Today's iso performance

alaios

Senior Member
Hi there,
I wanted your opinion on how bad you think d7000 for todays standard's.
It looks like that even to today standards iso performance is just better than more recent bodies (like the a77 ii from sony, although this is not a camera to brag about iso).
Dynamic range is also very good and it looks like that there are no banding problems as the d7100 sensor.
Resolution is a bit small but still is not this a decent number to have today? Perhaps you can not crop that much but still that gives you smaller raw file sizes with a decent dynamic range to pull shadows if you need so .

Reason I am asking is that I see those cameras selling around 200 euros! Is not his a nice way to save couple of euros for lenses for example?
Regards
Alex
 
Having owned and shot both the D7000 and the D7100 I can tell you the D7100 is a much better camera in every aspect. I still own my D7100 and it is shot along beside my D750.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Bikerbrent

Senior Member
What are your local prices for the D7100 or D7200? If they are significantly more expensive than the 200 euros for the D7000, ask yourself why? All the reviews I have seen rate the D7100 a significant step up from the D7000 and the D7200 a small step up from the D7100. Be careful not to be pound foolish and penny wise.
 

skene

Senior Member
Well if you are basing everything on iso, newer technology will always beat older technology. So what you want to consider is if the 7000 is no longer relevant as a camera, and the answer is no. The 7000 is still very much relevant despite its age, however when you are blindsided by newer tech like the 7100, 7200 and even the 500 and 5 where you see ridiculous iso gains. Now you should also put into consideration where the images are at its most usable level (this is where noise comes into play). How much noise is introduced and at what ISO?

When you start to consider what is usable and what is no longer an image, you can pit each of these cameras up against each other. Most cameras start to introduce noise above 6400 ISO, which is also where the 7000 still produces clean usable images.
So now if all cameras created equally start introducing noise at the same ISO, where else should you be looking. Camera buffering? More MPix? Burst?

Good luck with your decision.
 

Camera Fun

Senior Member
Q. Would I like better iso performance than my D7000 provides in some situations? A. Of course I would.
Q. Will I someday upgrade to a new body that happens to have better iso performance? A. Of course I want to.
Q. Am I happy with my D7000 right now? A. Of course (as long as I don't keep reading about how good the newer models are). :)
 

