Nikon 850 w/ 4K!

Samuel H said:
I also think we are just a couple of generations away from having RAW video on DSLR and mirrorless cameras, and that's going to wipe away almost all the IQ difference between these little cameras and their bigger $$$$ and $$$$$ video brothers. Or maybe not, we'll see.

Now, several people in this thread have mentioned that Nikon has better colors. I hear that a lot, actually. But I recently ran this blind test: a9, 1DX2 and D5, straight out of the camera, randomly reordered on each round. It turns out my preferences were Sony > Canon > Nikon, though it was a very close result (27>24>21 points). It turns out I'm a sony fanboy not just out of feature-list hype but also in terms of the actual images. So, those saying Nikon has better colors, would you go through the test and post your results?
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You cannot breakdown cameras by points and/or going through silly tests.

A human brain likes what it likes.
 
Sure, you can't just rank points out of a feature list or anything like that. But this is a very nice test because it's blind and the pics are remarkably similar, except for the image processing: you take notes of which colors you like the most, then average over a bunch of different images. Of course it won't tell you anything about AF, handling, noise, etc, it's just about color, but that's an interesting aspect and I can't think of any other way to test it that is better than this.
(of course there will also be some noise because these decisions are not clearcut, but I just ran the test again and got a similar result: Sony > Canon = Nikon, with 28>22=22)
 
Samuel H said:
I also think we are just a couple of generations away from having RAW video on DSLR and mirrorless cameras, and that's going to wipe away almost all the IQ difference between these little cameras and their bigger $$$$ and $$$$$ video brothers. Or maybe not, we'll see...
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Hypotheoretically speaking, a D850 type camera could have had a Log and H265 compression @ 200 Mbps and 10-bit recording and an oversampling DX center crop for 4/4.5K, rendering it virtually indistinguishable from any other 4/4.5/5K camera in image quality, if not in workflow.

PS. As people have been pointing out, Nikon doesn't have a video line to protect. To which, I'd respond that it should. Have a video line of models in the $5,000-$10,000 range.
 
Samuel H said:
Now, several people in this thread have mentioned that Nikon has better colors. I hear that a lot, actually. But I recently ran this blind test: a9, 1DX2 and D5, straight out of the camera, randomly reordered on each round. It turns out my preferences were Sony > Canon > Nikon, though it was a very close result (27>24>21 points). It turns out I'm a sony fanboy not just out of feature-list hype but also in terms of the actual images. So, those saying Nikon has better colors, would you go through the test and post your results?
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Remember the Zacuto Great Camera Shootouts? At 17:58 in part three of the shootout, I thought the D7000 really held it's own in regard to color and skin tones; not as good as the Alexa, but I liked it better than the Canon DSLRs.

I don't have experience with recent Nikon cameras, like I said, I've been holding out for Nikon to come out with a game changing camera. I suppose that Nikon's color can vary a bit between sensors and camera models, but I've been pretty happy with the results my D7000 has given me. I've always thought that Canon threw too much red into the image (at least in my experience with the 5D MKII, 7D, T2i), but that didn't seem to be the case in your test. I don't currently have any comparisons between my D7000 & A6300, but your test is an inspiration to compare who truly has better color.
 
Samuel H said:
I also think we are just a couple of generations away from having RAW video on DSLR and mirrorless cameras
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I hope so. The technology is here:

Uncompressed 10-bit 4K RAW 24fps is 240 MB/sec. (that's megabytes, not megabits)
6K or 8K is more likely the native res of a stills camera, but it could use light compression (2:1, 4:1) to bring it down to the same data rate.

CFast 2.0 can handle 600 MB/sec. (60 fps)
SDXC UHS-III can handle 624 MB/sec. (60 fps)
CFexpress can handle 2 GB/sec. (200 fps)

Part of the reason that the manufacturers haven't put RAW video in yet, is just because it wasn't in the cards, pun intended, at least not when they were sketching out the camera, which I think is usually a few years before it actually comes out. This explains why a new camera always seems 3-5 years behind the latest technology to me.

But even today, now that the latest cards have the bus speeds to handle it, we still have the roadblock of cost. An hour of that 10-bit 4K RAW 24fps is 1 TB, which will run you a few hundred dollars in flash memory. Ye olde spinning-disk hard drives are affordable at about $40/TB. So I guess you could do it today if you archive your footage to spinning disk and reuse your cards. In my limited experience, though, I would not be totally at peace with a spinny disk archive. At least we know that in about 5-10 years, solid state drives may be in that price range.
 
