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blackfox



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I suppose it had to go full circle , after a bit of umming and arring I have just ordered a used D300S off of the bay of evil , should be here at the weekend. :applause: as some might remember I nearly started up again last year but at the time decided to stay on canon .. that eventually got to heavy to lug around and I was told by her indoors to get something lighter , so earlier this year I sold all m6 big canon gear and changed to Panasonic MFT a g80 +Leica 100-400 which is a excellent walk around rig due to 2x crop factor , and weighs a incredible all up weight of 1.5kg camera and lens .. .

But as I feared the system is great in the summer but as the winter has drawn on noise has started to become a nuisance . So after reviewing old files and camera results I kept getting drawn back to the D300S partly due to the fact I also have a couple of manual focus Nikon fit lenses a 50mm f1.4 ais and a soligor 200mm f3.5 which are both razor sharp . S o deed now done and no doubt I,ll be inputting on here again shortly SO WAKE UP HERE WE GO :whip: :devil:

jk



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Well welcome back. Hope the D300S works for you.

Robert



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Good to hear from you, welcome back.

blackfox



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Thanks Robert and Jonathan , I thought about what to get for quiet a while , luckily as you know I have quiet a library of shots from various bodies over the years all brands and models . I could have gone a extra few pounds and gotten one of the newer sensor models , but my gut feeling doesn't favour the tightly packed pixel sensors . . Again lenses come into the equation got two manual focus ones for now , and a brand new 70-300vr from Hong Kong comes in at £122 this morning . Might get a few bob for Xmas who knows ....
At this moment in time I intend to keep my micro four thirds stuff and run both side by side .. time will tell

jk



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4/3 is OK in sunny weather and low ISO other wise it is not up to scratch. Just my opinion.

blackfox



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I agree on the sunny weather bit Jonathan , but I have also gotten good shots at up to 6400 iso if the subject is close enough .

Robert



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Well, I am reneging (slightly) on my aversion to high res sensors, the D3 is wonderful, I love the daylight and lowlight images, motorsport and other stuff, 12Mp is plenty for most needs.

For night time and star photography, the large pixels are a limiting factor, also I can't get my D3 into the PB4 bellows for slide copying and photo (print) copying so I am considering either the D800 or the D810, I am leaning towards the D810. There are a lot of minor improvements in the 810 over the 800. They all add up to a rather better camera.

https://photographylife.com/nikon-d810-vs-d800-d800e

With the advent of the Z range, these superb bodies are going for a song now, prices are plummeting, really good, low shutter count D800's for ~£600. o.O I have had two offered recently.

The D3 and D300S will still be my 'normal' bodies but the D8X0 will step in where the extra pixels and features give an advantage.

Eric



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blackfox wrote:
I agree on the sunny weather bit Jonathan , but I have also gotten good shots at up to 6400 iso if the subject is close enough .

Hi Jeff...welcome back.

You raise an interesting point about iso limits.

On Monday I was photographing woodland birds. Fast shutter speeds and small apertures (necessary for fast moving small birds, relatively close) nd poor light meant very high ISOs. I was disappointed with the results in terms of noise. Admittedly the ISO's were well above the 5000 but I have come to the conclusion that the D500 has distracting noise when used over 4000.

That's a surprise and disappointment because my old D3 could do 4000 as well as the D500. o.O

Of course we know that, the smaller the pixels, the greater the propensity for noise in the images. So a 12mp FX D3 might be expected to have less noise sensitivity than a 24mp DX D500. But there was probably 10years development between the models and I would have hoped the noise improvements would have been as much in the normal use range, as in the upper registers. It's almost as though they concentrated exclsuively on flattening the noise grdient at the top end and forgot to do anything in the lower middle ie <10000

I am coming to the conclusion that if the UK light won't give me 1/1000 @ f8 at <3000 iso....there's little value trying to photograph birds. Might as well just take the binoculars for a walk.

blackfox



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totally agree there Eric . a good p/p regime does help as does a good de-noise plug in for photoshop if you use it . here's one from the panasonic g80 at 3200iso taken a couple of weeks ago in grey overcast , normally I would not have bothered in this sort of light but its a rarity (Slavonian grebe) so it had to be done . my main problem is my lens whilst being a Leica is a f6.3 minimum and though I do love the fact I can shoot at a equivalent 800mm on the 2x crop factor and with 5 way i.s the light is the limiting factor .
I will be hoping to find a f4 or better when the d300s arrives . anyway heres this I will look for higher iso examples later
tossing and turning by jeff and jan cohen, on Flickr

blackfox



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and one at 6400iso taken in dark woodland , so yes it can work but not good enough ... or consistently enough for my liking
the forager by jeff and jan cohen, on Flickr

blackfox



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to sum up as Eric says we seem to have lost something in moving forward , rest assured before deciding to go back to Nikon, and back to a D300s I scanned through shots from lots of my older cameras and lens combos both from nikon and canon to evaluate what I perceived to be the i.q I would like to regain .

