D700 - Future Digital Classic or Just Another Very, Very Good Camera...????

donaldejose

Yes, if you are going to be shooting in lower levels of light you should use one of the more recent generation FX bodies which DxOMark will rate as having good ISO up to about 3,000. You many not need more than 24 megapixels though unless you plan to print larger than poster size. The D80 was my first DSLR also! I liked it at the time because I didn't know any better. Bringing up the D80 raises another issue: handling preferences. I have come to really dislike working with plastic feeling small viewfinder bodies no matter how "adequate" their sensor performance may be. To me their only plus is their lightness and small size. Part of the enjoyment for me is how the camera feels in my hands and how easy it is to see through the viewfinder. I really like using an FX viewfinder and the D4 body shape and weight feels like a perfect fit for my hands. Part of what is "adequate" to a person is not only sensor performance; it should include user preferences as to ergonomics. I do not do video so that capability is of no importance to me. "Adequacy" will vary among photographers.

PB_PM

I use the D750 all the way to ISO 12800, if needed, but I don’t print much anymore. I like the 24&36MP bodies for when I need to crop, more than for printing. When I do print, it’s large and with files from the D810, since what little printing I do is low ISO landscapes.

I used my D700 up to ISO6400 all the time as well, that was why I had it, and clients didn’t mind at all. The noise character on it was a little different, and if you used the light well it wasn’t an issue, just as it is with cameras now. You just had to nail the exposure and not over or under expose due to the limited DR. I find people who complain about high ISO noise just have trouble getting the exposure right in those conditions, and rely on post processing too much. I don’t get it right all the time either (maybe 50%, but I don’t shoot for others anymore), but when you do it’s more than worth it. The D700 wasn’t special at low ISO shooting, like the D810 or D850 are, since it bottomed out at ISO200. You needed to use filters more often for long exposures.

If I could get a D3 or D3s for a good price, I’d be all over that, great cameras (ergonomically speaking). I also have tons of old CF cards that would work well with them. Not much interest in a D4 since I don’t use XQD cards.

donaldejose

Yes, a base ISO of 64 is best for long exposures. I remember the days of shooting with Kodachrome 25! Maybe some day we will get a specialized DSLR with a base ISO of 25 and additional dynamic range for nature/landscape photographers. How about a mirrorless Z9 body with interchangeable sensor backs? One back with a 24 mp base ISO 100 sensor and one back with a 60 mp base ISO 25 sensor? Or a Z9 and a Z9x with those sensors in them? Same in DSLR for a D7 and a D7x? Nikon sure could use more products which would increase sales.

I got my D3s recently for $745 with 75,000 shutter actuations. A D3 body was going for about $200 less but I thought the much better high ISO ability of the D3s sensor was worth the additional money. Cosmetically it is in very good condition with only two small spots showing wear. It looks mint in my hand because no one can see those two small spots from 5 feet away. I doubt I would ever wear out that shutter since I am increasingly spreading my use over many bodies for vintage enjoyment. When the D6 arrives soon prices for the D3 and D3s should drop another notch since they become one more generation older.

ssj92

I had sold off all my photography gear by 2018. I bought a D300S in January this year with a lens (Tamron 17-50 F2.8) for $225 shipped. I bought new grips, eyepiece, everything to make it look like brand new. 3 batteries later, cost was still below $300 lol. I plan to keep this thing til it dies.

I can say that it is very well built! Probably on pare with my D800 if not slightly better (better than D750 for sure). I can say that unless I am in low light, it still performs very well!

I can only imagine how nice a D700 is still in todays time.

Few months later I am now back in the game with my D800 back, and now a new D750.

When I was comparing the 3 cameras last weekend with the same lens, it was amazing what the D300S was capable of. Unless looking at the pic at 100%, I can say for something like a full screen computer monitor, most people couldn't tell the difference.

I can tell the difference because I have all 3 and use them (less noise, more DR, etc. on FF camera) but most people would not be able to. I shot a pic on my iPhone & D300S and showed a bunch of people, 90% liked the D300S pic better and that was on IG lol.

I've never made a large print yet but will hopefully be testing that out in a month.

I'd say keep it if you're going to use it every now and then.

