I meant a DSLR newbie.
Ken Rockwell's D40/D3000 ISO comparison
(84 posts) (16 voices)-
Posted 3 years ago #
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Niko - Sorry... I meant that it is a fact that it has 11 points, not that it is fast and accurate. Although it is a fact that it is faster and more accurate than the d40. I will argue that AF speed & accuracy is something that can be objectively measured using the charts and what have you. Ken doesn't do this (I'm not sure that anyone does).
How well it tracks its subject and chooses what points to use in continuous mode is more subjective.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Alpha, an iphone is a much better camera than a DSLR, according to Chase Jarvis and ME
So have any of us actually read Gentoo's original post? I have to admit that I saw the word Ken and I stopped reading :^(
Posted 3 years ago # -
Of course. Because it's always with you.
I read the original post. Interesting, but not surprising.
However, when I saw the word Ken I knew I had to read it!
Posted 3 years ago # -
LOL...loser :^)
Posted 3 years ago # -
Thankfully I am not the only one who thought Ken was full of $#!*. His comments about RAW vs. JPEG are grossly inaccurate. If anyone read the JPEG specification, you'd realize what a crappy format it really is. Just because it is the most popular, does not make it better by far. The only time I read what he has to say is when his site comes up in a search but immediately look for someone else’s take it.
Last year I bought a D300 seeking to upgrade my D80. The night prior of my purchase I read Thom Hogan's review of the D80 as well as the D300 and knew right away I'd be a happy camper. Personally I find Thom to be very real world, and his opinions fairly accurate. To me they seemed less biased than that of the big name photo magazine that has to protect their ad revenue. Ken on the other hand makes me wonder if he ever held a camera in his life.
How he can make assertions about not needing a tripod if you have VR is absurd. Both are great tools for a photographer to have, and both have a time and place to use one over the other. It’s these bizarre conclusions that destroy his credibility in my eyes.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Hear, hear pabnj!
Posted 3 years ago # -
/me believes Ken provides a valuable service through acting as a devil's advocate. His arguments for quick and good enough photos out of the box are all sound. We all should be able to produce final product straight out of the camera. His arguments for a minimal workflow counter the rising tide of gear-heads who waste valuable shooting time tweaking every last setting. Anyone would be better served by composing more in the finder and less in Lightroom.
THAT SAID
In the real world there are flaws to be fixed, both technical and compositional. However, a newbie striving for the extreme played (and I do mean played) by Ken will be much better served, IMHO, than a newbie striving for technical brilliance over compositional brilliance. And insofar as the D3000's lag gets in the way of instant feedback on composition and exposure it is a hindrance, a hindrance which doesn't justify 2 MP nor the price differential, IMHO. ADR is nice, but if it slows you down to where you miss a shot it is the most costly nice thing ever.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Part of Ansel Adams "genius" was the work he did to his photos in the darkroom not just straight out of the camera. A camera is just a tool and is often the starting point for a photographer to realize amazing work.
"Just because you own a camera DOES NOT make you a photographer, it simply means you are a camera owner".
Ken owns a camera or two.
Posted 3 years ago # -
OK, Ok, I've never seen an actually impressive photo from Ken.
But what he says still makes perfect sense. JPEG is better. Today I will shoot RAW, but in ten years when I may be unable to open my photographs from today, I may reconsider. JPEG has never been replaced. RAW is different in every camera. Which will survive natural selection? JPEG of course!
Posted 3 years ago # -
Which is sad because JPEG is a horrible format. Think about it. JPEG was developed in the early 1990's and the internet, as we know it today, didn't even exist yet! JPEG became popular after it's wide spread use on the new internet! Yes it's good to have a stable format but JPEG is so destructive and every camera has a different way of compressing the pixel info. Also each time you save a JPEG your photo deteriorates!!!! Now how is that a good thing for archival purposes?!
Posted 3 years ago # -
THANK YOU NIKO. When will people realize how bad a format JPEG really is? Why do people associate popularity with superiority.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Wow, just wow! While I've agreed on a lot of points, I am blown away by the complete inability of some so understand what a controlled experiment is. It shouldn't surprise me after all this time but...wow...it still does.
