My new D3300

After a long wait starting on 7th the camera finally arrived at 1600 hrs today.

Here are some shots of the items


The product box

Components displayed

I got the camera primarily for low light shots and to recover shadows, as the current sensors have a lot more DR compared to my D70 and D300. I did a quick test


Original - shot taken at around 1500

After processing in Capture NX beta

I will post more shots after processing them tomorrow.

From your original first shot, this is what I came up with, using Irfanview.

Congrats...

Some more shots with the 18-55

My Dog

Indoor with built in flash. This does not have much range, so will be using my SB800 most of the time.

Yesterday I tested the 105mm AIS macro. It worked fine, but D3300 does not meter, so all shots were with manual exposures - just like in the old film days.

Today I have been testing the 50mmF1.8 AF. This lense is MF but meters perfectly. Will have some shots from dawn to mid afternoon to dusk to check its performance.

Congrats

I'm curious as to know just how much better the new lens/d3300 is compared to the d3200 with older kit lens?

Mark F said:

I'm curious as to know just how much better the new lens/d3300 is compared to the d3200 with older kit lens?

Click to expand...

Hard to say. Only difference I can see is that it is VR-II. I think the best place is to check at DXO, but they have not tested it yet.

The folding part has nothing to do with optics. I will try to borrow a friend's 18-55 which he got with D3200but doubt they are but marginally different, if at all.

aroy said:

Hard to say. Only difference I can see is that it is VR-II. I think the best place is to check at DXO, but they have not tested it yet.

The folding part has nothing to do with optics. I will try to borrow a friend's 18-55 which he got with D3200 but doubt they are but marginally different, if at all.

Click to expand...

I have heard the VRII is a better lens.. pairing that with the newer sensor with the AA filter removed, thats what I am kind of curious about as to how much difference those changes actually make. Not so much in higher ISO for low light. I was thinking about getting either one for a light alternative to my d600 for long hikes.
Generally, I shoot landscapes at 100 - 400 ISO F8, tripod as needed.

As a camera body, D3300 has the following advantages over D3200
- Faster burst fps
- Faster movie fps
- Extended ISO range
- No AA filter, so should be sharper
- Marginally smaller and lighter
These are mainly due to faster processor Expeed4

In camera filters

The major disadvantages for those who have MF and screw driver lenses are that
- You have to manually focus these lenses, though the focus conformation "green dot" helps.
- Non CPU lenses cannot use the in camera metering and you have to set the Aperture, Speed and ISO manually using an external meter, or if you have none experience or trial and error.

congrats and enjoy

Enjoy your new camera some nice photos there.

As I got this camera primarily to shoot in low light and at high ISO, I carried out test at various ISO


ISO 12800 +1EV

ISO 12800 +1EV

As I got this camera primarily to shoot in low light and at high ISO, I carried out test at various ISO


ISO 12800 + 1EV


ISO 12800


ISO 6400


ISO 3200


ISO 1600


ISO 800


ISO 400


ISO 200


ISO 100 - Normal


ISO 100 - Shadow recover #1


ISO 100 - Shadow recover #2


ISO 100 - Shadow recover #3

Observations
. For clean images ISO 800 is about all, if you want do recover shadow, I would stick to 100 and 200 for images with wide DR and upto 800 for low contrast scenes.
. ISO 1600 - 6400 are useful if that is that is possible - low light fast speed is required
. ISO 12800 and Hi are for emergencies - occasions where any thing is better than nothing
. Shadow recovery is quite good at lower ISO. As there is about 13 EV DR, and shadows start at 9 EV, there is only 4 EV of shadows at ISO100, so that by ISO 800 only noise is left in the shadows. D600 and D800 have an extra stop of DR, so should produce clean images till ISO 1600. Similarly D4S would be good till ISO 6400

Some more things that I learned

. The camera shakes due to mirror slap, even on a sturdy tripod, hence you have to stabilize it properly. Here the VR helps a lot in hand held shots.

. The inbuilt flash requires some practice as it is always (at least for me) under exposing. For most of the out door shots I use +2EV and for indoor shots +1EV as flash compensation.

