DSLR to Mirrorless 2022

[Harry Harrison]

I've tried reading a few reviews of that 'inexpensive' 70-300 f5.6 lens but so far they are universally critical, a lens designed and made cheaply, particularly poor at 200mm. Very odd to criticise a camera body for having more noise in the corners, that just couldn't be correct. Similarly IBIS, or lens IS, will only help if the camera is not being held still in the first place, it can be remarkable but if you are using the camera at 'normal' shutter speeds for the focal length then it shouldn't be necessary and would offer no advantage. In the shots you have uploaded it looks to me as if the camera is definitely moving, or the lens is worse than I could imagine it to be. Clearly easy to test the lens on a normal sunny day though. You should definitely be shooting RAW, no excuse not to with a static subject like this.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[MDM]

14 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

FWIW I've always used "consumer" lenses and Sony non-professional camera bodies. Have had relatively few problems with QC, especially in recent years. Megapixels don't really mean a thing when it comes to passing QC. I've submitted images captured with 10, 14, 16, and 24 MP cameras. IMO the most important thing is to shoot in RAW. Best of luck.

 

But you have not used a consumer lens on a 36MP camera. These high MP cameras really do need very good to excellent lenses. I just used the word consumer in my attempts at politeness. I could used other adjectives. The real point is that it is ridiculous blaming the camera here. Decent lens and good technique are what is required. I have taken many thousands of images with the D810 for clients and stock and can guarantee it is a superb camera.

 

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by MDM

[spacecadet]

3 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

You should definitely be shooting RAW, no excuse not to with a static subject like this.

I have to agree. Your image has the unmistakable (to me) "plastic" look of a jpeg. I had no end of trouble with them before abandoning jpeg years ago.

There is also very bad uncorrected CA, which is much easier to deal with in RAW.  Downsizing would probably have helped you as well. I'm surprised it's so noisy though- was it underexposed?

[John Mitchell]

1 minute ago, MDM said:

 

But you have not used a consumer lens on a 36MP camera. These high MP cameras really do need very good to excellent lenses. I just used the word consumer in my attempts at politeness. I could used other adjectives. The real point here is that it is ridiculous blaming the camera here.

 

 

 

No I haven't. A couple of my lenses are stretched at 24 MP. However, downsizing usually does the trick if the image is technically OK. Where there's a will, there's a way, especially if you're on a tight budget... 🧐

[MDM]

8 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

No I haven't. A couple of my lenses are stretched at 24 MP. However, downsizing usually does the trick if the image is technically OK. Where there's a will, there's a way, especially if you're on a tight budget... 🧐

 

Sure and that is fine. Downsizing can do the trick. That is what I did when I made my initial mistakes with the D810's older brother (the D800). But I didn't blame the camera. I got my technique together and never failed QC since.

 

Learn from my mistakes is one of my main mottos. That can be difficult if one can't even identify one's mistakes but no excuses here: the OP is getting a lot of help in that direction but ignoring the advice. I am not seeing that as a professional approach.

 

 

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by MDM

[MDM]

DxO sensor database, sorted by best landscape cameras

 

Note the D810 gets the same rating as the medium format Hasselblad X1D-50C, the Nikon D850, the Sony A7R IV and the Leica M11 (look at the price of that). It might be elderly but it's superb for static photography.

[Steve F]

Hi Frank,

I like the subject and lighting a lot in your pictures above. I can't quite see what the definition problem is. It might be the processing, or it could be the focus is not quite right. I'm thinking maybe posterization is the problem?

 

Sorry if some of this is teaching you to suck eggs. You've got a very nice professional grade camera; as pointed out above, you may want to get more expensive / professional glass for it as lower quality lenses might not have enough resolution for the sensor. Or downgrade to e.g. 24MP, more than enough for stock. More importantly though, you're using it on Auto settings and shooting with JPEGs!!

 

Your camera is intelligent, but it doesn't know what you want the image to look like. And it doesn't always know what the correct focus point is. You should have an option to change the focus setting (when you want to, and especially when you're using a tripod so you have plenty of time) to a movable spot, so you can move the spot within the frame to the point you want to be sharp. Ditto goes for the auto white balance, it's good on modern cameras, but it often won't get it right. You're much better off editing the white balance in Lightroom (LR).

