I'm trying to take over the work of the newly introduced D850, but when I was shooting, I realized that it wasn't straightforward.
What I learned by comparing the previous shooting of Comet Neowise.
That is, the old D800E has less shadow noise, especially gradation skipping, and richer gradation expression than the D850.
The sensitivity of use is ISO400.
Continuing from the last time, this time I will dig deeper and verify that.
table of contents
Photographing Comet Neowise moving away with Sannippa
Captured image
Comet orbit
Comparison of captured images
Shadow noise comparison
D850 High-sensitivity granular characteristics
Unreliable highest sensitivity characteristics
D850 with more noise in the shadow area than I expected
Relationship between the number of pixels and image quality
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Photographing Comet Neowise moving away with Sannippa
August 1 Since the last comet shooting, at sunset, I often looked at the west sky, "Is it sunny?" This is to take a picture of Comet Neowise, which moves away from the sun every day.
The farther away from the sun, the less gas and dust the comet emits, and the darker and harder it becomes.
It will move away from the earth so quickly that it will be so dark that it will not be found soon.
For a while, the clouds were thick and I couldn't observe the comet, but it was August 6th that I finally got a chance to take a picture.
I could roughly understand the direction of the polar axis of the Pota Red and Sky Memo T to be installed, so this time I compared the shooting with a big and heavy sunnipper.
This is because F2.8 is very attractive for projecting dark subjects, even with its weight added.
For the time being, it is invisible to the naked eye, so this time I used the Kenko Tokina 100mm f2.8 macro to locate the comet.
This macro lens is a very sharp and high-performance lens that is resistant to backlight.
The image quality is good even near infinity, but it is very difficult to focus near infinity because the stroke is short.
This would be the fate of macro lenses.
The position of the comet has moved considerably to the south (left) on the celestial sphere than last time.
The photo still showed comet blue light, so I could quickly identify the location.
The amount of light of the comet seems to be much lower than last time.
There are many clouds, but the transparency is high
Because of the graininess and low noise of the results of the previous shooting comparison, I always prefer to use the D800E.
Captured image
I would like to return the stigma of the D850, but how will the results come out?
This time, I lowered the sensitivity to ISO200 and decided to compare it with the D800E.
The aperture is open f2.8 and the exposure is 20 seconds each.
Both photos have been cropped to include approximately the same range to make the comet easier to understand.
First of all, D800E
I've been using it for many years, and I have the confidence that it will definitely look good.
Sunnipper open, 20 seconds exposure
If there is little light pollution, the faint light of the comet will be more widespread.
The sky in Nairobi is much better than the sky in central Tokyo.
This time, it was the harvest that I found out that I could take such astrophotography even in the city of Nairobi.
The light bulb seen in the upper right of the comet is M53, a globular cluster.
When I was looking for Comet Neowise for the first time, I thought it was a comet and took many pictures.
Last time, it was a polar axis that was hard to decide, but this time I was able to decide immediately.
Even with an exposure of 300 mm for 20 seconds, it was decided that it would hardly flow.
Although the polar axis should be aligned, the same blurring occurs in both the D800E example and the D850 example.
In both cases, we take great care not to blur the shooting.
In particular, the D850 does not activate the shutter and shoots silently, so it can be said that there is no element of blurring because there is no wind.
Is it because of the periodic motion of Sky Memo Q that the star image looks blurry?
SkyMemo's drive motor seems to use a stepping motor, and the frequency is quite slow when it comes to sidereal time tracking.
This motion seems to swing a lot because it sometimes gets caught.
When it reaches 300 mm, it is possible that it is the cause of blurring.
In the first place, it exceeds the load capacity of 3 kg by 1 kg or more, so it is not covered by the warranty.
Sky Memo T Perhaps it can be used up to about 180 mm?
If it is 300mm, it will be up to Sanyon that can fit in the load capacity.
I don't know when this will happen, but I'll try to verify it soon.
And shot with the same condition D850
D850, shooting under the same conditions
Both of them are crazy at this size, and the appearance of the comet seems to be beautifully expressed.
The difference between the D800E and D850 images is not so noticeable at first glance.
Comet orbit
Here, one thing about the fact that the position of the comet deviated from the simulated position
The orbital data of Comet Neowise pulled from Wikipedia was inserted into the simulation of Stella Navigator.
Then, on August 6, the position of the comet at 20:34 was simulated with the upper left of this globular cluster M53.
Difference between simulated and actual comet position
Did the comet ejecta shift the orbit slightly?
Also, did the orbit change due to the gravity of the surrounding planets?
The start-up data itself used was from the time when the comet was just discovered, and it may not have been accurate.
If so, the number of years until the next return will have changed significantly from the forecast.
The comet is moving from right to left on the screen, celestial sphere, and from north to south.