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FWIW, CFExpress is using the QXD cards (different wiring), so the next Nikon camera just might have it.

Hah ... who am I kidding ... AVCHD it is ...
 
Samuel H said:
But I recently ran this blind test: a9, 1DX2 and D5, straight out of the camera, randomly reordered on each round. It turns out my preferences were Sony > Canon > Nikon, though it was a very close result (27>24>21 points). It turns out I'm a sony fanboy not just out of feature-list hype but also in terms of the actual images. So, those saying Nikon has better colors, would you go through the test and post your results?
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Now are we talking about camera JPEG still photo images ? ...Or camera RAW corrected images ? ...Or 4K 8-bit 4:2:0 video images ?

Because I personally don't give a sh*t about JPEG color, but if there is something unique in one camera's RAW images, then I would like to see this with my own eyes.
 
The test is for jpg still images straight out of the camera. But in terms of colors, that's identical to what you'd get with onboard video. If you used the same settings, that is (and I have no idea which settings the test used, though I guess it must be "standard for all" or something like that).

(I didn't make the test, I just ran it to see what my preferences actually are, among those -very limited- options)
 
DLD said:
Hypotheoretically speaking, a D850 type camera could have had a Log and H265 compression @ 200 Mbps and 10-bit recording and an oversampling DX center crop for 4/4.5K, rendering it virtually indistinguishable from any other 4/4.5/5K camera in image quality, if not in workflow.

PS. As people have been pointing out, Nikon doesn't have a video line to protect. To which, I'd respond that it should. Have a video line of models in the $5,000-$10,000 range.
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Totally agree!
 
Samuel H said:
The test is for jpg still images straight out of the camera. But in terms of colors, that's identical to what you'd get with onboard video. If you used the same settings, that is (and I have no idea which settings the test used, though I guess it must be "standard for all" or something like that).

(I didn't make the test, I just ran it to see what my preferences actually are, among those -very limited- options)
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I don't know if the jpeg stills have identical colours to the video, if I look at the comparison of the videos from the 3 cameras, at 28':45" and at 28':58" I like better the subdued and pastel like colours of the Nikon. And I expect the D850 to produce better videos than the D5
 
Andrea189 said:
I don't know if the jpeg stills have identical colours to the video
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It was the case in the 5D2, T2i, D800, D5200, NEX-5N and a7S... as long as you're using the same settings for video and stills, which nowadays is a rare thing. Not sure about more recent models.
 
Samuel H said:
I didn't make the test, I just ran it to see what my preferences actually are, among those -very limited- options
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But what they are testing is the JPEG Engine performance, NOT the actual color capability of the camera itself.

I know that Olympus has one of the best JPEG engines on the market, but I doubt I would ever use an Olympus camera for video work.

I shoot JPEG still photos for personal and family events. I shoot RAW images for anything that really matters to me. RAW color is all I really care about when taking photos.
 
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It seems nobody else found this test useful. It has lots of limitations but it still presents useful information about the images that come straight out of the camera, particularly in video mode (where you can't shoot RAW and you can't use any color engine but the camera's one), and blinds your personal bias to allow you to decide which one you really like best.
I'm sure in a week someone will write again that Sony has great specs but ugly colors, and I'll be like: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
 
Samuel H said:
...particularly in video mode (where you can't shoot RAW and you can't use any color engine but the camera's one), and blinds your personal bias to allow you to decide which one you really like best.
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I am not convinced that JPEG still photos are a good representation of a camera's video color, unless the camera is recording MJPEG video. A camera's video software is often different than it's still software, with different controls and settings.
 
In all the cameras I've tested (5D2, T2i, D800, D5200, NEX-5N and a7S) the colors were exactly identical (comparing in-camera JPG vs in-camera video, shot with the same settings). The compression is not, but that doesn't affect color palette, just color resolution. Newer models may have changed this, but I really doubt it.

(I compared them inside Premiere to avoid color management in different apps to create differences) (for those Canons and Nikons at least, colors were also identical if you shot RAW and then processed it on the PC using Canon Digital Photo Professional or Nikon's version of that -I can't recall the name but I still remember how awfully buggy it was)



EDIT: anyway, sorry for the off-topic disgression, this was supposed to be a thread about the D850...
 
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I got my hands on one at a demo at a local shop after work yesterday.

Seemed really solid. Nice flip out screen.

I won't be selling my XT-2 any time soon, however.
 
Nice. Some significant moire on the fence at 1:06, and on the gravel later in the piece. I wonder if that was in the original video, or a compression artifact in the upload?
 
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