 

Some contributors shoot JPEG, but it's very hit and miss. I would expect most of us to shoot in Raw and to do some edits in Lightroom and/or Photoshop (or other image editor of choice). Once you get into a routine, the editing is generally relatively quick. Advantage of shooting in Raw vs JPEG:

1. A JPEG from the camera is an Raw file that has been edited in-camera. You didn't get to choose what the edit looks like, your camera did. And a JPEG is a compressed file so it's lost information. If you edit a JPEG, you will also lose further information - editing a raw file is non destructive.

2. JPEG records 256 levels of brightness, and RAW records between 4,096 to 16,384 levels. This is described as a “bit”. JPEG captures in 8bit, and RAW is either 12bit or 14bit. Those additional steps of brightness let you make more adjustments (exposure, blacks, fill light, recovery, contrast, brightness) to your image without a significant reduction of quality, because there’s more levels to work with.

3. It's easier to recover clipped shadows and blown highlights with Raw files.

4. Easier to correct white balance on the Raw file.

5. The sharpening and noise tools in LR are much more powerful than in camera.

6. You've got a professional camera - the professionals are all working on Raw files

 

Image editing more generally - it really does pay and it should help make your images more saleable. You can correct wonky horizons, get rid of dust bunnies (something that you'll fail Alamy QC with), apply lens corrections to get rid of distortion and vignetting (you've got noticeable vignetting in your image above). Also, get the correct exposure, white balance, noise correction etc.

 

One more thing, your camera's exposure meter assumes that everything you're photographing is a mid grey shade, so it will adjust your images to suit this. E.g. if you take a picture of a black steam train, your camera will make it grey (paler than black) because it doesn't know what it's looking at, so you actually need to underexpose. If you take a picture of white snow, you actually need to overexpose your image because again it will make the snow look too dark (grey). Again, another situation where you don't want to rely on your camera's auto settings.

 

If you do get into editing, here's my workflow in Lightroom. It's just an example, other people will be doing their own thing:

1. Lens corrections - apply correction for your lens - if you're lucky, LR does it automatically for you. Remove chromatic abberation.
2. Transform - make sure horizon is straight and buildings are not leaning at funny angles. You can get away with "Auto" in a lot of cases.
3. Adjust the exposure. I do it by eye so it looks "right" to me, but you can also try and get the histogram so the 'bell shape' is in the middle and not skewed to the left or right.
4. Adjust contrast by eye.
5. Adjust the whites and blacks so that the histogram goes all the way to the left and right with no clipping. But check by eye as well, sometimes you don't want to go all the way to the edge.
6. Adjust shadows and highlights by eye (sometimes necessary).
7. Adjust the White Balance as necessary. Default is "as shot". Change it to "Auto" to see what it looks like. See what you think, adjust by eye as you see fit. There's also an eye dropper tool you can put on any white in the image which will do a kind of auto adjust.
8. Adjust vibrance and saturation. By the way, increasing the overall exposure a lot seems to automatically increase the saturation so you might actually need to apply negative saturation.
9. Adjust saturation and luminance on individual colours if necessary, i.e. if one colour looks really garish or flat.
10. Check for dust bunnies with the spot removal tool, and click on "visualise spots". It's a bit hit and miss though so I just tend to zoom in on the photo by eye and remove them.
11. Sharpening - I just leave it as default and I believe that is alright for Alamy.
12. Export as highest quality jpeg with sRGB or AdobeRGB colour space - don't apply additional sharpening.
13. Congrats, you're done, next photo.

I generally use my camera on a kind of semi auto setting - I almost always use it on Aperture Priority. I set the aperture depending on the depth of field I want or if I want to hit the 'sweet spot' of the lens (lenses have a particular aperture at which they are sharpest). The camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed to suit getting what it thinks is a properly exposed image. I then change the exposure setting if I think I need to (although you can do this during editing as long as you don't have blown shadows or highlights). I sometimes up the ISO if there's insufficient light to get a sharp hand held image.  And I generally choose the focus point. I occasionally adjust the white balance, but I normally leave it on Auto as it's easier to get it right during editing. That's pretty much it when I'm shooting - but I'm much more in control than just using the Auto settings.