The remarks about...or excuses is a better word...why the D3000 has worse ISO performance blah blah blah and just send it through whatever PP software...IS BESIDE THE POINT!!! let me repeat that, that's not the point. The point is, is produces more noise when you shoot regardless. Of course you can clean up an image in PP. The point is to reduce the amount of time spent PP which includes cleaning up noise. I know a few of you have purchased D3000's and the news that it's ISO performance predates the D40's is not something you want to hear. Fine, don't hear it then, won't change anything.
Now onto more impressive statements; JPEG is destructive and not a very good way to maintain quality, especially if you PP like, according to the previous statements, most of us do. On this I completely ignore and disagree with KR.
One must also know how to read KR. I'm repeating myself for like the 10,000th time but I've gathered that a lot of people on here don't read very carefully at all. Not going to turn this into another KR thread at the request of Niko who I respect so I won't lol
Just remember, when you test something, you are testing what is the way it is. You cannot set things up in a way that doesn't actually test anything. This goes for KR's experiment which I thought he did pretty well. It doesn't matter if the in camera uses such and such NR, that's the way the camera came so that's what must be tested. It's the same for those of you that don't understand that you have to push something before comparisons and tests can be made.
Posted 3 years ago # -
But my (and Ken's) point is that in ten years at least you'll have some fragment of a photo that you are able to read rather than a undamaged RAW that you cannot read as an image.
Oh, these digital cameras messed up everything! It was so nice and easy with film, no RAW and JPEG and the rest of that crap. It's easy to look at an image at film, whether its today or 100 years from now.
That's done it. When the F7 comes out, I'm officially switching to film. Period.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Gentoo - My question to you is this (and it is an honest question... I've not shot with a D3k, just played with one at best buy): Are the D3k's Raw images any different than the shots that come from other cameras with the same sensor?
If they are the same, then Nikon just changed the way they apply noise reduction. They were more conservative in the D90 than the D300, and the images are slightly better because of the increased detail (w/o much more noise). If they are different, then the D3k is truly inferior. Comparing it to the D40, however, doesn't seem quite fair. I just took my D40 shooting this weekend, and can attest that it's raw images at 1600 are essentially unusable w/o a lot of clean-up. Much nosier than the JPEG on Ken's comparison. Ken's comparison isn't truly "controlled" because it has both the variables of sensor noise and software noise removal.
I actually like Ken's noise comparisons because I normally shoot JPEG, but I also want to know how much detail I'm loosing to NR settings. Ken usually doesn't go there (although I think he did once).
Posted 3 years ago # -
"Gentoo - My question to you is this (and it is an honest question... I've not shot with a D3k, just played with one at best buy): Are the D3k's Raw images any different than the shots that come from other cameras with the same sensor?"
Honest question, honest answer. The problem is RAW, is not an image. I know you know this, I'm not trying to be patronizing on this. It's a dump of data. What you see is an "image" converted to a format that can be viewed. What's in the RAW data is everything that the camera added, a great deal of which cannot be seen unless you are able to "turn it on" in certain RAW editing software. It basically gives you more wiggle room as anything you do, as you know is not finished until you convert it to a usable format. Therefore, one cannot really compare one RAW from one camera to another because, as we all know, each camera has it's own unique formula.
Ken's comparison is controlled precisely because he's comparing JPEG's. Between JPEG and RAW, you can only really compare JPEG as it is a set standard where as RAW, as already mentioned isn't. Comparing JPG's is like comparing one red apple to other red apples. Comparing different RAW files is more in line with comparing a red apple to a plum then to an orange then to an apricot. In his comparison, JPEG is the control.
Posted 3 years ago # -
he really should just copy paste this bit to all the cameras
"Buy a D40 instead, while you still can.
The D40 is a significantly better camera (and I haven't even gotten to how the D40 has a sync speed over twice as fast as the [insert camera name]), and the D40 costs less.
The only advantage of the [insert camera name] is that it has more pixels, but considering how I have no problems making great 20 x 30" (50 x 75cm) prints from my D40 with its kit lens, I wouldn't get a [insert camera name]for that."
no kidding him and bloody d40 is getting to me for a while now... drop it and break it...have to agree that d3000 is a bit disappointing, played with it in a shop for a bit ... feels like crap
as I said before I think they chopped it to muchPosted 3 years ago # -
nau, you're right about him and his D40. He says he uses that and his D3. He doesn't use his D300 anymore. How can you let a D300 just sit there?
