Nikon D800 Rumours

D.P. · 4 Oct 2011 at 13:09

While Nikonrumours.com is not always very accurate they are often correct and are better than average. Moreover, when they say 99% they have rarely been wrong.

http://nikonrumors.com/2011/10/03/t...-the-sensor-will-be-36mp-99-probability.aspx/

If it is 36MP then there is a 99% chance I wont be buying it. But I personally rate this rumor closer to 1% in reliability

AHarvey · 4 Oct 2011 at 13:21

I won't hold my breath.

You could post any random **** online about it and it would get passed around.

Think i'll just wait until Nikon come out with it, and they had better bleedin hurry!

D.P. · 4 Oct 2011 at 13:24

AHarvey said:
I won't hold my breath.

You could post any random **** online about it and it would get passed around.

Think i'll just wait until Nikon come out with it, and they had better bleedin hurry!

As I said, NikonRumours provides a little bit of filtering, and has a few contacts, they usually have full specs of cameras and lenses weeks and even months before release. But sometimes they issue rubbish.

The key will be if others substantiate the rumour. Thom Higan often lets out snippets of info.

An Exception · 4 Oct 2011 at 13:27

Just the absence of a AA filter will make a big difference, it will effectively add 30% more resolution to the 36mp's.
From the MP count it should have a similar ISO as the D7K, but once the image is resized it will actually be allot better.
However I actually heard another rumour, that Nikon will have a high ISO mode, where it will allow 4 pixels to effectively become 1 large pixel, making this a 9 mega pixel camera, and because it doesn't have an AA filter, it will effectively have the same res as the D700.

Raymond Lin · 4 Oct 2011 at 13:33

how can the D800 have higher res than a D3s? not by a little bit, but by 50%?

It has 300% more pixels than the D700 !

An Exception · 4 Oct 2011 at 13:57

You mean D3x?

Well they are probably building the sensor in a similar way they built the D3x, i.e. high pixel density at the expense of ISO.
But hopefully the rumour about a high ISO mode turns out true, and if not, ISO won't be so bad once you have down-sampled the image, although I would prefer something like 24mp and great ISO/Dynamic range.

D.P. · 4 Oct 2011 at 14:26

Raymond Lin said:
how can the D800 have higher res than a D3s? not by a little bit, but by 50%?

It has 300% more pixels than the D700 !

The D3s Will be replaced soon as well. Besides which the D3s is aimed at sports, PJ, natural light, wedding, wildlife, etc. where high ISo performance is more important than MP. The D3x is aimed at landscape, studio, still life, macro etc. that can benefit from increased resolution and where a tripod or proper lighting is used. The D3x is 24MP.

The D800 may follow the D3x successor (D4x) rather than the D3s successor (D4).

As to the how, it could be a scaled up D7K sensor which is 16MP and has a Dynamic range of 14 stops.

I would have much preferred an 18MP sensor, perhaps i will need to invest in the D4.

monkeypants · 7 Oct 2011 at 21:02

I'm not convinced by these rumours of binning to improve sensitivity, combining 4 pixels into one doesn't increase the amount of light detail they pick up, it just makes a bigger area with the same light detail in it.
18MP would have been a much better pixel count, or 24 with improved sensitivity.

D.P. · 8 Oct 2011 at 08:11

monkeypants said:
I'm not convinced by these rumours of binning to improve sensitivity, combining 4 pixels into one doesn't increase the amount of light detail they pick up, it just makes a bigger area with the same light detail in it.
18MP would have been a much better pixel count, or 24 with improved sensitivity.

Pixel binning does work, combining 4 pixels will quadruples the signal to noise ratio and increase the noise performance by 2 stops.

monkeypants · 10 Oct 2011 at 19:16

Ahh, I see. I'm still to be convinced but I'm certainly excited to see what it brings.

D.P. · 10 Oct 2011 at 19:32

monkeypants said:
Ahh, I see. I'm still to be convinced but I'm certainly excited to see what it brings.

Try with your own photos, take a photo at a relatively high ISO, then downsample so it is 2 or 4 times smaller. Compare it and the original at 100% (obviously the down-sampled is smaller). You will find much less noise.

A simple way visualize it is to image simply taking a mean of a set of sample values. E.g. if there is something you measure which should give you the value of 100, but you record 80,110,90,120 - taking an average of these 4 will give you 100. If you were recording an area of image that should have a red (or green or blue) value of 100 then down sampling the image containing lots of noisy values will remove the variance.

bigredshark · 10 Oct 2011 at 20:26

Curious, it kinda looks like a D3x replacement on spec. There's no way you'd buy a D3x if that was out (particularly given it's price).

The D4 is vaguely talked about as 18MP and better than D3s ISO performance which makes sense. But this looks a strange move commercially for Nikon, the D4x will likely be a while coming (the D3x took more than a year after the D3) and it'll have to be much better than the D800 to demand it's inevitable price premium. So they've killed sales of the hyper expensive D3x in favour of a £2000 prosumer body. Bizarre.