Sell it if it will literally collect dust for the rest of its life. There are people that will use it. I kinda wish I bought a D700 instead of the D300S now but the price was good on the D300S and D700 was at least $450+ at the time of purchase without lens.

donaldejose

Using vintage cameras which are still fully capable for the task at hand can be one way to enjoy photography. For some people here, it is all about the "latest and greatest" equipment capable of producing good results in extreme situations. We don't all have to be like that. Some of us can enjoy other aspects of photography. It is good to see you shooting with a highly capable D800 and with a much less capable vintage D300s.

daveznspace

I still think the D700 spits out the best photos overall, the af rarely misses & lenses that I've got to fine tune on newer bodies don't generally need any on the D700.

It still has it's uses and you won't get much $$ for it. I've seen used ones that are mint, under 5k shots for $400-500.

NSXTypeR

I don't think there's anything wrong with using a D700, especially if you're not shooting professionally. What gain would you get by selling it off?

If you shoot for your own enjoyment, new gear likely won't benefit you much. Phones these days still have 12mp sensors, so at a minimum it would likely still be usable.

If you are shooting professionally and often at higher ISOs, I can see a potential gain though and it may even hold you back. Like PB_PM said, I doubt it would be a good idea to stick with DX from that era or earlier as high ISO and performance really suffered. But the D700 was and still is an excellent camera.

I also hold onto things for sentimental value, and when my D40 kicked the bucket my parents wanted me to repair it as we were in Hong Kong at the time and there are multiple service centers there. I had used it since 2008 and it was already 2013. The D7100 was already out, the D7000 had some nice price cuts. It was time to let the D40 go- DX performance was so much better at that point there was no advantage to sinking more money into 2008 technology. The D700 had excellent performance when it came out, no doubt it will serve you well even now.

CaMeRaQuEsT

LCDs and capacitors are perishable parts due to the liquids inside which leak over time. That's the reason why cameras and lenses nowadays all come with a "recycle in 10 years" stamp on them. After they quit working, they're only worth their weight in scrap material.

mhedges

True they will not last forever, but I'm guessing many of this stuff will last longer than 10 years. Its electrolytic caps that have the shortest lifetime, but I don't think modern cameras and lenses use very many of them.

NSXTypeR

CaMeRaQuEsT said:

LCDs and capacitors are perishable parts due to the liquids inside which leak over time. That's the reason why cameras and lenses nowadays all come with a "recycle in 10 years" stamp on them. After they quit working, they're only worth their weight in scrap material.

Even a F6 has a LCD and electronic parts, you're not immune because you shoot film though.

You might as well use it until you drive the camera into the ground, whether it be digital or analogue.

PB_PM

CaMeRaQuEsT said:

LCDs and capacitors are perishable parts due to the liquids inside which leak over time. That's the reason why cameras and lenses nowadays all come with a "recycle in 10 years" stamp on them. After they quit working, they're only worth their weight in scrap material.

I know you were being sarcastic, but someone might actually believe that...

That's not what the 10 in the recycling symbol means. It either tells you what type of plastics are used in the construction, or what percentage of the product has been made from recycled material.

As for the capacitors, not all capacitors use liquid anymore, there are solid caps, which you will often see used in high end electronics. No idea, if Nikon uses them in their cameras though, since I've never torn one down.

WestEndFoto

There are a lot of comments in here about how few people can tell the difference between X and Y. I will just say that if you are shooting at base ISO in an environment without a lot of contrast without a lot of fine detail, then OK.

But if you are in a low light, high contrast scene with fine details, then the difference will be obvious to many, if not most.

A better camera in these factors provides more flexibility to the photographer to deal with less than ideal situations.

donaldejose

Right WEF. It all depends upon the light you are shooting in, the subject, and especially the ultimate use of the photo. I have been surprised in recent years about two things.

