Nikon D3 sample images

I went to the Focus On Imaging annual imaging show at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham today, and had the opportunity to use the D3.

I took a couple of shots without flash and as one would expect in this kind of venue, the lighting was difficult. It was mixed, with a halogen spotlights over the stand, and tungsten background lighting. I shot at 3200 ISO and 200 ISO, with the camera set on automatic white balance.

I processed these images in Camera Raw. The faces were very yellow - not surprising that the automatic white balance couldn’t cope to perfection in the mixed lighting, so I used the eyedropper on the white of the subject’s eye to get the white balance in post-processing. Then I used the same settings for the next image.

Later on I took a couple of shots with an SB-800 on-camera flash. I wanted to do this to get a full spectrum of light on the subject. Unfortunately, I was offered a different camera body to use and on this camera the image size was set up at 2784 x 1848 pixels instead of the full size of 4256 x 2832 pixels (which I didn’t notice) so the shots are not directly comparable with the earlier ones. And there was a different lens on the camera so the test has its limits. And in the circumstances, my focusing is not perfect either.

I think that as a test of shooting at 3200 ISO, however, the results are clear. What do you think?

200 full frame - no flash

200 crop - no flash

3200 full frame - no flash

3200 crop - no flash

3200 arm - flash

3200 crop - flash

:
:
:
And one last shot of Justin Focus, the power behind These videos

Nikon P5100 - flash

Sacks

When the river rises and floods its banks, it’s useful to have sacks filled with sand to increase the height of the banks of the river. But where do you keep the sacks when the river is not in danger of bursting its banks? After all, you don’t want to be filling sacks afresh every time there is a flood warning. The answer is that you put the sacks in nooks and crannies everywhere, where they sit waiting to be put to use.

Nikon P5100 - further images added to the review

I have added some more images to the end of the review HERE

Q: Film or digital? A: At the end of the post.

And here is a thumbnail of the shot. Click on it to see a bigger version. the bigger version is 1,500×1,125 pixels and the file size is 472KB so it shouldn’t strain a fast/broadband connection.

Q: Film or digital? A: They are all from the Nikon P5100.

Nikon P5100 at 800 ISO

I am taking it slowly with the camera and only now that I have had a little more experience with it, I decided to find out what it can do at higher ISO.

Here is a shot at 1/150 second at f5.3 and 800 ISO. The full frame shot is 4000 x 3000 pixels and the crop is 1000 x 1000, which represents therefore 1/12 of the area of the frame.

There is noise, but it doesn’t seem too bad. Rather more important it seems to me, is that the image is sketchier and less saturated than it would have been had it been shot at lower ISO. It stills seems fine to me though, for what it is.

Full frame

Crop