It also trashes frame rate performance compared to the D700, which will hurt a lot of amateurs. You could shoot sports or wildlife with a D700 really well with it's high speed and decent ISO performance, when it was released it was pretty special, while this wouldn't be worse it wouldn't be the improvement those guys were hoping for either. Maybe hoping to push up D3s/D4 sales?

What is does do is really aggressively hurts hasselblad and phase 1 - 36MP for (probably) £2000-2500? That's painful for the medium format guys when it comes to landscapes and studio work. You could buy a D800 and a full set of glass for the price of a 40MP phase 1 back.

Of course maybe the missing piece of the puzzle is a 'D9000' sometime next year to bring full frame down to £1500 or so with an old D700/D3s sensor and D7000 feature set.

Who knows though, interesting thoughts either way.

monkeypants · 10 Oct 2011 at 20:51

I think the D4 (any variants) will be different from the D800. What Nikon don't want to do is repeat the D3/D700 scenario where they were giving away the top of the line pro sensor in a cheaper body thus losing out on D3 sales.

I suspect there will be two D4 variants in time, one with a high resolution (maybe higher than 36mp) and one with a faster frame rate and better ISO performance than the D800. If they make the D800 too similar to the true pro bodies they're shooting themselves in their collective feet again as most pros will go for the cheaper body. It's a balancing act, the D800 has to be good enough for serious amateurs but not so good it's good enough for specialised professionals.

The thing that worries me now is this: http://mansurovs.com/nikon-d7000-review/5. With the D800 having the same pixel density as the D7000, will the crops look the same as here in comparison to the D700?

bigredshark · 10 Oct 2011 at 21:13

monkeypants said:
I think the D4 (any variants) will be different from the D800. What Nikon don't want to do is repeat the D3/D700 scenario where they were giving away the top of the line pro sensor in a cheaper body thus losing out on D3 sales.

Actually I think they don't regret that at all, it was massively successful for them, it's not like they did it by accident last time round. When they put the same sensor, same AF, same metering etc from the D3 in the D700 they didn't accidentally overlook the fact it would steal sales, nobody running a company that size is that stupid.

And all told they sold a lots of D3 bodies anyway, which was a given as it was faster with a few nice pro features (dual cards, better battery etc). It was probably a master stroke for Nikon because it saved them masses on developing a new sensor or AF or anything much for the D700 (it was a D300 with D3 sensor at the end of the day).

This is slightly irrelevant though, the D700 came after the D3. The D800 looks like being before the D4 and the D4 will not have the same sensor anyway, you can't do 10fps at 36MP and the D4 will need to do 10fps.

Nikon's strategy is different here is the rumours are true. They would mean they've made a 5DII killer for landscapes and studio work and thrown a bit of a shot at the medium format guys too.

An Exception · 11 Oct 2011 at 02:14

monkeypants said:
The thing that worries me now is this: http://mansurovs.com/nikon-d7000-review/5. With the D800 having the same pixel density as the D7000, will the crops look the same as here in comparison to the D700?

Probably, but then you would need to take into account the approx. 60% difference in linear dimensions (D800 60% taller and wider), and how the file will look once viewed at a similar file size to the D700.

Tooks · 11 Oct 2011 at 09:46

bigredshark said:
Actually I think they don't regret that at all, it was massively successful for them, it's not like they did it by accident last time round. When they put the same sensor, same AF, same metering etc from the D3 in the D700 they didn't accidentally overlook the fact it would steal sales, nobody running a company that size is that stupid.

And all told they sold a lots of D3 bodies anyway, which was a given as it was faster with a few nice pro features (dual cards, better battery etc). It was probably a master stroke for Nikon because it saved them masses on developing a new sensor or AF or anything much for the D700 (it was a D300 with D3 sensor at the end of the day).

This is slightly irrelevant though, the D700 came after the D3. The D800 looks like being before the D4 and the D4 will not have the same sensor anyway, you can't do 10fps at 36MP and the D4 will need to do 10fps.

Nikon's strategy is different here is the rumours are true. They would mean they've made a 5DII killer for landscapes and studio work and thrown a bit of a shot at the medium format guys too.

Totally agree with this.

The D700 was a major success for Nikon, and as long as they turn a healthy profit on each body, why would they care if it's stealing sales from the D3? If you think of the D700 as a Canon 5d rival, rather than a D3 competitor, it makes more sense.

The D3 was a lower volume product, and with extra features arguably unimportant to D700 buyers, but considered essential for Pro's who at the end of the day were the target market for the D3.

It will certainly be interesting to see what any D800 ends up with features/sensor wise, and how many of the above rumours turn out to be true!

D.P. · 11 Oct 2011 at 10:15

Tooks said:
Totally agree with this.

The D700 was a major success for Nikon, and as long as they turn a healthy profit on each body, why would they care if it's stealing sales from the D3? If you think of the D700 as a Canon 5d rival, rather than a D3 competitor, it makes more sense.