1. If you are shooting at base ISO in good light and not viewing the image larger than full size (not 100% pixel peeping) on a 2 mp monitor my recent experimentation with old cameras convinces me that a 10 year old FX sensor does much better than I thought it would. This suggests the gain from a DxOMark rating of 80/81/82 for the D700/D3/D3s era camera to a rating of 97/100 for a D810/D850 era camera is not really a 20 point gain at base ISO in good light. I had thought a 20 point difference would be obvious even in a studio portrait viewed full screen on a computer monitor. It is not (at least to my eye). The recent gains, as you say, are obvious in the "fringes." So if you are shooting in the fringes use a recent generation DSLR. If you are shooting in good light and the ultimate use will be social media or viewing full size on a computer monitor or printing 5x7 or 8x10 you can comfortably still use an old D700/D3/D3s generation DSLR with its "terrible" DxOMark rating 20 points lower than the latest and greatest. These old cameras don't have to be trashed. They can still be useful and produce great images in the right conditions. In fact, under those limited conditions a $500 Nikon D3500 with kit lens can produce great images. Using an old D700 purchased for the same price on e-bay instead of a new D3500 will give you the advantages of a better viewfinder, better build, quick button rather than slow menu access to functions and better 3200 ISO. The "lowest" camera I would use recently would be a higher end DX (the D7xxx series). Now I think my "lowest" camera will be a D700 or D3s (other than a D500 for birding because of its attributes or an old D5xxx series for lightness). For me, DX sensor bodies are being "fazed out" in favor of older FX sensors primarily because I enjoy using them more. At least that is how I feel at this moment. In "fringe" conditions or for large prints I will use a current generation DSLR. They are just "overkill" for many situations such as that large fitness instructor photoshoot I did which is why I started this experiment with older lower megapixel DSLRs in the first place. D850 RAW images caused so much trouble in uploading it created a large waste of time. I did not want to go through that again and started searching for a lower megapixel substitute.

2. Those darn cell phone cameras are getting much better than I thought they ever would. A cell phone is so thin compared to a DSLR they must have a tiny senor and tiny lens with a very short lens to sensor distance. I am amazed by the detail the tiny sensor/lens combination can capture. They are even getting better in low light and are starting to have passable fake bokeh through computational photography. I never thought that would happen. They are fully sufficient for social media use which is crushing the low end camera market and it will never recover. Increasingly, cameras will only be purchased by "real" photographers and "normal" people will be using cellphones. The market for Nikons and Canons is going to continue to shrink.

NSXTypeR

donaldejose said:

2. Those darn cell phone cameras are getting much better than I thought they ever would. A cell phone is so thin compared to a DSLR they must have a tiny senor and tiny lens with a very short lens to sensor distance. I am amazed by the detail the tiny sensor/lens combination can capture. They are even getting better in low light and are starting to have passable fake bokeh through computational photography. I never thought that would happen. They are fully sufficient for social media use which is crushing the low end camera market and it will never recover. Increasingly, cameras will only be purchased by "real" photographers and "normal" people will be using cellphones. The market for Nikons and Canons is going to continue to shrink.

Darn right. Have you seen some photos from a Pixel 3? I've been very satisfied with low light capability with Google's new phone.





One is straight out of camera from my Pixel 3, the other is from a D7000 and an 18-135mm.

The amount of detail the phone retained is quite amazing and effortless.

donaldejose

Perhaps part of the issue some people are having with this discussion is that they are thinking I am talking about a D700 as your sole camera or about using a D700 as their primary camera. I am not so advocating. If you have only one camera it should be newer than a D700. If you have a primary and a secondary camera your primary camera should be newer than a D700. The D700 is limited today in many ways. I am only saying it is not useless. For certain uses (such as the examples I have been discussing) it remains very adequate; so don't "junk it." If you are buying a third or fourth camera to play with consider a D700 instead of a D3500 or D5600 for about the same price. Of course, sometimes you want small and light rather than the weight of the D700.

snakebunk

Of course the D700 is not useless. Many great photographs are made with it.

My first camera was a D300s. It still works fine (after something like 150k shots), the handling and build quality is great, and I still use many photographs that I shot with it.

ssj92

My D300S has over 400K+ shutters lol....

Regarding cell phone cameras, they're only going to get better.

Samsung has a 48MP camera in some of their A series phones and now they just announced a 64MP sensor that may well go into their new Note 10.

The processing power of a cell phone is higher than a DSLR so it's no surprise what they are capable of with such a small sensor.

We need 8-core ARM CPUs in our DSLRs as well. lol

mhedges

Cell phones have huge economy of scale advantages. And that applies to software too, maybe even more than the hardware.

WestEndFoto

ssj92 said:

My D300S has over 400K+ shutters lol....

Regarding cell phone cameras, they're only going to get better.

Samsung has a 48MP camera in some of their A series phones and now they just announced a 64MP sensor that may well go into their new Note 10.

The processing power of a cell phone is higher than a DSLR so it's no surprise what they are capable of with such a small sensor.

We need 8-core ARM CPUs in our DSLRs as well. lol

The lens on my iPhone X is roughly equivalent to an 8-12mp sensor, depending on the focal length. And that assumes that it is actually good enough to be diffraction limited - meaning the laws of physics would need to be broken to do better.