. As metered the image has at least +1EV reserve for highlights. So if you have a perfect histogram, just touching the right, and then expose it by +1EV, the data is available in post.

. To get super sharp images with my MF 50mm F1.8 lens I used flash as a strobe.

. The View NX-D (beta) is an excellent software and unless you need Photoshop or focus stacking that is all that is required to process the Raw Nikon images.

. The camera software for calculating storage on the card seems to retain the 14 bit size of 27MB (of D7100 camera). That the images here are 12 bit and 22MB on average has escaped the coders. That means that the 4GB card supplied shows space for around 145 images where as in reality it can store around 180. While this may be a nice feature so that you do not run out of space, I would prefer the estimate to be more accurate.

It is a pity that there is no mirror up mode. This could have been easily incorporated as the Live View has the mirror up. Why the mirror has do cycle while shooting in LV is a mystery to me.

Checked the "range finder". It is extremely accurate with the 50mm AF lense. I checked all the three for focus accuracy at F1.8.
- Green Dot
- Range Finder
- Image

All of them tally.
The optical view finder is quite bright and shows point of sharp focus clearly. I now have to get my glasses changed so that I am in tune with the diopter adjuster (at its maximum). At present with my glasses I am slightly off when judging the sharpest focus on the view finder.

I'm actually thinking of selling my d600 ( just can't wrap myself around it anymore for some reason ) and getting this camera. For all I shoot... landscape at ISO 100-400 F5.6 to 11, I think the image quality will be about the same. I had the d3200 and I was impressed with it for what it was.
With the extra money selling the FX.. I can get a higher quality DX lens kit. Its going backwards, I know... so I haven't been convinced yet

Learnt another thing. This camera will not expose properly with flash when "distance" information is not relayed by the lens. My 50mm AF is a non "D" lense. So for every distance I have to adjust the flash compensation. I always thought that modern cameras can meter the flash off the film (sensor) as in older TTL systems.

Mark F said:

I'm actually thinking of selling my d600 ( just can't wrap myself around it anymore for some reason ) and getting this camera. For all I shoot... landscape at ISO 100-400 F5.6 to 11, I think the image quality will be about the same. I had the d3200 and I was impressed with it for what it was.
With the extra money selling the FX.. I can get a higher quality DX lens kit. Its going backwards, I know... so I haven't been convinced yet

Click to expand...

Keep the D600. Here are the reasons, especially if you are shooting landscapes.

. D600 has about 1.5EV DR more. What this means that even with the D3300 I have a 4EV leeway in the shadows and 1EV in highlights. You will get 5+ in shadows. So you meter for the brightest object and then recover deep shadows in post. This is invaluable capability for landscapes.

. FX sensor is wider, hence wides will be wide. Consider that 18mm on DX has an FOV of 28mm on FX. Think of what a 14mm will have.

. A lot of excellent AIS (manual focus) lenses are available new and dirt cheap pre-owned. 28mm F2.8 AIS is one of them. Ultimately most of the primes, at their sweet spot are faster and have less distortion compared to zooms, not to mention they are way less expensive.

. D600 has two user modes, D3300 none. You have to change setting every time the shooting scenario changes. Though not essential it is a good to have feature.

. Two SD card slots let you have redundancy, one does not.

. Flash metering is much better integrated. The D3300 does not meter with lenses which do not send the distance back.

Here in India the D3300 has touched $500/ mark, and I think the rest of the world will follow. If you can sell the kit lense for $100, the the D3300 is just $400, less than most of the lenses. So I suggest that instead of getting rid of D600, keep it and get a D3300. You can always use a second DX camera with the primary FX.

aroy said:

Keep the D600. Here are the reasons, especially if you are shooting landscapes.

Click to expand...

I may end up doing just that, but I haven't really used the d600 for 6 months.
I really don't understand why.... When I was using the D90, D300s, and the d3200, I was shooting all the time. Sold all those to go full frame and ended up with the d600 instead of the d800e that I really wanted. Then Nikon customer service came into the picture and thoroughly disgusted me, so now the d600 sits most of the time.
Not the fault of the picture quality that comes out of the d600. I'll work it out eventually, but for now I think the d3300 or maybe wait and see what the d3400 will bring to get back the fun of photography to me.