Posted 3 years ago # -
You can't take Ken's "review" as fact! It's just an attempt to stir up traffic to his website. Sorry but that's a FACT according to ME :^)
To all you D3000 owners out there. Take this "review" with a grain of salt! Your cameras are perfectly fine and are capable of creating wonderful images. Don't believe your camera is now junk just because Ken took pictures of his stuffed monkey! I've used a D3000 and it's a good camera. True the sensor doesn't have much of a tweak, but their are so many other things that are improved over the D60 and the D40 that you can't just dismiss it.
I think Micheal Riechmann from luminous-landscape says it best:
"I alternately chuckle and get steamed up when I read someone on a web forum either condemn or praise a camera or lens based on a web images. This is utter nonsense. What can one possibly tell from a 100ppi image on a screen, except of course how it looks on a screen at 100ppi? What screen, was it calibrated, and how long ago, and what are the viewing conditions, and....."
Here's the complete article entitled "The Fallacy of Judging Image Quality Online"
http://luminous-landscape.com/essays/rant23b.shtmlI don't even think of Ken as the Chuck Norris of photography. I see him more as the Gomer Pyle of photography :^)
Posted 3 years ago # -
"To all you D3000 owners out there. Take this "review" with a grain of salt! Your cameras are perfectly fine and are capable of creating wonderful images. Don't believe your camera is now junk just because Ken took pictures of his stuffed monkey! I've used a D3000 and it's a good camera. True the sensor doesn't have much of a tweak, but their are so many other things that are improved over the D60 and the D40 that you can't just dismiss it."
Based on this statement don't you ever EVER reference Thom Hogan or anyone on the web ever again. I guess all web based reviews are no good and cannot be relied upon in anyway. So all of us (myself included) need to withdraw all the statements and post made "here on the web" regrading what we think is good or bad. Blame it on the web, that's the problem.
What a daft statement.
Posted 3 years ago # -
It's not daft Gentoo. It's the same reason you don't buy a camera bag online just because I said you should. Go and try it out yourself and see how it fits your needs! I have used a D3000 and I didn't see the noise as any worse (or better) than the D60. But like I said there are lots of things I found better such as the build quality and auto focus. Take ANY "review" with a grain of salt. You should base your purchases on what your own wants and needs are, and NOT on what one person says in a "review".
I'm not sure why you've suddenly become a ken follower and defender when you have called him "a real fool!!!" in the past. Why the sudden change of heart?
Posted 3 years ago # -
I am not a Ken follower. I liked this review because unlike many he used a control. Doesn't look like many on here know what that is. I have also said at one point...actually more than once that he must be read with a grain of salt. How convenient of you to leave that out. Another example of not reading posts carefully.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Sigh .. being on the other side of the world I missed all the banter as it developed .. :-)
Re : pinhole camera. and developing film etc .. Just use polaroid media(instant photo). Its a bit fiddly to put in place and all but it works.. Thats howe I took photos with my first pinhole camera! LOL.
Re ken rockwell and the original point of this post .. no comment !! LOL
Posted 3 years ago # -
Gentoo, stop getting so coiled up when some one doesn't agree with what your saying :^) Relax dude!
Ken is nobody to lose sleep over. Your right, I have no idea what you mean by his review has a control? JPEG is the end result but every camera handles the compression differently, but whatever. Don't take all of this so personal Gentoo. It's just a friendly discussion on a photography forum.Heartyfisher your quite right. KR requires a NO COMMENT ;^)
I use my cameras as pinholes every now and then.Jazz Hands Everybody!
Posted 3 years ago # -
1 - 10 years from now you'll be able to open your .nef raw files.
2 - If you're worried about that (and don't believe me) convert them today to .dng, an open (ie fully documented) format with great support from the OSS community.
3 - .nef might not be officially documented, but has been reverse-engineered and while I have see no documentation on the format, the source code for any of the OSS projects which successfully open it are documentation enough for those who know what they are doing (ie the software devs).
4 - While many of the OSS implementations are lagging behind, they are eventually catching up. Adobe's closed-source parser appears feature-complete through AT LEAST the D300 at the current time, and that's why I mentioned #2.Posted 3 years ago #
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