Roy1961

Senior Member
Contributor
i like my D7000, not too happy with the ISO but lucky i get lots of sun, my next camera will do better in the low light dept, a D???????
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
I have shot with every Nikon made in the last 10 years and any from the D90 and later is capable of shooting any image found on gallery walls. The D7000 was the first of the Sony sensors that were essentially ISO'less so shooting underexposed a few stops to get higher shutter speed when needed delivered the same image when boosted in post as shooting at at "correct" to the right of the histogram exposure. The D7100 going with a Hitachi sensor had better spec for low light but also returned to the bad old days of less robust file depth, meaning boosting in post usually ruined the image with banding and color fidelity loss, like a Canon was known for. The D7200 returned to Sony and it is a better data generator. But why are people trying to shoot at such high ISO numbers, even on the best cameras, DR and color depth goes to pot. Numbers being quoted are for 6 db signal to noise ratio, with if horrible.
I suspect the reason is few people print their images and on small screens even phone cameras seem good. But the question is, why record a dark scene and expect to present it as full daylight? That is not how our vision works and is creating an artificial presentation. Low light really does have noise visually, and poor color fidelity and poor edge detail, there really is less information with a camera or just your eyes.
Regardless of the camera there is very little difference between finished images between any cameras. Whether an image is worth looking at or tells a story, or draws viewers has nothing to do with factors the camera controls. If you create a compelling image, it is, without the camera having any impact on its interest.
Whatever you have, honing your skills at finding and telling a story, composing it and exposing as needed to best tell the story, you have a winner. Missing any of those elements and you have a worthless image even if pixel peeping reveals less noise than an other. Using that as a baseline, upgrading all the time seems to retard development of the photographer more than if sticking with a competent camera and learning to stories with light and shadow better. A good workshop or art appreciation classes at the local college will get you closer to creating compelling images far faster than buying another body.
Why are photos being taken in such dark where all the light information it missing anyway? Learning and using techniques to augment light is a more valuable skill than mastering a higher spec sheet camera. What scenes are needing that much artificial sensor amplification. Pro sports are very well lit, but that is the excuse most trot out as justification of getting a camera with 3million ISO. But look at their gallery and you see conventional snap shots or landscapes, cat/dog/baby pictures. It is gear hobby, not image hobby. Look around at images winning awards or in top glossy publications, ad work or any other high end or fine art images, what do they all have in common? MF, Fx, View camera, Dx, mega lens, or?? They all where that way because of light that was used creatively by augmentation. A studio is not a place where there are cameras....sure there are some but it does not matter which are used. Studios are where light is easily modified and augmented. Now, it is possible to carry a studio in your backpack. Look around your room, any images you see that were valuable enough to have been paid for, the difference in that photo that earn money and your snap shots is not camera but skill in telling a compelling story with light and dark. Light is cheap but requires learning how to solve problems with it and be creative with it. It is more open-ended than just buying a higher cost camera so it is less popular than just pulling out the credit card.
Is the D7000 worse than the D7100 or D7200? Technically, sure on specific single points that were focused on that by themselves have little or no bearing on whether a photo is good.
There are some simple steps to improving your images. One is stop thinking of images are pixels and components, they only make sense viewed overall, in one glance. If you can't see the whole image in one look without scanning side to side, you are too darn close. Every image, every painting, every sculpture has a viewing distance where it makes the sense the artist intended. It makes less sense if view further or closer. It is a human scale, and how we experience our environment. Go to a major art gallery with significant painting and you will see two types of people. notice some people move up very close, to see the detail and placard to see if it is famous. Many, particularly tourists who want to see a famous painting but know more about it when leaving than before seeing it because they get up very close. The painting has no information to impart to them, they get nothing from it other than they saw it. The other group of people see a large canvas and they move back, back to the range that it can be seen in one whole, as the painter intended. They are the ones getting something out of it.
The same with photographers, who are always pixel peeping to tell them whether it is perfectly sharp in some detail. They are ruining their own perception of their photo. Human scale of our environment depends very little on micro scale, our brains and eyes evolved to get the most information that was actually useful in describing their environment that would be useful to them. Actual sharp images often are less compelling than those less so, but regardless, how it looks as a whole is the only vantage point that suggests the message, story or feeling of the image. Stop pixel peeping and your stories will be better told.
Plan the intent of the shot or the goal. Shadow tells as much as light does, shadows is often ignored by those shooting auto modes wanting everything "properly" exposed. Hi ISO is death for shadows. If the subject is still, a good tripod is much more valuable than a high ISO camera.
A D7000 is a very competent camera and I dare anyone to look at a decent sized print and pick an image shot with a D7000 from one shot with a D810 when viewing from normal distance. Unless you are printing large and viewing too close to view in one take, the added resolution is just wasted, and adds no information to the viewer. A 6mpx file is plenty large enough for 20 foot billboards. If one photo is better, more interesting, it is due to content and non-camera reasons.
The most common excuse why people reject the suggestion to get into lighting is "I hate the flash look" or "I prefer natural light". Both only underscores the reason they need to learn about lighting. Every other image they see every day was done with lighting modification. That outdoor, sunny day beach photo on the magazine cover almost surely had lighting and modifiers used to create natural looking images. Snap shot without it, don't look "natural" at all, it is not how we see the same scene with our naked eyes. We use lighting and modifiers to trick the brain into seeing what would be natural for human vision but isn't what a camera natively puts out.
Another reason why upgrading all the time holds people back is because it consumes the budget that could be used for items that actually DO make a difference., such as workshops, lighting, modifiers, and even a lens of two. If you are not winning awards now, it is not because you don't have the latest camera. The reason the image that did get an award was honored depended not one bit on the camera model.
 

