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Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Watching The Evening Pass
As I mentioned the other day on the impromptu portraits post, I picked up a Nikon D4.
説明書を読まずに、買ったばかりニコンD4で夜の撮影遊び。
I actually ordered it the day it was announced, but ended up canceling the order for lack of excitement about what I'd get over the Nikon D700 I've been happy with for years. But despite having canceled the order, the shop shipped one to me a couple of months later when they finally got stock, and well, not ordering is one thing, but returning is another, so here I am with a D4.
I've used Nikon bodies for years, so many of the basics felt familiar, and with that insufficient head start, I took it with me on a late-night outing with Paul Barr, who had just arrived in Kyoto. I slapped on an f/1.4 lens and set the Auto ISO to go as high as 12k, so I hoped that combination would compensate in the dark evening for my lack of experience with the camera.
(I'd done something similar years ago when I got the D700, as seen in “Impossible Photography: No Light, No Tripod, No Hope. D700 and a 50mm f/1.2”.)
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Low Tide
I was to meet Paul on the Sanjo Street bridge (the one featured a few days later in “Kyoto’s Quasi-Annual Flash Flood”), so I just hung around in the pleasant warm evening and snapped whatever went by...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 7200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Much Brighter Than Reality
though it gives us a peek at the heron that couldn't be seen in real life
Dark scenes kept overexposing, so to maintain a realistic sense of the scene, I had to dial in quite a bit of negative exposure...
This was annoying, and mimicked my experience with the Nikon D700, until I suddenly had an epiphany about exposure that made me feel like a total idiot... something one should learn as the first stop beyond “camera noob”... something that I realized I knew the moment I actually thought about it: the camera attempts to set exposure to create an “average” result, and that works fine in most average situations, but when the scene is particularly bright (e.g. a sunny day over a blanket of snow) or particularly dark (these evening scenes), an overall “average” brightness will be unnaturally dark (resulting in gray snow) or bright (an evening scene that looks almost like day). So, you must dial in some compensation to tell the camera to shoot for an overall brighter or darker result.
I knew this as a textbook fact, and practically speaking I knew to compensate in bright situations, but in my formative years with the D200, it was simply out of the question to take these kinds of evening pictures, so I didn't internalize the textbook knowledge on that side of the scale. When the ability for these night shots arrived with my D700, I remained ignorant, which was simply stupid. Glad to have finally fixed that.
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/50 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Oops
slight backfocus
The D4 has a bunch of different autofocus modes that I didn't know anything about, but I thought I'd play with them before actually reading the manual. The focus miss in the shot above is actually interesting, I think, when you look at the big version... the lawn and path in the background are rendered with such a nice mood.
The next shot (with even more questionable focus) is much darker, perhaps because of the car headlight that had just entered the scene...
As people walked by while I waited on the bridge, I tried what seemed to be an appropriate autofocus mode for tracking people as they moved nearer. I had mixed results, but this next shot impresses me for the overall feel and exposure in such a dark, complex scene...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/80 sec, f/1.4, ISO 3600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Straight Out of the Camera
(actually, straight out of Lightroom, with only a bit of added noise reduction)
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/60 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Waiting in Traffic
with lots of “negative highlights” in Lightroom to tame the LEDs
There were some other autofocus modes that I tried and it was a total disaster. I got a local tough-guy-poser kid to, well, pose for me, but managed to get only the writing on his sleeve in focus...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 7200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Wasted Opportunity
After milling around for a while with the camera, Paul and I developed a hearty thirst that required quenching...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
To The Rescue
We sat at a counter overlooking a little river, with the windows in front of us hinged at the top and opened halfway, leaving the windows as half mirrors in front of the leaves of a tree...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/125 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Hazy Self Portrait
I shot a few more “Kyoto Night Scenes” on the walk home...
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Typical Gion
just past midnight
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/400 sec, f/1.4, ISO 6400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Tidying Up Shop
in front of their flower shop, which was still open at midnight
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 — 1/4 sec, f/4.5, ISO 12800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Path To The Chioin Temple
long exposure while propping the camera on a short light post
I've since sat with the camera's manual and tried the various autofocus modes, and have not been able to make heads or tails about most of them, so I'll have to study more.
My biggest impression with the D4 so far is extreme disappointment. The one feature that I was really really really looking forward to, focal-length-aware Auto ISO, is implemented so poorly as to be essentially useless to me, but I'll rant about that another day.
These iSO 12800 shots look amazingly clean. I’m looking at the one with the LEDs and the white area is amazing. Do you find the low light performance is much better than the D700?
You’ve seen the results of my one informal test. Seemed a bit better, but the D700 is really amazing. Stats say the D4 is better, though. By the way, you’re seeing the results from Lighroom 4′s raw converter, which has killer noise reduction. I realize now that I’d used my bulk-develop plugin to apply ISO-specific noise reduction to all the photos, something I do mechanically after each shoot, so in that sense none of these are “straight out of the camera”, so I’ll have to update the one caption. —Jeffrey
There was I reading your blog slowly turning green as I noted the D4 tag next to some of your recent shots. Last week I was offered the opertunity to swap my D700 for an 800 (just for a day) and with great pleasure took off across London to play. As with your initial thoughts of the D4, mine of the D800 floated in the disappointment range. While it too is a lovely piece of kit it does not outshine the 700 in any way I would ever need. My optimism of 16mp crop mode and super sized macro just didn’t get away from the ‘nothing special’ opinion chatting to me from my left shoulder. Pleased to say that day saved me a good chunk of cash and your blog just saved a considerable chunk more! Thanks Jeffrey.
I also noticed a few of your other entries featuring the D4, and thought it was a surprising choice on your part. When the camera was released I noted that most of the feature enhancements seemed to be on the video side of things. Even though I’m not a Nikon shooter, I was disappointed by that. I figure that Nikon’s and Canon’s flagship products generally indicate the trends in photography and push the technological boundaries, so for the D4 (and the 1DX) to focus so heavily on video and not really leap ahead of their previous products on the photography side was a let-down.
By comparison, the D800 looks like a true photographer’s camera. That Nikon provides it in a version with the anti-aliasing filter removed seems to emphasize that (although in all the shots I’ve examined, I really can’t see a difference in detail between the AA-lacking D800E and the D800). The resolution jump makes it seem more like a specialty camera than a standard shooter, though… but then I guess that those of us using DSLRs are already using “specialty cameras” compared with what most people shoot with.
Rambling aside, I would have thought that you would take a D800, and possibly pair it up with your D700. Are you thinking of trading the D4 for a D800?
No, not interested in the D800. To quote what Emperor Joseph II said to Mozart, “Too many pixels.”. The D4 at least has a stop better low-light performance than the D700, which I find appealing. And voice memo, so I can remember stuff when taking a bunch of shots for a post. But I’m not nearly as jazzed about the D700→D4 jump as the D200→D700 jump, which was monumental. And I’m really disappointed in the D4′s Auto ISO “enhancements”, a subject of a rant soon. —Jeffrey
I have just got my D4 , as u say quite a disappointment bout it. The af-s mode no longer allow to set AF point assist like in AF-C mode. So the AF-S mode focus is slower than D700(I’m d700 user)
Another fact that I discovered , D4 focus point will affected by the AF beam from the SB 900/Sb910 . As it didn’t focus right on center but a little upwards where the AF beam indicated . But nothing like this happen in D700.