D600 users, how has your experience been?

J

j1clark@ucsd.edu

Veteran
I just upgraded the Wife's camera from the Fuji S5, to the D600.

I chose the D600 over the D800 mainly due to the price and the differences were not something that she would typically use.

She is a still photographer mainly shooting 'people' pictures, such weddings and portraits. Her wedding business has wound down but we are thinking about her continuing with portraiture.

The 'camera package' was 2 lenses, 24-85mm and 28-300mm + D600 + Wifi accessory. Since we have Nikon lenses, we can use those or these new ones.

Anyway, I'd like to know what people who have bought and used the D600 feel about the camera.

I've looked at Ken Rockwell's reviews but sometimes I get the feeiing he may be a bit 'too' much of a booster...

I will also be looking at using the camera as well. I've seen a number of craigslist ads that read something to the effect of 'surf shots', so I'm thinking about testing that market...
 
I have been very happy with mine. I upgraded from a t2i which i used for video and i still use a D3 for stills work. I find that the stills on the d600 are obviously superior to both the t2i and the D3. The video has its annoyances and downfalls compared to my t2i when it comes to interface and controls. I was used to running the t2i with Magic Lantern which gave me a ton of great features like focus peaking, live hisotrams, crop marks and all kinds of other things that my D600 lacks. The other annoying part is the aperture control in live view. In photo mode for live view i can control aperture just as normal but in the video mode its locked. This is supposedly being fixed with the next firmware that is coming sometime in the undetermined future. Fingers crossed that is soon.

For stills work I find myself using more of the function buttons than I ever have with my D3 and switching form full frame to the DX (1.5) crop mode a lot more. I find that the image quality is high enough on the crop to still be very usable for professional shots (headshots, weddings, products) where as i did not feel this way with the D3 as much.

All in all its a rock solid camera for the price even though it has its minor problems.

Once the new firmware comes out and it fixes the liveview aperture bug as well as possibly the video output then i will be extremely happy. (right now the hdmi out scales to 95% leaving you a black boarder around the outside. this isn't a big deal is you are just monitoring but one of the reasons i got this camera was to be able to record that HDMI signal uncompressed for green screen keying work. Rumors are saying that it will be fixed with the new firmware but it has not been confirmed by Nikon yet)
 
treynolds said:
For stills work I find myself using more of the function buttons than I ever have with my D3 and switching form full frame to the DX (1.5) crop mode a lot more. I find that the image quality is high enough on the crop to still be very usable for professional shots (headshots, weddings, products) where as i did not feel this way with the D3 as much.
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That sounds good. If I do any 'surfer' work, I calculated I needed a 300mm lens to give a reasonably framing for a surfer on a board up to 1-200 yards out. I was also thinking about a GoPro but I can't figure out how to make sure I'm 'insured'... customer pays a depost to the price of a replacement?

Anyway for land based shooting, this camera looks to be a good solution for the price.

The Wife doesn't need the 300mm ever... when we were shooting weddings weekly I would be the one with the 250mm on the Hasselblad or the 200 on a Nikon in the rafters...

She did really like her 105mm for portrait work though. That lens is still 'usable' but totally manual... parish the thought...
 
I just picked up the 105mm 2.8 AI. The old full manual one. I love it man, I really do. You could try renting the 300mm f/4 for pretty cheap. I would trust the d600 at fairly high ISOs so that would be a plenty fast lens, on a clear day surfing you could easily be shooting at 1/1000 f/4 and keep your iso below 1600 i bet.
 
treynolds said:
The other annoying part is the aperture control in live view. In photo mode for live view i can control aperture just as normal but in the video mode its locked. This is supposedly being fixed with the next firmware that is coming sometime in the undetermined future. Fingers crossed that is soon.
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If its anything like the D7000(which I'm guessing it is) then it is not a bug, and was made like that. If I remember correctly,the D800 CAN change aperture while in live view because it has a mechanical arm to change it. I believe Nikon didn't implement it in the D600 to get more people to buy the D800, but thats just my conspiracy theory :)
 