Bikerbrent

Senior Member
I agree, endless updating just puts more money in the manufacturer's pockets. That is one reason I waited over 10 years before upgrading to my D7200 from my D200. The upgrade from D200 to D300/d300x was just not significant enough to warrant the cost. In fact, many of my posted photos were shot with my D200 and I challenge anyone to tell which photos are which without looking at the EXIF data.
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
It is telling as well as interesting to visit photo galleries. It is amazing how many of the photos awarded and praised were shot with D200s, D40s and equivel and Canon cameras. Are they really that good? No, but good enough to win awards. The shooter has an advantage, by shooting with the same camera for 15 years it is no longer anything but an automatic extension of ones eyes and hand. Nothing in that award winning image depended on high res or 14 stops of DR. It NEVER does. Forget on-line galleries, visit physical curated galleries, either for photos or paintings and your whole view of image arts becomes better informed. A great painting and a great photo is so for the same reason. Only art historians are interested in what the resolution of Rembrandt's brushes. Neither is an photo gallery curator interested in anything but who did it, date possibly, and title. It needs to stand on its own without any external information.
I was in the music business as recording engineer/producer and studio owner for 25 years and everyday people wanted me to hear the songs they wrote and begin by telling me what is about. Any song that needs background info is a poor song. It has to stand on its own merits. Photos are the same. It communicates its own message, or doesn't, in case of the later, it is not a good photo no matter how sharp or 16 gigapixels and 120 db DR shot with a bus sized sensor. I never once heard a song presented to me that way that was suitable for the artists looking for new material. It was a great way to meet girls however, every songwriter girl wanted to get next to me;>) since we were doing top selling albums with household name artists. The most money I ever made from an album as studio owner was black and white snap shots in the studio of artists relaxing or taking a break to discuss something. One photo license on the back of an album, moody dark capture with film with a face half in shadows earned enough to buy a vacation home on Maui;>), all it needed being put on the back of a 3,000,000 copy sales album. The old adage "the best camera is the one with you" is absolutely true. My old Canon A1 was with me every day all over the world, 90 countries so far, and my first digital was a D90 when it was released and it had 130,000 frames before my GF started hording it as her own. Still cranking out great photos, she has a natural eye for perspective and points of view.I have over 100k on my D7000 and about the same on the D800 but the kit got too big so I seldom carry it when out walking around the city, being probably the most beautiful large city in the world. Doing a wedding or a theater shoot, with a 70-200 2.8 on the D7000 and 24-70 2.8, 85 1.4 or 1.8 or 24 1.4g on the D800, the photos are presented in the same catalog for the venue and no one every said "ewww, a 16mpx image, yuck"
 

Danno

Senior Member
Do you know how does the D7100 compare to the D7200?

I actually believe that they are pretty close to the same. The D7200 may have a bit of an edge, but it is small. I think both of these cameras are excellent. I picked the D7200 refurbished over the D7100 when I upgraded because of the price. It was a really good price. Until then I had gone back and forth on the two cameras.

I am glad I got the D7200 but I think I would be just as happy with a D7100.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Do you know how does the D7100 compare to the D7200?
If you mean at really high ISO then the D7200 performance is better. Not by leaps and bounds, not really the kind of better you upgrade from a D7100 for, specifically, but it is better. The really strong suit of the D7200, and I mean over the D7100 specifically (in my opinion) would be the better auto-focus (especially in low-light situations), the better processor and deeper buffer (roughly three times that of the D7100).
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carguy

Senior Member
Hi there,
I wanted your opinion on how bad you think d7000 for todays standard's.
It looks like that even to today standards iso performance is just better than more recent bodies (like the a77 ii from sony, although this is not a camera to brag about iso).
Dynamic range is also very good and it looks like that there are no banding problems as the d7100 sensor.
Resolution is a bit small but still is not this a decent number to have today? Perhaps you can not crop that much but still that gives you smaller raw file sizes with a decent dynamic range to pull shadows if you need so .

