-position noise reduction and high-position noise reduction at ISO 1600. The center image with no noise reduction was taken at ISO 100 to show what details would be available in that scene
Even on the web, the graininess of the ISO 1600 shots is visible - no surprise and quite normal, but the details vanish in these shots, depending on the amount of noise reduction as one can see on the detail crops below -same shots, just cropped center part to see the details better than in the shots above
CONCLUSION I am aware that I have pointed out not only positive aspects but also made some critical remarks - but overall, I have a very strong opinion about this camera - it is excellent. Would I prefer it over the closest competitor, the Canon 5D (at the time of publishing, there are no other close competitors to these cameras on the market, but this might change during the upcoming Photokina 2006 in Cologne)? I think this depends on the camera history of the user - a traditional Canon user would prefer to stay with a Canon digital camera as most of the AF lenses can be used and same is valid for a traditional Nikon user. There are however a few advantages of the smaller sensor size philosophy of Nikon - when using 35mm lenses, they are used in their best part of the field of view, which means that the always existing small residual correction shortcomings of the edges of the image field are not used for taking digital images and for those who like telephoto photography, the 1,5x factor works like a tele-converter without loosing the 1f-stop of an optical converter. But of course, no advantage without some drawbacks - in my opinion, the biggest drawback is the still smaller field of view in the viewfinder - despite the fact that the viewfinder of the D200 is much better and wider than others with a 1.5x factor. And do not forget - a smaller sensor means less light collection area available, which results in more noise. Other small shortcomings, which I noticed, can be adjusted or overcome - like the very soft base settings of the camera, which makes images appear to be not really crispy - just set the standard sharpening to a slightly higher value and it works very fine. Or the automatic white balance which in my opinion works very fine with daylight but not that great with incandescent light - again, there is a manual setting and this works perfect. Nothing important, just a bit of a nuisance - such an excellent camera but a few small shortcomings which are not necessary. Would I want to get the camera - yes, definitely. Just think about the price/performance ratio - significantly lower price compared to the Canon 5D and largely comparable in image performance and quality. It is a very attractive semi-professional camera which should become a hot runner for all those who want to spend some larger amount of money for a serious digital SLR. To end this certainly not comprehensive and not complete review (I do not have all the gadgets and devices available which other website publishers have got available..) I would like to show a few more images taken with this camera which I liked very much to try out.
On the Arlberg/Vorarlberg-Austria
Steinhof / Vienna
Otto Wagner Church / Steinhof-Vienna
Muhh..What do you want?
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