 

Best of luck,

Steve

 

P. S. Agreed with other contributors, it looks like de-noising the original JPEG has destroyed a lot of the detail and also caused posterization.

 

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by Steve F

[MDM]

2 hours ago, Steve F said:

Adjust the White Balance as necessary. Default is "as shot". Change it to "Auto" to see what it looks like. See what you think, adjust by eye as you see fit. There's also an eye dropper tool you can put on any white in the image which will do a kind of auto adjust.

 

 

Great lesson Steve. Could be the basis for a photography course. One thing I would change is the bit about white balance and this is more a general thing, not advice for the OP which appears in my case to have been totally ignored. I would never use Auto  WB in Lightroom, as it will rarely get things right and why should it? It is making a coarse judgment presumably by averaging over the image. I would advocate the eyedropper method but it is surprising how difficult it can be to get something properly neutral in an image. For that reason I would advocate using a good gray card or a Color Checker Passport, photographed in the same light as the main subject. This is not always possible but it can work really well and it takes out a lot of guesswork. A lot of the time one can get away with inaccurate white balance but there are some subjects such as portraits where it is very important (skin tone). However, there is a caveat to that approach as one might not want neutral light as in the case of warm evening light for example where one want to preserve the warmth. 

Edited September 9, 2022 by MDM

[zxzoomy]

4 hours ago, frankbiganski said:

Nikon 70-300mm f4-5.6 D ED AF zoom lens

Ken Rockwell does not like that lens: "I didn't like it because of the circus-mirror like distortions at the long end and the focus errors I saw on one sample at 70mm on my F100. There are better choices."

[Marianne]

5 hours ago, frankbiganski said:

Thank you all for your insightful replies. When I first started to reply yesterday afternoon, I was stopped by the dreadful news of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing. As a new resident of the UK, my heartfelt condolences go out to every British citizen and those her knew her. It is sad indeed...

 

Another possibility for my “lack of definition” issue could be the Nikon 70-300mm f4-5.6 D ED AF zoom lens I recently purchased. Although I purchased the lens used, it was purchased from a reputable London camera shop in mint condition for £100 (retails around £535 new?). But after further investigation, I now see the lens only has one extra-low dispersion (ED) lens and the more expensive similar VR lens that retails for £2,300 has seven ED lenses within. So as someone said within this post, and what life experience has shown me, price matters so some of my issue could also have to do with this cheaper lens.

...

 

Thanks again and keep on clickin! You folks are the best!

 

Frank

 

 

 

I was a Nikon shooter for years with many different lenses from used manual lenses I bought on ebay to high end pricey ones and the only lens I ever regretted buying (and have since sold) was the Nikon 70-300mm f4-5.6 D ED AF zoom lens. Mine was soft after 200mm no matter what I did, both with my D700 and D5100. I purchased it for a trip to northern Europe in 2011 (I live in the US) because I wanted something lighter than my Sigma 50-500mm (which was tack-sharp to 500mm). Some consumer level zoom lenses lose sharpness at either end, particularly the long end, but the 70-300mm was really unacceptable. I purchased a week or so before the trip, got busy with work so didn't check it out beforehand since I'd never had an issue with a lens before, and by the time I returned my return window had closed. Even setting it up on a tripod and checking to see if I needed to adjust focus (which you can do on higher end cameras like the D700 and D810) didn't help. At least you purchased it used so not a huge loss, though frustrating nonetheless. 

 

If you do decide to go mirrorless for other reasons (I switched for the weight and have been using Sony mirrorless a7rii & a7riv for a few years now) make sure for Real Estate that you stick with a full frame camera.

 

By the way, one Nikon lens I highly recommend for Real Estate (I shot a lot of commercial RE for contractors) is the 20mm f/2.8. It looks plasticy but is beautifully sharp and if you keep your x and y- axis level (i.e. straight horizons and don't tilt the camera backwards or forwards) you will get beautifully straight verticals. It's very light. I kept that lens when I switched to mirrorless and use it with an adapter. It's great for landscapes, which is what I've been focusing on of late. 

 

Good luck.