I discounted anything full frame as I don't want to move in that direction with its limited reach , If I do decide to leave mirrorless and go back to DSLR I have a d500 and lenses being kept for me by a good friend who is suffering medically and has to give up .and at a super price to . time will tell

Eric



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blackfox wrote:
totally agree there Eric . a good p/p regime does help as does a good de-noise plug in for photoshop if you use it . here's one from the panasonic g80 at 3200iso taken a couple of weeks ago in grey overcast , normally I would not have bothered in this sort of light but its a rarity (Slavonian grebe) so it had to be done . my main problem is my lens whilst being a Leica is a f6.3 minimum and though I do love the fact I can shoot at a equivalent 800mm on the 2x crop factor and with 5 way i.s the light is the limiting factor .
I will be hoping to find a f4 or better when the d300s arrives . anyway heres this I will look for higher iso examples later
tossing and turning by jeff and jan cohen, on Flickr


Jeff that's a superb shot of the Slav. I do wonder why you need to change gear when you can get results like that? Did you have to use any noise reduction on that image? How much of a crop is it?

I would LOVE to achieve such sharp noise free results but either the locations, lighting or both seem to be conspiring to mean I need to crop noisy images....making them worse. I would like to think I could get images out of the camera that don't need post processing. I spent years at a computer and would like to now...just take photos. But at the moment I am failing.

:needsahug:

blackfox



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its probably about a 50% crop Eric , and imageonic de-noise has been applied to the background layer , whilst the the bird has then been sharpened . as I stated earlier though this is great if the subject is close enough . once you put distance into the equation the whole thing goes to mush .... also not really changing gear I will be keeping this set up for the for-seeable future just running the nikon side by side for comparison and situations where I feel its needed .

and what your not seeing is my failure rate with the MFT which runs at approx 60% far higher than anything I have gotten before .. . my jan now uses a Olympus omd10-mkii which I got bnib in the summer cash back for a incredible £234 with 30 months warranty as well ....

she uses that with a panasonic 100-300 and at times beats me on i.q . 99% of my shots are hand held as well due to the in body 4 way i.s coupled with lens i.s . but there are niggles with for instance fast moving b.i.f where the nikon will come in handy ...

I have also been dabbling with manual focus lenses and getting good results there to two of which are nikon mount a 50mm f1.4 AIS and a 200mm f3.5 which are both sharp as a razor ...

blackfox



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heres one from the manual focus 200mm f3.5 vivitar lens again hand held just to prove it could be done , this is one of the lenses I will be using on the nikon when it arrives .

manual focus no.2 by jeff and jan cohen, on Flickr

Eric



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I can see that I am going to have to embrace noise reduction filtration beyond my basic techniques.

Having spent years photographing (professionally) at ISO's EXCLUSIVELY BELOW 1000, the rude awakening of the ISO limitations imposed by UK wildlife photography, clearly means change in what I HAVE to do.

blackfox



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It's a whole different ball game Eric , but you have some great sites near you I believe . Hopefully I'm off out in the morning chasing waxwings they have arrived in Chester at last . .

It's hard to explain a method of p.p over a forum , but what I do is so easy it takes less than 3 minutes to do a normal raw - process- j.peg conversion and post , a bit longer if any cloning is needed .

I realise there's a reluctance on here to sign up to photoshop cc but in reality the constant upgrades are worth every penny , virtually everything can be done with just one click these days which saves precious time ..

Robert



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blackfox wrote:
I realise there's a reluctance on here to sign up to photoshop cc but in reality the constant upgrades are worth every penny , virtually everything can be done with just one click these days which saves precious time ..
I agree, the monthly charge is a pittance, less than the cost of a couple of pints of beer in Manchester. The results are amazing, without all the messing about trying this software and that, it just works. You DON'T have to be connected to the internet except very occasionally just to update and maybe allow the software to 'phone home'. I think I only had to do that once with the MBP and it gives you ample warning before it stops working, like weeks. Even then you can still still use it to review and export images.

blackfox



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Exactly rob as we get older ,the only precious thing in our life's is time once gone you can never get it back , and there's no pockets in a shroud spend while you have it


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