The D3 was a lower volume product, and with extra features arguably unimportant to D700 buyers, but considered essential for Pro's who at the end of the day were the target market for the D3.

It will certainly be interesting to see what any D800 ends up with features/sensor wise, and how many of the above rumours turn out to be true!

I agree.

This attitude that the D700 took sales from D3/s is unfounded and mostly arises from Canon 5DMKII owners who claim if canon made the 5DMKII have the same features as the 1dsMKII then sales would be lost.

The sales figures and profits of the Nikon D700 and D3 shows this not to be the case at all.

Pro photogs will still buy the pro top end body. The only case where sales might be lost is a Pro might buy a D700 as a backup rather than having 2 D3 bodies. But this is probably counteracted by the fact that some people wouldn't have afforded 2 D3 cameras but could afford a D3 + D700, and some that do a lot of landscape owning a D3x decide to add a D700 for weddings etc. Let alone all the prosumers buying the D700

D.P. · 11 Oct 2011 at 10:43

As for the D800 itself, not sure what to make of 36MP. I would have preferred something in the 18MP range, and accepted 24MP. However, down-sampling back to 9-18MP will resolve most of the issues of having too high a pixel density and in the end will give you a choice of high resolution for landscape work and lower res, better noise for wildlife or natural light etc. This comes at a cost of much slower frame rates which is is a bummer for many.

I can see why Nikon might go this route. The 5dMKIII will probably have 32MP in order to make a noticeable increase in linear resolution form the 21MP. Although Nikon openly states that they prefer a balance between resolution, dynamic range, and noise characteristics, they get forced to play the MP race that Sony and Canon fight for. Too many uninformed internet photographers harping on about the 5DMKII's 21MP being "so much better" than the 12MP D700 and other such useless and irrelevant rubbish may push Nikon to aim to exceed the 5DMKIIIs estimated resolution. Which would be a real shame for Nikon photographers.

Still, a 36MP sensor with modern technology when downsampled to 12MP should still outperform the D700 and may be slightly better than the D3s.

The problem is though that even my Nikon 24-70 2.8 will not really have sufficient resolving power (it barely keeps up with the 24MP D3x), and this is the best wide-to-normal pro zoom there is. The only lenses to get to these kind of resolution will be the new 24/35/85mm primes stopped down to 5.6, which is a BS aperture. Beyond f/8 and diffraction has stolen all the resolution, so even for landscape photographers this doesn't make so much sense.

The only caveat is that if they do have a body without the AA filter which may be achievable with this resolution (basically since there wont be a lens good enough to resolve the sensor, the lens will become the AA filter and block high frequencies) then the total recorded resolution may be significantly more than say the D3x (but still no where near 36MP).

The other thing is the rumor may be some confusion over a new sensor technology. Nikon has several patents for alternatives to the Bayer filter, some like Sigmas technique of sampling all R G and B values at each photodiode/pixel which could mean a 12MP sensor that can resolve colour information at 36MP. They also have patents for Fuji style sensor with a high and low sensitivity photodiode at each pixel site but with interesting arrangements for RGB values. There are also interesting results in near-IR integration in colour photography, which can massively increase the effective resolution and reduce effects of haze.
There is also technology that shifts a bayer type filter 1 pixel distance 3 times during an exposure, allowing each pixel site to record both R G and B information.

Bluelion · 11 Oct 2011 at 20:25

Lets just put things into perspective though, and talk pixel densities.

The Canon 7D has 18Mp, on Canon's APS-C format sensor, and people appear to produce pretty decent images with it.

Feel free to correct my maths, but I think this is:

Canon APS-C = 22.2 x 14.8mm = 329mm^^2

Full Frame = 36x24mm = 864mm^^2

Canon 7d = 5184 x 3456 ~= 18 Mp

Average pixel density: (5184 x 3456) / 329 = 54456 pixels/mm^^2

Upsizing to full frame = 54456 x 864 = 47Mp

So a full-frame 36Mp is significantly less than the 7D. Personally, if they can produce the sensor, it has reasonable high ISO qualities, I don't have a problem with the pixel count. I'll just have to buy a few more hard-drives to save the images on

monkeypants · 11 Oct 2011 at 20:39

It's true that people take very good pictures with even the most basic of kit but if you check the link I posted above, you can see a very noticable quality difference between the low density D700 and the high density D7000. As an aside, my P100 has an equivalent pixel density to 188MP on APS-C!

If anyone has a D50 and the ability to take a similar picture to the one in the test, it'd be good to see if there's a difference. If I'm correct, the only difference should be caused by the in-camera processing of the sensor data.

Suitable lenses may be hard to come by, if I were to buy one (not that I have £3k to spend on a camera) I'd get a 24-120 f4 with it but that struggles on a D3x so whether you'll be able to get a good matching lens for less than £1k is a bit up in the air imo.