I tried several iterations of the D600 and after dealing with the dust issues repetitively, I moved on to a D800 while they were on sale. Given Nikon's inability to address the dust issue, I have grave doubts that they will suddenly upgrade the D600 via firmware to allow for changing the aperture on the fly in Liveview. I am not so sure the HDMI out is a bug. I believe they left it crippled so that when hooked up to a TV with overscan on, it will look fine, but with HDMI out to capture, you will see the 95% size. I am not sure how well it will scale up in post.

Nikon does not seem to concerned about what the customer base thinks, only if the widgets are moved. It is frustrating. Nikon can make a good product. The question is when they will provide good after-sales support.
 
After having tried my best to like the D600, I've decided to change to the D800. It's a fine camera, but for video it's got way too much moire/aliasing if you intend to shoot wide, and for stills, the autofocus system is really not up to par (slow, poor performance in low light). I wasn't even bothered by the lack power aperture since all my lenses are D type lenses. Oh and the viewfinder is disappointing compared to the D800/D700. Even though they're supposed to be identical per specs, they most definitely are not. The max 1/200 sec flash sync is also very limiting - you're getting 1/3 of a stop less.
 
nikon has said they are adressing the live view aperture issue in the new firmware, which has an undetermined release date, but they have made no mention of fixing the scaling issues. I am hopeful but i have a strong feeling i will be proven wrong when push comes to shove.
 
I was able to get out and shoot a couple of frames of clear sky to look into the 'dust' issue that people have mentioned here and elsewhere. I'll report back when I've had time to analyze the images... (The Wife never does this sort of thing... that's my job... drudge work...).

On the topic of moire and such issues. I think this may be a 'conceptual' issue... I don't doubt that there are issues, but here's the problem... the usual way that moire artifacts are dealt with is to put a 'low pass' filter on the imaging system, such that any higher frequency than 1/2 the sample rate, is 'filtered out'. The problem is that as a still camera, the spatial 1/2 frequency would be about 3K, where as for a HD 1920x1080, that would be 960 cutoff.

I believe some DSP in other 'solutions' may perhaps yield this sort of thing, and definitely one can do this in post, but the point is that it is a 'bluring' filter, and if tuned "optically" for HD would cause the stills to be pretty worthless at the higher resolutions.

Since to get HD from the higher sensor spatial dimensions there are several ways to get there, 1) skipping pixels, 2) averaging pixels, 3) average + noise-dither, etc. etc... I'll have to check this out to see if it is a problem for my shooting expectations.

When I first got the GH-1 people were complaining about rapid panning and various artifacts that were induced... well... even for Film film there are rules about how fast an object can move across the sensor plane before 'strobing' aka 'artifacts' occur... the advice there is 'don't do that'...
 
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after a shoot yesterday i noticed an interesting problem. I was shooting with the portrait picture profile with most everything turned down. The images on the camera screen looked really muddy in the skin tones. now in post they look perfectly fine. Its just something i will have to remember on set next time. Gave me quite the scare yesterday though
 
treynolds said:
after a shoot yesterday i noticed an interesting problem. I was shooting with the portrait picture profile with most everything turned down. The images on the camera screen looked really muddy in the skin tones. now in post they look perfectly fine. Its just something i will have to remember on set next time. Gave me quite the scare yesterday though
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So, where's that configurable 3-d LUT option for on set video village viewing...
 
How many of you change aperture while filming? I don't see that as a serious impediment, especially since it costs nothing but a short amount of time (or a light meter) to find the best aperture for your needs. Shot set up time should allow for the selection of the appropriate aperture. The crippled data ('black bands') is much more serious, and I hope Nikon addresses that first.
 
It's not so much about changing aperture while filming as much as it is about changing aperture while in Live View.