 

And I second your expression of sympathy to our British fellow photographers. I was so saddened to hear of the Queen's passing. She was a remarkable woman. 

 

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by Marianne
Edited first paragraph

[sooth]

5 hours ago, frankbiganski said:

The images were shot just after sunset in JPEG at 130mm, ISO-64, 5 sec exposure at f/6.3, tripod, self-timer 6 second delayed shutter release, solid ground, no wind. The image on top has no noise reduction. The image on the bottom has some noise removed and this was one of the images that failed due to “lack of definition”.

 

 

i would've cranked up the iso from 64 to at least 2000.  that would have allowed a smaller aperture and shorter time needed to take the image and probably made the image sharper. the higher iso would have been a piece of cake for that camera

[Chuck Nacke]

On 06/09/2022 at 13:36, frankbiganski said:

Hi folks. I saw a similar post and discussions from a year ago, but I'm looking forward to hearing your current views on this topic. I'm getting the unnerving feeling that my Nikon D810 is/has become outmoded, as my images are not getting accepted by Alamy due to "soft or lacking definition". Or maybe I need to shoot everything in RAW now and convert to jpg?

 

I've been involved in photography since the 1970's, and I always try to keep apprised of the latest trends in camera technology. When I bought the D810 in early 2020, I could not afford a mirrorless system at that time and as a property photographer, the D810 was still highly recommended. I know of it being a great workhorse as well. Over the past few years as a property photographer, its results have been impressing agents and their clients, and of course Lightroom and Photoshop helps attribute to the quality of those images.

 

But over the past few years, I've also been reading a lot about the LUMIX S5, Fuji T4 and Nikon Z's.  And as other photographers previously mentioned, I'm beginning to wonder if I need to gather up all of my Nikon gear and trade it all in for a mirrorless?  I'm now apprehensive about the Nikon Z's, and I'm favoring the LUMIX S5 with the LUMIX S Pro 16-35mm lens, especially based on this recent article I stumbled upon.

https://www.panasonic.com/global/consumer/lumix/s/daniel_berehulak.html

 

I've been a long-time Nikon fan for years, but I'm just not feeling the love for Nikon any more... not since my Nikon F with NIKKOR 500mm lens (I think I remember Nikon doing something different with manufacturing their lens years ago, but that's another topic completely).

 

I tried searching the interweb and with no luck, but I would love to find someone who has done a side-by-side comparison of twilight images at ISO 400, 800, and 1600 using the Nikon Z7, Fuji T4, and LUMIX S5 -- all unedited in low light, to see how much or little grain each camera produces. I know lenses affect this too, but just would love to hear some feedback on the matter.  My head is spinning!

 

Thanks and cheers!

 

Frank

 

 

 

Frank,

 

I am a big fan of the NIKON D8XXX series DSLRs.  I would seriously doubt that switching to any other camera body will get your images past QC.  I've been using D800s for some time and I found that one of my bodies and my TOKINA 16-28 was not producing the sharpness I have always demanded from the D800s.  I sent the body to the people that do my NIKON repair work and found out the sensor was out of alignment.  I also had TOKINA service my 16-28 and now I am getting nice sharp images from that combination.  While I am sure that NIKON would appreciate you dumping your current equipment and purchasing new Z (currently unfortunate letter to use for a camera body) the only person or people who will benefit are going to be NIKON, but if you really want new "Toys" and you have the change.

 

Just my opinion.

 

PS I only shoot in NEF (NIKON Raw) and convert to 16bit TIFFs, then down to JPEGs for Alamy.

 

Chuck   

Edited September 9, 2022 by Chuck Nacke
addition

[Marianne]

4 hours ago, MDM said:

 

But you have not used a consumer lens on a 36MP camera. These high MP cameras really do need very good to excellent lenses. I just used the word consumer in my attempts at politeness. I could used other adjectives. The real point is that it is ridiculous blaming the camera here. Decent lens and good technique are what is required. I have taken many thousands of images with the D810 for clients and stock and can guarantee it is a superb camera.