Anything higher than this is a gimmick for the uninformed.

donaldejose

So there is an unused "megapixel war" with cell phones too now?

snakebunk

I think we should be a little bit careful to talk about unused pixels because of diffraction.

First of all, if a lens is said to be diffraction limited at a certain resolution we need a lot higher resolution in the sensor to make the camera system purely diffraction limited (theoretically we need an infinite number of pixels on the sensor). Otherwise the resolution will be partially limited by diffraction and partially limited by the sensor resolution.

Secondly, images captured by a Bayer sensor often needs down sampling to achieve correct color in each pixel (since each pixel in itself is monochrome).

Also, since diffraction is dependent on the wave length I wonder how it is possible to come up with a specific mp count for the diffraction limit.

I don't know all about diffraction but my conclusion is that it is not as simple as to say that we don't need a sensor resolution above the diffraction limit of a lens. Please let me know if I am wrong.

WestEndFoto

snakebunk said:

I think we should be a little bit careful to talk about unused pixels because of diffraction.

First of all, if a lens is said to be diffraction limited at a certain resolution we need a lot higher resolution in the sensor to make the camera system purely diffraction limited (theoretically we need an infinite number of pixels on the sensor). Otherwise the resolution will be partially limited by diffraction and partially limited by the sensor resolution.

Secondly, images captured by a Bayer sensor often needs down sampling to achieve correct color in each pixel (since each pixel in itself is monochrome).

Also, since diffraction is dependent on the wave length I wonder how it is possible to come up with a specific mp count for the diffraction limit.

I don't know all about diffraction but my conclusion is that it is not as simple as to say that we don't need a sensor resolution above the diffraction limit of a lens. Please let me know if I am wrong.

I think that you are correct on all of your points Snakebunk. The estimate was me playing with the calculator that Cambridge by Colour offers.

I would say this. I would think that you are going to get a noticeable improvement going past the diffraction limit, but that return will diminish quickly. The difference between f/8.0 and f/11.0 on my D850 is obvious when I pixel peak. At some point, the differences will be indistinguishable. I would wager a bet that an expert would struggle to detect the difference between a 64mp sensor and a 48mp sensor on a phone. Companies being what they are, I think that they are suckering their customers. Now if the lens was something like an f/0.1, maybe diffraction will not be an issue, but that lens might be a quarter the size of the camera and certainly not slim.

ssj92

WestEndFoto said:

ssj92 said:

My D300S has over 400K+ shutters lol....

Regarding cell phone cameras, they're only going to get better.

Samsung has a 48MP camera in some of their A series phones and now they just announced a 64MP sensor that may well go into their new Note 10.

The processing power of a cell phone is higher than a DSLR so it's no surprise what they are capable of with such a small sensor.

We need 8-core ARM CPUs in our DSLRs as well. lol

The lens on my iPhone X is roughly equivalent to an 8-12mp sensor, depending on the focal length. And that assumes that it is actually good enough to be diffraction limited - meaning the laws of physics would need to be broken to do better.

Anything higher than this is a gimmick for the uninformed.

Your iPhone has a 12MP sensor either way.

XS Max Camera:

12 MP, f/1.8, 26mm (wide), 1/2.55", 1.4µm, OIS, PDAF
12 MP, f/2.4, 52mm (telephoto), 1/3.4", 1.0µm, OIS, PDAF, 2x optical zoom

40MP Phone: https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_p30_pro-pictures-9635.php

40 MP, f/1.6, 27mm (wide), 1/1.7", PDAF, OIS
20 MP, f/2.2, 16mm (ultrawide), 1/2.7", PDAF
Periscope 8 MP, f/3.4, 125mm (telephoto), 1/4", 5x optical zoom, OIS, PDAF


Phone manufacturers will do what they can with marketing to try and sell people stuff but at the same time they're not going to stuff a 40MP sensor with the same constraints as a 12MP sensor. The lens is a bit bigger on the Huawei phone for the 40MP sensor.

I haven't used a phone over 16MP so I can't say anything about these newer ones but when I get the new Note 10 later this year I'll let you know how it compares to my D800

WestEndFoto

You would want to specify the lens. A bad lens might cripple the D800.

Pistnbroke

The low pass filter cripples the D800 ( and the noisy shutter)