D300 ISO

[Charlie Groh]

...anyone tested the D300 at ISO 100? I've checked around a bit, just want to quiz the shooters here...

cg

[WW]

Charlie>>>> Try rec.photo.digital or rec.photo.digital.slr-systems

May get more results. Warren

[Charlie Groh]

Har-har...no crosspost...wrongpost! LOL...

cg

>

[Bored Borg]

On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:16:16 +0100, Charlie Groh wrote (in article ):

well, I've got the fuji-modded D200, and it's awesome, if that helps. . different chipset though. No bleach in hilights... I would think the 300 would at least equal it cos of the pixel density (I think there's some redundancy in there that effectively gives you dead pixels till the surrounding area saturates when they kick in and retrieve the tone again, but that could be my memory playing tricks with the spec sheet.) behaves like a conventional fast film for the latitude gain with the resolution of a slow film. About as good as it gets for the chip area.

So what's your worry? What you want to test? :-)

[Charlie Groh]

...I just fouled-up and posted to the wrong group, sorry. However, I know there are photogs here, too, and here you are! The 300's native ISO is 200 and there are 3 settings below that...roughly in thirds down to 100...I did find some testing done and there are some choices to be made depending on subject matter (I'm trying the 160 L 0.3 setting for awhile...seems some think that's the "sweet spot"). I'm not familiar with the 200, but it sounds like you're miles ahead of moi in the tech surrounding pixels and such...I'm just looking for general guidelines, eventually, of course, it's how my eye sees it.

(funny, I was actually thinking "film" today...hehehe...may break-out the olde bodies and do some "you'd better be right the first time" work!).

cg

[Bored Borg]

On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:17:50 +0100, Charlie Groh wrote (in article ):

easily done. I'm always running into trouble with my alt.nuns-latex.fetish.custard-wrestling posts going awry :-)

I was a scientific photographer (and a keen amateur) for many years and after the first few years I finally came to grips with the "There's more to life than photographing resolution charts" go out and make pictures philosophy. I knew a lot of camera club types (I was one too, all through my teens) who never got beyond the race for better definition and thirtyOdd years later are still stuck on the quest for an extra line pair.. that's why I was raising an eyebrow. slightly, at the mention of 'test." It is (often) a road to folly, unless you're iron-willed and prepared to shrug off the fact that there are always "better" cameras out there.

I know film FAR better than digital but digital gives you 90% of the quality at least 90% of the time.. with virtually no running costs. I rarely touch film now. I feel like I trained as a dinosaur jockey or a gas street-lamp tuner or the bloke who works the cutter head microscope for vinyl LPs.. Years of work and experience in learning sensitometric control, Zone systems and how to baffle the unwary with Jones quadrant transfer curves... as completely obsolete as alchemy.

However...

What I HAVE learned about digital photography is that by the time you've researched and found your ideal set-up, the market will already have changed and you'll have to start all over again IF you want to keep on the bleeding edge, The corollary of this is that the extra technological stretch is NOT worth pursuing. It exists purely for magazine pundits and marketing hacks and will not improve your picture-making results in the short to medium term.

For years I never went out of the house without a camera.. either an F2 or an old WW2 Contax, usually. Then i started with a coolpix compact.. which turned out superb quality snaphots but was frustratingly useless in all my terms of reference, so I continued with film for "proper" photography until very recently. I still prefer to use an incident light meter. I like the camera to do what _I_ want it to do, with no shutter lag, exposure control or auto-anything and that's why I finally bought what I did.. seems you have to pay dearly for complete manual control. Ironically, I now tend to use it on "auto" most of the time. I can, however, go in to full-on photographer mode if the subject and occasion warrant it.

I'm convinced that if I put as much effort into the technology s I did with film, It'll be superceded by colour-holographic wristwatch eye-movement controlled wizardry overnight. So I don't bother.

I shoot for highish-quality jpegs unless I'm doing a shoot (usually a commercial job) that I know I'll manipulate (or sell). Then I switch to RAW.

Most of my commercial work is reference material for illustration, and sharper-than-life is unnecessary - but control over lighting etc is absolutely essential.

Bottom line - nothing's worth losing sleep over. Go plane some wood, fry some fish, drink wine.. paint a sunset.

And (photographically speaking) nothing feels - or looks - as good as producing a proper paper chlorbromide from a properly-exposed _sheet_ of film. The trouble is most people have never actually seen one, so they don't know what the trad method is capable of.

Good luck with it all. :-)