 

 

 

Have to agree with this - the only lenses I use with my 42MP and 61MP Sonys, with one exception, are primes - from various manufacturers - Nikon, Sony and analog Zuiko (Olympus) lenses , all made in Japan - the only inexpensive one in the bunch is a Rokinon 8mm fisheye, but at 8mm everything is going to be in focus unless you shake the camera. The only zoom lens  is the Sony G Master 24-105mm f/4 

 

Another hint in determining if a zoom lens will meet your requirements, besides price, especially since you are concerned with shooting in low light, is to look for a zoom that has a fixed aperture since that will let in more light than a variable aperture will as you zoom out (in?- toward the longer focal length). Since you need to increase your speed as your focal length gets longer, you won't have the double whammy of a smaller aperture as well which will increase the need to raise your ISO, or use long exposures, that can also cause noise issues. Generally, a faster lens (i.e. one with a larger maximum aperture) means a better lens, all other things being equal, and if you shoot handheld in low light, a fast lens is essential. 

 

Always buy the best glass (i.e. lenses) that you can afford. I still have analog lenses from the 1970's (Zuikos from my old OM-1 and Nikons purchased on ebay) as well as other Nikon digital lenses bought circa 2006-2011 that I now use with my Sonys. My only regret is selling my 24-70mm f/2.8 when I made the mirrorless switch thinking it would be too heavy to keep with the new camera - another Nikon workhorse that is super sharp and has imperceptible distortion. Great if you're sticking with the D810.

 

I would have gone with one in the D800 series myself if I hadn't needed to switch to lighter cameras to save my back. I tried the D5100 as a backup camera since it was lighter than the D700 and was disappointed since I'd become so used to the quality of the D700 (I believe it was the precursor to the D800 series). You've got a great camera and if it's not too heavy for you, definitely stick with it. Spend your money on a better lens)es) for the camera you have rather than a new camera system

 

And shoot RAW. I did a photo shoot of Hillary Clinton for a magazine a couple of weeks after I got my first digital camera, a D70, back in 2006 and shot jpeg because I didn't know any better. It worked out fine since the magazine had a skilled photo editor but I would have been able to bring out so much more in the photos had I known. I took a Nikon weekend seminar a few weeks later and have been shooting RAW ever since. I've gone back to old photos with the newer versions of LR & PS and wow, how well the re-processed images look! You degrade a jpeg every time you process or re-save it. RAW files are never touched, you're merely editing the sidecar files. 

 

You're always going to make mistakes. Learn from them and you'll enjoy improving as a photographer. 

 

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by Marianne

[MDM]

1 hour ago, sooth said:

i would've cranked up the iso from 64 to at least 2000.  that would have allowed a smaller aperture and shorter time needed to take the image and probably made the image sharper. the higher iso would have been a piece of cake for that camera

 

If he had shot raw at ISO64 and set the default colour noise reduction in Lightroom there would be no visible noise at all. The top image has terrible colour noise and the bottom one looks like paste because of the noise reduction. If he shot JPEG at ISO2000 it would probably look pretty bad anyway. The D810s are noisy at high ISO (>1000) and need good processing to be acceptable. 

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Marianne said:

 

Have to agree with this - the only lenses I use with my 42MP and 61MP Sonys, with one exception, are primes - from various manufacturers - Nikon, Sony and analog Zuiko (Olympus) lenses , all made in Japan - the only inexpensive one in the bunch is a Rokinon 8mm fisheye, but at 8mm everything is going to be in focus unless you shake the camera. The only zoom lens  is the Sony G Master 24-105mm f/4 

 

Another hint in determining if a zoom lens will meet your requirements, besides price, especially since you are concerned with shooting in low light, is to look for a zoom that has a fixed aperture since that will let in more light than a variable aperture will as you zoom out (in?- toward the longer focal length). Since you need to increase your speed as your focal length gets longer, you won't have the double whammy of a smaller aperture as well which will increase the need to raise your ISO, or use long exposures, that can also cause noise issues. Generally, a faster lens (i.e. one with a larger maximum aperture) means a better lens, all other things being equal, and if you shoot handheld in low light, a fast lens is essential. 

 

Always buy the best glass (i.e. lenses) that you can afford. I still have analog lenses from the 1970's (Zuikos from my old OM-1 and Nikons purchased on ebay) as well as other Nikon digital lenses bought circa 2006-2011 that I now use with my Sonys. My only regret is selling my 24-70mm f/2.8 when I made the mirrorless switch thinking it would be too heavy to keep with the new camera - another Nikon workhorse that is super sharp and has imperceptible distortion. Great if you're sticking with the D810.

