Been busy with work and lots of travelling and I haven't been updating this blog for months. Lets end the year with few gear reviews/first impressions posts. Those seems to be anyways the most interesting content for readers.
D750 feels like great successor for my trusted workhorse, D700. This camera with small prime like 50mm is compact, has great grip ergonomics (something that should have been in Df) and feels FUN. It is great camera for both studio & event photography. List of first impression below after using the camera for about two months and having multiple outdoor & studio shoots.
High ISO quality compared to D700 looks to be something like stop better or even more. ISO 12800 with moderate noise reduction and downsampling the file smaller results usable files. Nice!
Top 1/4000 shutter speed shouldn't be that big issue because of base ISO of 100 that can be pushed down to 50. Same with max sync speed of 1/200. In practise I found out 1/200 to be too fast sometimes resulting curtain to be captured in photos. 1/160 shutter speed seems to be safe shutter speed.
Battery grip's button & dial ergonomics clearly worse compared to D700's grip. Its good that shutter button in grip is not oversensitive like it was in D700's grip but it still lacks the good feedback compared to camera's own shutter button. Same with dial wheels, where especially the front one is hard to turn. It looks to be placed deeper in the grip which makes it difficult to rotate. Maybe this was made to prevent accidental wheel turns when hanging the camera from shoulder (happened me multiple times). Even with the problems the wheel were usable when used gloves on.
Otherwise ergonomics in camera and battery grip are excellent.
Auto ISO. Can be turned on/off from the front dial when ISO menu activated. Much better than before when it required own menu item for fast auto ISO setting access.
Top LCD. I miss the image format info and showing WB choices when WB key pressed and dial rotated. On the other hand, ISO value being always visible as big improvement.
Back LCD. Info view. There could have been area to see active focus point like in D700. I used that quite often to change focus point before raising camera to the eye. I also preferred the info view's layout in D700. Otherwise bigger screen with higher resolution is another improvement. Not sure how the LCD without plastic cover can withstand scratches and tilting mechanism in the articulated screen can be prone to break or suck dirt inside. I have already noticed that screen starts to lift when hanging the camera from shoulder. Time will tell how durable it is. I guess I would have preferred D750 to have non articulated LCD with plastic screen protector :)
Shutter sound. Much quieter than with D700. Quiet mode however feels unnecessary. There is no audible difference between normal & quiet mode.
Sometimes there is delay (hourglass shown) when pressing play icon for reviewing the photos. This was also case with D700 but I was expecting better response for 3 years newer camera model. Update: looks like multiple people are reporting same delay when reviewing photos. Hopefully fixed by software update.
Buffer size & speed emptying it with fast SD (95mb/s) cards. More than I ever need in studio photography but could have been faster for event, sports & nature photography. btw. Buffer size with 14bit lossless NEF + JPEG fine (backup to 2nd card) is 10 images.
AF speed & accuracy. Feels fast & reliable even when in dark. I have encountered cases where focusing goes bananas but they are usually linked to extreme cases. Usually in situations where there is not enough light to make decent photos in the first place.
Wifi. First obstacle was finding IOS WMU software from store. Close to impossible without direct link. Connection to application changes to standard wifi too easily if there is short breaks while using the remote capturing and you can basically just capture the photos by software. By default photos are transferred as medium sized JPEG. You can download NEF file via application but it is so slow that this doesn't feel as alternative for true tethered shooting. Maybe updates will improve this, but for now, meh.
Video. FullHD videos recorded with flat profile looks really good. Automated time lapse video creation is also great to have. Some testing of D750 video recording and time lapse from this link. Focusing mistakes in the video are my fault.
One annoying thing I have noticed that flash mode (rear sync etc.) settings can't be accessed when using flash trigger like PocketWizard. Pressing flash key opens the flash partially (as it will be blocked by the transmitter in hotshoe) and menu won't show up. Removing the transmitter will show the flash menu options.
Reported dark band flare problem? Haven't noticed it on any of my photos or videos this far. I even tested pointing the camera on live view against studio light with modeling light on. Then took some photos with the same studio flash firing against the lens. Tried to keep the light source just outside of frame. Tested the setup with hood on &am and also with D700 and same 24-70mm lens. Only thing I could see was noticeable flare on the bottom of frame when light source was below it. This happened on both cameras. Maybe the light source wasn't bright enough or I couldn't reproduce the problem. Update: by the
Conclusions: great camera for the price? yes. Does it make your photos better by getting new camera? usually not
Then some RAW conversion examples:
RAW developing & Lightroom. Using Camera standard profile is often recommended. Tones with Adobe standard are very desaturated. With D700, Adobe Standard was often good starting point. This looks to be now changed with D750 files.
click to see it in bigger
Lightroom 5.7 is finally out (with support for new cameras like D750 and fix for D810 RAW developing). Different RAW conversion samples in the image above.
Notes:
- First image is JPEG FINE straight from camera. Standard profile.
- Second image. ADOBE DNG Converter RC 8.7 and Lightroom 5.7 (Adobe Standard profile) to export the JPEG file.
- Third image. LR 5.7, Adobe Standard (default) profile and exported JPEG
- Fourth image. LR 5.7, Camera Standard profile and exported JPEG
- Fifth image. Capture NX-D, Picture Control Standard and exported JPEG
Notes: Camera Standard profile gives warmer colors and more contrasty image than Adobe Standard which looks often a bit pale or muted. In LR 5.7, developing profiles also got some changes. ACR is removed and camera flat profile added to the list. Changing developing profile for NEF & DNG files gives similar looking results.
With Lightroom's Camera Standard profile, the test RAW image was quite close to the JPEG file straight from camera. There are still tone differences and those also depends lot about light used in capture (tungsten, flash or daylight etc.)
NEF file opened with Capture NX-D (default settings) and exported as JPEG has excellent colors and more contrast than with original JPEG straight from camera or with LR 5.7 developed NEF files (you can see it from the shadows under jaw).
I made this test with only one file and didn't test HIGH ISO or wider range of colors how they will go through conversion.
Is this splitting hairs. Yes and no. Everything can be, and will be corrected and enhanced in post. But good starting point for colors is always important. LR has its performance and RAW developing flaws but for overall workflow management its still one of the best options available.
Model: Rinka
Some sample photos to the end like in real reviews:
D750 + 85mm/f1.4
From the shoot with Askar Ibragimov
Model: Miry Vainaja
MUAH & styling, clothes & hairpiece: Jannica Stelander
D750 + 35mm/f1.4 The Museum of Flight, just because they also took aeroplane photos from same place in Dpreview review
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