Nikon D3X DXOMark Numbers Blow the Sony A900 Away!

[01af]

... it's telling me next to nothing regarding real-world use. [...] can anyone honestly say these numbers are accurate?

Two months ago I said these numbers are totally pointless. Just ignore them. The DxOMark ratings are not worth the time it takes to read them. It seems to me their sole purpose is to generate traffic on the DxO Lab's website and to give clueless wanna-be experts something to rant about.

-- Olaf

[David Kilpatrick]

I have not used a D90..but DK has...maybe he can comment on DR with this one..
Plus the D90 didn't get amazing DR scored on the reviews I read.

The amazing DR is all in the shadows. If you get a burned out highlight on the D90, it is just as likely to show channel clipping as the A700, I've just checked over some of my extreme DR D90 shots against some similar A700 examples. On a typical scene where a shaft of sunlight hits grass, but most of the shot is in open shade, the highlight is not recovered at -2 and going any further turns the sunlit grass orange instead of green. But it's possible to go into the shadows and open up by +4 in ACR without the image getting unpleasantly noisy or posterised.

Now most reviewers, like me, are looking for more dynamic range at the highlight end (Fuji style) not more ability to rescue underexposed shots. We tend to take a few snaps with overexposed skin, sky, foliage, dresses etc and see how well the raw file responds to recovering the highlights. Here, the A700 and D90 are evenly matched and the A900 is a bit better. I would not rate the D3X much better than the A900 at this end either, if anything it clips highlights more readily especially at ISO 50 and 100. The Canon 5D MkII is nowhere near as good as either, not so much a matter of colour clipping as just not being able to bring the highlights in at all.

But - the D3X and D90 are both exceptional for being able to take brightening of shadows, better than the A700 or A900 (and much better than the Canon which, at least in the firmware version I used, produced excess noise). Reading DO Labs criteria, it seems they are using certain industry standards which are very misleading - ISO speed calculated using sensor saturation point (a factor of the point at which highlights blow out) rather than using the first apperance of useful visible detail above black+noise; dynamic range calculated using using the first appearance of visible detail above noise, ranged against the saturation point. It's almost exactly the wrong way round; digital ISO should be calculated (but is not) from the shadow point, the same way film ISO was calculated; and dynamic range should be calculated not from saturation of all three channels, but from the level where any ONE of the channels blows out. That's how working photographers see the two parameters.

The outcome is simple enough, if you are shooting raw with a D90 you can safely set -1 all the time and work with dark raw files, the noise will be no worse than giving correct exposure with an A700. The same goes for the D3X, set ISO 100 but expose as if it was 200, and you are home and dry. Do that with an A700 or A900, and you will end up with more noise than you want.

David

[bfitzgerald]

Not ignorance, just sceptical..

Always have been.

[caporip]

Mmmm you dont bash hate to see ypur post when you do lol


[Olaf may be the biggest hack photographer on the planet....Take a look at his personal website if you don't know what I am talking about.

http://www.ulrix.de/pferd/jagd/dkbl08/index_0007.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.ulrix.de/pferd/jagd/hchs07/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The guy has not yet posted a good picture to this or any other forum that I can find. Olaf is about as clueless as it gets with regards to bokeh and macro shooting and I highly doubt he is a wide angle specialist either!

-Sonolta[/quote]

[Greg Beetham]

Don you're a fine one to talk about others "bashing you" this is the way you indulge in a discussion about a camera,

"Olaf may be the biggest hack photographer on the planet....Take a look at his personal website if you don't know what I am talking about."

"It's not bashing when the facts are on your side. BTW, I don't bash...I refute nonsense with facts so maybe you need a more careful reading of the threads. BTW...many a back door Nikon basher in here as this site is a low traffic version of Sony fanboy central."

"Nobody is ranting and I am ALWAYS in the market for a new camera. BTW...most of my posts are spot on and if an idiot or two needs to hear something three or four times it ain't my fault."