 

I would have gone with one in the D800 series myself if I hadn't needed to switch to lighter cameras to save my back. I tried the D5100 as a backup camera since it was lighter than the D700 and was disappointed since I'd become so used to the quality of the D700 (I believe it was the precursor to the D800 series). You've got a great camera and if it's not too heavy for you, definitely stick with it. Spend your money on a better lens)es) for the camera you have rather than a new camera system

 

And shoot RAW. I did a photo shoot of Hillary Clinton for a magazine a couple of weeks after I got my first digital camera, a D70, back in 2006 and shot jpeg because I didn't know any better. It worked out fine since the magazine had a skilled photo editor but I would have been able to bring out so much more in the photos had I known. I took a Nikon weekend seminar a few weeks later and have been shooting RAW ever since. I've gone back to old photos with the newer versions of LR & PS and wow, how well the re-processed images look! You degrade a jpeg every time you process or re-save it. RAW files are never touched, you're merely editing the sidecar files. 

 

You're always going to make mistakes. Learn from them and you'll enjoy improving as a photographer. 

 

 

 

If using zooms on these cameras, they need to be quality zooms and they are expensive. You can get the 50mm 1.8 Nikkor new at the moment for £130 (not much difference with the $ right now) as Nikon are running a lens sale. It is a light plastic lens but man is it sharp and it would be fine on the D810. OK it's not an ideal lens for property but he hasn't said what he is actually using (assuming it's now the 70-300). It's possible to pick up old secondhand Nikkor primes as well. 

 

As for mistakes - bring em on. Definitely the best way to learn but also the best way to fail continuously if you refuse to learn or don't even recognise them as mistakes. And you don't want to learn on the job 😀. If I was commissioning a photographer and they gave me images of the quality the OP has posted I would be extremely unhappy.

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Chuck Nacke said:

and purchasing new Z (currently unfortunate letter to use for a camera body)

 

 

 

Yes to that Chuck. The Z on the camera is OK but not the big Z on the camera strap. You certainly would not want to be using straps like that as a war photographer in Ukraine these days. 

 

 

[sooth]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

 

If he had shot raw at ISO64 and set the default colour noise reduction in Lightroom there would be no visible noise at all. The top image has terrible colour noise and the bottom one looks like paste because of the noise reduction. If he shot JPEG at ISO2000 it would probably look pretty bad anyway. The D810s are noisy at high ISO (>1000) and need good processing to be acceptable. 

a long exposure with that type of image of detailed buildings, and not going to at at least a f/8 or something you're not going to get sharpimages, esp if there are any temperature differentials coming off the water. and having some noise in the image i feel is acceptable.  whatever equipment you have, i would try to work with its flaws, technique over equipment.

[Chuck Nacke]

13 hours ago, MDM said:

 

If using zooms on these cameras, they need to be quality zooms and they are expensive. You can get the 50mm 1.8 Nikkor new at the moment for £130 (not much difference with the $ right now) as Nikon are running a lens sale. It is a light plastic lens but man is it sharp and it would be fine on the D810. OK it's not an ideal lens for property but he hasn't said what he is actually using (assuming it's now the 70-300). It's possible to pick up old secondhand Nikkor primes as well. 

 

As for mistakes - bring em on. Definitely the best way to learn but also the best way to fail continuously if you refuse to learn or don't even recognise them as mistakes. And you don't want to learn on the job 😀. If I was commissioning a photographer and they gave me images of the quality the OP has posted I would be extremely unhappy.

Too much talk about "high-end" lenses, but not enough talk about knowing your lens.  All lenses have an optimum aperture and zooms have optimum focal lengths.  I also disagree with the idea of "old fixed focal length" lenses being better than modern zooms, again you need to know the performance of the lens, I have tested my 70-200 f4 AFED NIKKOR, zoom set at 180, against my 180 f2.8 ED NIKKOR and at f5.6 to 8 there is no difference optically.  At f4 there is a difference, the 180 wins.  One of the worst fixed focal length AF NIKKORs is the 20 f2.8 AF.  I hated several versions of that lens.  I do also have a very old 35-70 f2.8 AF and I love that lens.  about five years ago I did replace the mount and had the elements checked.  Another NIKKOR to avoid is the original 20-35 f2.8 AF.  The 18-35 f2.8 AF ED is optically way better.