Reason I am asking is that I see those cameras selling around 200 euros! Is not his a nice way to save couple of euros for lenses for example?
Regards
Alex
It isn't about how 'bad' the D7000 ISO performance is compared to 'today's standards'. it's more about, will the D7000's ISO performance allow YOU to obtain quality images of what YOU shoot.


What 'banding problems' are you referring to on the D7100?
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
What 'banding problems' are you referring to on the D7100?
I'll try to give you the Readers Digest version... Oh, wait, Thom Hogan has done that for us! Yea Thom!!

Allow me to quote him at length:
Thom Hogan said:
Which brings me to the other image quality issue: the banding in the deep shadow detail on these Toshiba sensors (shared with the D5200; see example in my D5200 review). The typical forum poster on other Web sites starts their condemnation of the D7100 sensor by shooting something four or five stops underexposed in raw, then bringing up the "exposure" in their raw converter. Typical result: shadows have some banding in them.

Now, the areas that have banding in that situation are still probably three stops below middle gray after adjustment, so what we're actually seeing in such examples are things usually eight or more stops below middle gray. In normal situations, you're just not going to see such problems. But it's true that you might see some slight banding if you use Active D-Lighting in strong contrast situations or have to do deep shadow recovery in an image via post processing. Let's see, how many times have I done that so far? None, except for the times where I was trying to illustrate the problem ;~).


Source: Nikon D7100 Review by Thom Hogan
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
Probably the best research on DR of cameras/sensors has been Bill Claff's Photographic Dynamic Range, instead of engineering DR
Visit his web site where he has measured most of the cameras of the last 15 years:

Photographic Dynamic Range versus ISO Setting

Just click on the models on the right to superimpose the graphs for as many cameras as you select
The D7100 and D7200 have almost identical DR and the D7000 and D90 trail by 1/2 a stop.
 

Bikerbrent

Senior Member
Probably the best research on DR of cameras/sensors has been Bill Claff's Photographic Dynamic Range, instead of engineering DR
Visit his web site where he has measured most of the cameras of the last 15 years:

Photographic Dynamic Range versus ISO Setting

Just click on the models on the right to superimpose the graphs for as many cameras as you select
The D7100 and D7200 have almost identical DR and the D7000 and D90 trail by 1/2 a stop.

Also interesting that the D7200/D7100 have almost identical DR to the D500.
 
Probably the best research on DR of cameras/sensors has been Bill Claff's Photographic Dynamic Range, instead of engineering DR
Visit his web site where he has measured most of the cameras of the last 15 years:

Photographic Dynamic Range versus ISO Setting

Just click on the models on the right to superimpose the graphs for as many cameras as you select
The D7100 and D7200 have almost identical DR and the D7000 and D90 trail by 1/2 a stop.

Interesting. But all this is great as long as the shooter knows how to get the maximum quality from his gear. I have seen photos from a Coolpix that was better than from a D4.

Don't get to hung up on numbers.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Probably the best research on DR of cameras/sensors has been Bill Claff's Photographic Dynamic Range, instead of engineering DR
Visit his web site where he has measured most of the cameras of the last 15 years:

Photographic Dynamic Range versus ISO Setting

Just click on the models on the right to superimpose the graphs for as many cameras as you select
The D7100 and D7200 have almost identical DR and the D7000 and D90 trail by 1/2 a stop.
Interesting... The D750 runs neck and neck with some pretty nice medium format bodies. It loses out to the $6,500 Fuji GFX 50s by less than a point and just beats the $7,000 Pentax 645Z by the same margin.

Of course if anyone want's to swap their lightly used '50s for my D750, please drop everything and call me; I'm confident we can work something out.
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