To be able to change aperture in Live View before you hit record is much better than going out of Live View.
It seems like a small thing but when it thing about it, why would we need or even want to take those extra steps?
I don't know if Nikon plans on "fixing" it but it is a bad design or flaw IMO.
 
I found if i need to switch aperture i just flip the switch from video LV to photo LV, switch the aperture, then flip back.
Now my question (as a canon guy now turned Nikon) why can't i use the manual aperture ring on my lenses? i have some like my 50mm 1.8 that support auto focus and digital aperture control but also have a manual aperture ring that can be unlocked with a small switch. When i attempt to use this i just get an error. Is there any way to enable this in the menu in some fashion?

Please forgive my not knowing the different terms for the Nikon lenses, they are rather new to me.
 
treynolds said:
I found if i need to switch aperture i just flip the switch from video LV to photo LV, switch the aperture, then flip back.
Now my question (as a canon guy now turned Nikon) why can't i use the manual aperture ring on my lenses? i have some like my 50mm 1.8 that support auto focus and digital aperture control but also have a manual aperture ring that can be unlocked with a small switch. When i attempt to use this i just get an error. Is there any way to enable this in the menu in some fashion?

Please forgive my not knowing the different terms for the Nikon lenses, they are rather new to me.
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If you are talking about Nikon lenses with aperture rings, as well as 'auto functions', I believe you have to put the aperture at f/22 (at least on the lenses that I'm thinking of...), then the 'auto functions' work. Otherwise, moving the ring disables the auto functions.

At least that's what I recall.

As for changing aperture while shooting... cine lenses have the ability to 'pull apeture' as well as focus during shooting. Change in aperture during a shot would allow one to move, pan, or change the frame view, and compensate for exposure changes. While there may be an 'auto' exposure adjustment, as with most 'auto' things, doing it manually often looks better. Smooth accurate focus follow is pretty standard, and this business of 'focus hunt', is often, to me, obnoxious... same would be for a bit of exposure 'hunt' if it were automated.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
If you are talking about Nikon lenses with aperture rings, as well as 'auto functions', I believe you have to put the aperture at f/22 (at least on the lenses that I'm thinking of...), then the 'auto functions' work. Otherwise, moving the ring disables the auto functions.

At least that's what I recall.

As for changing aperture while shooting... cine lenses have the ability to 'pull apeture' as well as focus during shooting. Change in aperture during a shot would allow one to move, pan, or change the frame view, and compensate for exposure changes. While there may be an 'auto' exposure adjustment, as with most 'auto' things, doing it manually often looks better. Smooth accurate focus follow is pretty standard, and this business of 'focus hunt', is often, to me, obnoxious... same would be for a bit of exposure 'hunt' if it were automated.
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You are correct that you can put these lenses at f/22 and control the aperture from the camera. The problem is when you remove them from f/22 they don't report an f-stop in the camera and instead read E when you try to shoot anything. When that E is up you cannot record a thing.
 
treynolds said:
You are correct that you can put these lenses at f/22 and control the aperture from the camera. The problem is when you remove them from f/22 they don't report an f-stop in the camera and instead read E when you try to shoot anything. When that E is up you cannot record a thing.
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The hat trick here is to put the Camera into Live View first then unlock the aperture ring and it'll shoot a Movie. With EE flashing loud and proud. Just like other Cameras though, it will not take a photo while flashing that code, in any mode.
 
under custom setting, go to controls, customize command dials,aperture setting, choose aperture ring. hope it can help
 
I'm liking my d600. The ability to use fx and dx modes, and switch quickly between them, is very handy. Audio monitoring, audio levels. It's has most of the things that were on my wish list when I had my 7d.

I know it will never happen, but peaking would be a nice addition. And of course being able to adjust aperture in movie mode. Actually, more than that I would like to be able to see the exposure meter in movie mode, just as you can in live photo mode.
 
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