It seems that the orbit has shifted slightly to the west and the speed has slowed down a little.
The orbital period, which was predicted to be 6700, should have been shortened.
Comparison of captured images
Now, let's get back to the difference between the D800E and D850.
Below, for the sake of clarity, we have arranged the ones that have been trimmed to 900x600, which is the same size as the pixels.
Both have ISO200 sensitivity, F2.8 aperture, 20 seconds exposure, and the same photo as above.
1x pixel
Although there is a slight difference in shooting time, if you look closely, you can see that the comet is moving slightly during that time.
The high-sensitivity noise setting is set as standard for both models because the most balanced noise correction was performed.
It is unclear if ISO200 will correct high-sensitivity noise.
(At a later date, it was found that high-sensitivity noise affected image processing even if the sensitivity was lowered to the lowest sensitivity.)
Other settings such as picture control, white balance, and active D lighting are all the same. Should be ...
Both examples are taken in 14-bit RAW and arranged with a tone curve so that the comet emerges clearly.
The difference between the 36 million pixels of the D800E and the 45 million pixels of the D850 is that the example on the right looks slightly larger.
Both of them are displayed at the same pixel size, so the larger the number of pixels, the larger the image.
result
By reducing the sensitivity to ISO200, the light beam appears to be wider on the D850 even when the difference in the number of pixels is taken into consideration.
The result of reversing the previous test.
Did the dynamic range expand by lowering the sensitivity?
Compared to the previous time, when the sensitivity was set to ISO400, the graininess of the D850 became too rough, and the spread of the comet's light beam and the color gradation were considerably weakened, it is doing well.
Shadow noise characteristics
It's still difficult to understand by comparing the above examples.
I enlarged it further and arranged it in a pixel 200% display.
In this example, in order to further emphasize the graininess, only the lower right triangular part was raised to 128 in the center with a tone curve.
Both examples perform exactly the same image processing.
The noise is now more visible
When the pixel was enlarged to 200%, the appearance of noise became clear at a glance.
Although the D800E example on the left was released eight years ago, it has a smooth graininess and almost no roughness.
Even if you look at the triangular part at the bottom right, which makes the noise easier to understand, you can see that the texture and graininess are very smooth, and there are few gradation jumps and roughness.
The noise in the example of the D850 on the right side was expanded to 200% and became more noticeable, and it became clear at a glance that the noise was louder than the D800E.
If you look at the part where the noise in the lower right is easy to understand, you can see that it is quite rough due to the graininess of the shadow part and the gradation skipping, despite the sensitivity ISO200.
This gradation noise makes the photo dirty and muddy.
In my personal opinion, assuming that both are set to ISO200 and the D800E has a graininess of ISO100, is the graininess of the D850 about ISO640?
It's hard to say that the D850 image quality is good.
D850 High-sensitivity granular characteristics
After all, as I felt in the previous shooting, it seems that the noise characteristics of the shadow of the D850's seamos sensor are not very good.
Can this be corrected by high-sensitivity noise processing?
First of all, I made an image with examples arranged so that it is easy to compare the difference in the image of sensitivity ISO200 to ISO25600 on D850.
High-sensitivity noise correction settings are all weak for comparison
It was trimmed to 200x300 with the same pixel size and arranged.
The photo was taken on August 1st.
Noise increases as sensitivity increases
If you set the high-sensitivity noise setting to standard or high, the noise will be reduced even more.
I am wondering how effective it is.
This time, I trimmed the same pixel size to 180x600 and arranged them with the high-sensitivity noise setting changed so that the effect of the processing could be easily understood.
This time, I tested only with ISO25600, but the state of the change is as follows.
Changes due to high-sensitivity noise correction changes at a sensitivity of 25600
The effect of high-sensitivity noise correction seems to be quite effective, and when set to high, the image looks quite usable even with a sensitivity of ISO 25600.
However, I don't know how much the detailed texture description is reduced in this example.
Perhaps if you set the high-sensitivity noise to a high level and tweak the other settings, you may get an image equal to or better than the D800E with a higher sensitivity.
I haven't done the above test with the D800E, so I can't say anything yet.
So, I haven't reached the optimum setting yet, but from the result of this test, it means that the D850 is not suitable for shooting stars like the last time.
Unreliable highest sensitivity characteristics
Just because the high-sensitivity characteristics in the catalog values have improved does not mean that the sensor noise has been reduced.
The maximum sensitivity of the D800E can be set to ISO 6400 and even plus 2.
The maximum sensitivity of D850 is ISO25600, and it can be set up to 2 steps.
High sensitivity characteristics that are two steps higher than the D800E, however, the D850 is overwhelmingly noisy when shooting at ISO200 and ISO400.
What does the result tell us?