 

Over the decades I've worked with a lot of the manufacturers fixed focal length lenses as well as a few 2cd party optics.  The TOKINA Pro 16-28 f2.8 AF is a great zoom.  For years I used a TAMRON 20-40 f2.6 AF, I also have a few pictures on Alamy that were shot with the old TAMRON MF 300 f2.8 and I still love my SYGMA 120-300 f2.8 AF.  I had an old NIKKOR 300 f2.8 ED that I spent a fortune to buy and later $ repairing and the SYGMA beat it hands down.

 

The comparisons I made were done using NIKON D800's shooting NEF, converting to 16bit TIFF in aRGB and looking at pixels.

 

Chuck  

Edited September 10, 2022 by Chuck Nacke
addition

[Rebecca Ore]

I rather like people who churn gear -- a couple of my camera bodies came from those people.  Only one had serious problems.  

[MDM]

6 hours ago, sooth said:

a long exposure with that type of image of detailed buildings, and not going to at at least a f/8 or something you're not going to get sharpimages, esp if there are any temperature differentials coming off the water. and having some noise in the image i feel is acceptable.  whatever equipment you have, i would try to work with its flaws, technique over equipment.

 

Yes I agree but having worked a lot with D810s I do know  the imitations and they are not great at high ISO - noise, reduced dynamic range and a magenta colour cast begins to show over about ISO1600. On a tripod there is no reason to go to high ISO in any case but definitely use the optimum aperture for the lens (around f8 in this case as you say). I have shot a lot of low light stuff with these cameras on a tripod and they can be essentially noise free if treated properly. Of course there is acceptable noise levels but the colour noise in the OP's top image is way beyond acceptable and correcting it in the bottom image has destroyed it completely - turned it to mush. Colour noise is a cinch to deal with with raw images in Lightroom

[Harry Harrison]

I'm wondering if this was just a wind-up really

[MDM]

38 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I'm wondering if this was just a wind-up really

 

It certainly is but I don't think it is intentional  🤣. I think the OP's questions are genuine but he is just not listening. 

[Harry Harrison]

7 minutes ago, MDM said:

It certainly is but I don't think it is intentional

Maybe it's Alamy doing some Forum Stress Testing🙂

[Rebecca Ore]

One Nicaraguan pro who does assignment work won't use Micro 4/3rds cameras because they don't look "professional."  My Sony a6000 isn't much bigger than a M4/3rds camera, and I don't mind not looking professional when I'm shooting street scenes and people here.  My first film camera was a Asahi Pentax that someone traded in for a Minox (not really good  image quality but very concealable).  

 

If I only had a cast net, I could switch out my convict cichlids for new fish to photograph :). 

 

My D300 was almost new, traded in for full frame as soon as Nikon released those after saying it was going to stick with APS-C digital (store clerk described the guy as pissed off).   Same for the Panasonic GF1, almost new.  Someone played with it and then decided to get something else.   Used Hasselblad gear fell into two categories: near trashed ex-pro stuff and barely used at all stuff from the proverbial dentists and doctors.

 

If people can afford to try different cameras, there's nothing wrong with that, but that particular hobby may not be supported with stock licenses.

 

For some use cases, people have pointed out that the D810 has some limitations for fast action shooting, but I've got a book on North American raptors with photos taken  with manual film Nikons from FE2 to F4 and an 8008, with a Nikkor ED 400mm f/3.5 lens.  Films used were Kodachrome 64 and Velvia pushed to 100.

 

What does the OP want to photograph besides buildings?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by Rebecca Ore

[Gervais Montacute]

Something like a Nikon D800 is going to be useless with inferior lenses. The better the camera and the higher the MP count, the worse the images will be if lower class lenses are used. The camera shows up the flaws in the lenses. You need e.g. Nikon 24-70 2.8 AF-S lenses that cost quite a lot of money these days if you want the best images.