The above is a small sample of how you speak to people about cameras.
Greg

[Greg Beetham]

Mate, I happen to think you are a very good photographer, but you go and spoil it all by starting to get agro with a poster rather than just talking about the camera....
Greg

[Greg Beetham]

Actually I missed that whole conversation, I must have been at work or asleep, anyway as much as I like too watch the news and like to try and keep abreast of American issues I still miss quite a bit, so I'm no expert on a lot of the happenings and when they happened etc. Important stuff (too me) Marilyn Munro died, Elvis Presley died, the big O died, President John F Kennedy assassinated, 9/11, fires and floods etc.
And yeah your right about getting noble, unduly, I don't know what came over me.
Greg

[Argonaut]

Two things: first, don't nobody be bashing on the KM5. I own one and any dude that says any other camera has better DR is going to be the next guest victim on Fringe.

Second, the guy who said don't shoot the messenger never met Sonolta. I find his diatribes insulting not because he bashes anyone who isn't on fire, but because he assumes that everyone is so stupid they will accept Sony PR as gospel, and that he and only he is going to save us from our miserable fates as pawns of the capitalist running dogs, and that to do this he must write tediously, unendingly, repetitiously, and LOUDLY.

Feh. I'm off to member control to arrange his disappearance.

[Greg Beetham]

I'm with you on the KM5D, I own one as well, I just love it's elegant uncluttered design and functionality, and takes damn fine photos as well..top work KM...posthumously of course

Don't worry about Don, it seems he likes to play the bull in the china shop, with his "get a clue's" and "you must have two d...s, you couldn't be that stupid playing with one" routine....getting everyone stirred up, it's his "thing".....a bit of a strange thing for sure, but it takes all types to make ze world, besides how would you ever know just how nice nice people were if you had no yardstick to gauge by...
Greg

[alexramos7]

Well, is very interesting how some number on a chart take better pictures than an user...

For me the D3x is a very good camera, but in the real life the difference between D3x and a900 in IQ is difficulty apreciate, but... I think I will take better picture is I use the D3x, DXO Mark told me that...

[stevecim]

Hmmm

I can see this topic going on and on

Can we all just agree that going by what's on the DxOmark web site, we can see that the a900 is the 6th best over all camera, 3rd best color depth, 5th best dynamic range and 7th best low light ISO, the Nil D3x is 20% beter in the low light ISO test, 5% beter in the other tests and cost $6000 more.

Not bad for Sony's 6th camera released and their first full frame.

I would like to see some dxomark results for the a700, it would be very interesting if they could test the a700 with version 1 FW then v4 FW. to see if FW has any impact to their testing.

And don't forget that the a350 is the 14th best over all camera 2 cameras in the top 20 go Sony

P.S Don't any body try and flame me, it would be a waste of flame, I'm very thick skined Hmmm sometimes my wife said I thick headed has well but's thats another story

[Greg Beetham]

Actually, I personally don't give a flying err..toss about DxO and their scores, I've seen some fabulous shots by DK (and others) with both the A700 and the A900 and that's really all I need to know about how good they are.
Greg

[picman]

Hmmm

I can see this topic going on and on

Can we all just agree that going by what's on the DxOmark web site, we can see that the a900 is the 6th best over all camera, 3rd best color depth, 5th best dynamic range and 7th best low light ISO, the Nil D3x is 20% beter in the low light ISO test, 5% beter in the other tests and cost $6000 more.

It sure scores nicely for the price, I see no problem there. However, what is far more worrying to me is the QC problem they clearly have over at Sony. Report upon report keeps appearing on various sites concerning QC problems with both cameras and lenses. What I find particularly worrying is the QC of the Zeiss lenses, because whereas the Alpha bodies have a very clear price advantage compared to Nikon, the Zeiss lenses are priced similarly if not more expensively.

Cheeers, Bob.

[Vidgamer]

Don you're a fine one to talk about others "bashing you" this is the way you indulge in a discussion about a camera,
.....

You forgot, "You must be off your meds!", and I think DK has been pretty controlled in his messages and doesn't deserve this treatment.

That's not to say that Don isn't right, just that this isn't a nice way to go about making a point, tossing these bombs around. Not a good way to win friends and influence enemies, so to speak.

[alexramos7]

Wow... I think that Annie Leibovitz should to see that... her picture will be better when she get a D3x...