The performance of the D850's sensor seems to have improved from the D800E, which is a disappointing result.
It's probably because of the high-sensitivity noise processing, after all, the processing by the engine.
However, in order to take high-quality pictures, it is necessary to have high-performance sensors and image elements rather than high-performance engines.
The engine is just post-processing.
D850 with more noise in the shadow area than I expected
I was thinking of a baton touch from the D800E to the D850, but in this test I found that it wasn't the case.
The photos taken with the D850, at first glance, are processed very nicely.
However, when I take a closer look at the same pixel size, there is no problem with the highlight part, but it has become clear from this example comparison that I am not good at expressing shadow gradation. It was also found that this noise appears without disappearing, although it becomes inconspicuous even at low sensitivity.
Whether you take a picture of a person or an object, compared to the D800E, this noise seems to be the cause, and the shadows appear dirty.
The cause of the dirt seems to be the gradation skip of the shadow noise.
Also, when I take a picture of a high-brightness subject such as the sun with an ND filter, I feel that the gradation of the highlights is more frequent than that of the D800E.
The exposure isn't flying, though.
Does that mean that shadows and highlights are useless?
Well, the gradation jump and the shadow noise are so small that you can't tell unless you make them the same size, so there is no problem in practical use.
Most videos, such as YouTube, have praised the D850.
After all, when money such as commercial income is involved, the truth cannot be told. When
No one can say bad things about the source of income, and this seems to be the mechanism of the world today.
The manager will surely not be able to make such a dry evaluation when income is involved.
Is this true not only for YouTube, but for all media such as TV and SNS?
The performance of the D800E's sensor was so good that the manager expected that it would be a successor to the two generations later, and that it would be even better in all respects.
The sensor pitch has narrowed due to a 25% increase in the number of pixels from 36 million to 45 million.
The seamos sensor that adopted backside illumination was convinced that the change would come out by compensating for the narrowed sensor pitch. It feels like it was made into a catalog.
I don't know the details, but the most important thing as a photographer is what kind of picture will be spit out.
In this case, I strongly felt that the dynamic range values published on the Internet are not directly related to the actual goodness of the image.
After all, if you don't actually take a picture of the subject, you won't know if the camera will spit out your favorite picture.
If this noise doesn't help, it may return to the D810.
The D810A, a model for Hoshino photography, probably has excellent shadow characteristics.
Certainly, the catalog says that the noise is half that of the D800.
The D850's catalog claims to be a back-illuminated CMOS sensor, but it doesn't mention how much noise has been reduced from the D800.
In this test, Nikon's Z7 and D850 examples, in terms of image quality, do not putt with Numet (administrator's intuition, dogmatism and prejudice) due to noise reduction added to hide noise. I came to feel it.
The D850 is a camera with perfect performance as a camera, such as continuous shooting performance, large buffer, perfect autofocus performance, dustproof and drip-proof performance, time-lapse performance, video performance, tilt LCD, etc.
It's too wasteful to be unable to use it due to sensor noise.
I want the noise of the shadow of the sensor to be managed.
I'm still thinking about trying various things by changing my hands and changing the settings so that this D850 can be managed.
And if I find any countermeasures, I will report it on this blog.
Relationship between the number of pixels and image quality
Many people think that the higher the number of pixels, the better the image quality, but the number of pixels has nothing to do with the beauty of the actual photograph.
What makes an image look beautiful, in most cases, the depth of color, the smooth tone, and the fineness of the image are sufficient and have little to do with the impression of the photograph.
It's different if it's a photo that sells delicacy.
And if the number of pixels is increased in the limited sensor, the pitch and area of each pixel will naturally become smaller.
As the area becomes smaller, the amount of light taken in decreases, the sensitivity decreases, and noise increases.
It becomes difficult to produce deep colors.
That is the reason why increasing the number of pixels does not improve the image quality.
By the way, the camera that the manager thinks the color was most impressive is the Nikon D70.
6 million pixels using a CCD sensor, some photos taken with the D70 are also introduced on this homepage. The colors were so indistinguishable from scanning the slide film.
If you actually see it, you can feel the impressive color.
Lion, rhino
Now, what is the optimum number of pixels for full size?
Is it good to have a full-size 24MP seamos sensor with a low-pass filter that has plenty of pitch?
It should be good because you can earn noise characteristics, gradation characteristics, and pixel pitch.
However, the low-pass sensor doesn't look good, but the blurry feeling is not liked by the manager who is familiar with the D800E.
It feels like it's been blurred and sharpened again.
It must be the strongest sensor for portraits, but it seems to be suitable for wild birds, celestial bodies, and landscape photography.
So, considering the total balance, is it low-passless 36 million pixels?
Isn't such a camera limited?
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Until the end Thank you for reading.
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