Nikon refund on d3100 to d90/d5000 opinions?

well....

I took the 3100 into the shop (proper photography shop - not a jessops or curry's etc), they like many said it's a brilliant camera etc... I then said I wasn't happy at all and that pro's had described the camera and photos as 'naff'.

I took 3 photos on auto mode, 2 indoors and 1 outdoors on the d3100 and the d90.... (using the same kit lens from the d3100)

the results were massively different... the colour reproduction on the d90 was excellent, the 3100 was really off and looked washed out.

the 3100 took a photo and at 100% size on screen most of the image was looking 'upscaled' and text on some boxes in the background was unreadable (not from camera shake or VR) and the d90 - every letter could be read a lot clearer and the colours were accurate... the shop fully agreed that the d3100 was not producing decent results but said that the vast majority of the public would be happy as they don't really look into things as much....

i'm swapping the 3100 for the d90 tomorrow, it will be well worth it and make me a lot happier!
 
the shadow said:
the 3100 screen has Lower-resolution 230,000 dots not 920,000 like the D90
Click to expand...

Exactly, please for the love of god dont compare on the LCD alone.
And again - stop using the camera in Auto >.<
Without actually testing, i wouldn't be shocked if a Sony NEX series camera out-performed low end DSLR's on auto.

edit

As for the cols being washed out, i've heard before (A friend had this happen to him with his 5d MKII) when he got his camera from the store, someone who had been playing with it had screwed so many settings / picture settings up and changed all the default presets that it took him hours to get it taking pics like he wanted.
No offence intended, its clear your on the lower end of the scale in terms of DSLR usage and understanding, is it not possible that someone in store changed the camera to use a custom image profile with no sharpening, bad colour settings etc.
 
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i may not have been clear enough.... i'd never use the LCD screen, i meant a calibrated computer monitor within the shop with photoshop etc installed.....

i DONT use camera in auto mode but it was a good quick way of comparing identical shots on different cameras.... I have a good understanding of the functions of a camera, i'm just not up to speed in applying the knowledge into my photo's yet....

another main point of my inititial point is that my g/f uses the camera (she will never ever want to know anything other than auto mode) so i needed something that takes good pics in auto mode.... the d3100 was crap....the d90 is hugely improved!

I'll have to be clear also, i've had other people use the camera and look at the photos to eliminate the fact it may be my own usage...
simon cowell can't play instruments or sing (by own admission) but he knows what works and what's good, I may not be anything but beginner user but I know what things should look like at the end... lol.

I've played with many options but as standard in aperture priority mode the d3100 always over exposed, the images were never very sharp and very smoothed out, at 100% the images were very noisy - at the lowest (and manual) iso - 100, taken outdoors on sunny days... I have tried, the bottom line is that the d3100 just couldn't cut it!
 
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As has already been said, the d3100 is a perfectly capable camera. Something is/was up with your camera or lens if all other variables have been eliminated. You've taken the camera back which would be the right choice in this case. Enjoy the d90 it's a nice camera :)
 
Hey guys, I'm Dan's brother...

I shoot pentax myself, but often use D80's and D90's from uni, aswell as using 5D and phase one at uni (I'm on VFX, not photography, I just use my flatmate as a means to get kit ;) ) I've been helping Dan recently on his new venture . . . by helping I mean recieving phonecalls all day :P

I went out with Dan for a day's shooting around durham and washington when I was last home, and we swapped cameras at a few points in the day. I didnt want to say anything at the time as it was a fair chunk of cash, but honestly it was just lacklustre. The menus felt childish, there was a distinct lack of dedicated buttons and switches, and other menu features; to be honest the images it was producing were just not right. compared to my camera, and the cameras I use around uni It's shooting and handling was more akin to a compact or bridge than a DSLR.

[edit] I knew Dan was questioning the quality of the images before we went out, so I went through every setting with a fine toothed comb - nothing was out of place. The offer to go out with him was because I was thinking the same thing - the error was occuring with the guy stood behind the camera; which turned out not to be the case.

I understand that the D3100 with a kit lens is by no means a professional camera, and I've already drilled that into Dan, but really you would expect such a new model to be able to compete with quite a lot of dated bodies. I've also been over the importance of decent glass over and over, he knows this - he's sick of me telling him.

It just didn't seem right to me. The images it was producing almost looked interpolated, compressed (yes shooting raw) it's difficult to describe, and I'm sure a lot of the shots have been trashed by now, but at the end of the day I though if I had bought that camera as an upgrade to my nearly 4 year old pentax I'd be disapointed; which sounds silly, i know, as it's a brand new camera.

I'm sure you can get some lovely results from it, and some of the images were not too bad but to me they looked just a little bit too digital, lacked detail, washed out and far too noisy for what they were.

A lot of this is the sensor really, it's obviously more of a budget sensor, yet with a large pixel count; pixel pitch will be tiny (or will it...?...), so noise will be greater. Some images, as I said before just looked interpolated, as if the sensor is not shooting natively at its claimed size (a probelm I come across time and time again with video cameras)

Everyone who owns this camera seems to rave about it, but honestly, unless they have just never used anything else I can only assume that this one was faulty, or that people are just happy with new equipment on principal because it's new and presume it's the way it should be. It's nice to have an imparcial look at something you have not shelled out for yourself :)

Enjoy the D90 Dan, it's going to serve you well. I'll go over more stuff after the 25th!!

Rick
 
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The fact of the matter is, the D3100 is an entry level camera with a brand new top of the line sensor (for entry level camera,s obviously not a FX sensor etc).

This means the controls and ergonomics are much like all the other entry level camera, Canon 1000D etc, and are very basic. The interface is meant to be made for people that have little or no idea about photography and the camera is set up to be helpful for beginners. AFAIK, it even has teaching modules etc in the menu.

Secondly, the image quality is good if not better than any other camera in the price point and will happily take photos as good if not better than older £1000 models.
Every review has shown this to be true.


The Sensor of the D3100 has very low noise and very high tested resolution. There is no interpolation or anything like that going on.

So this comes back to the point: Either the camera is broken, the lens is broken, or the technique is wrong.

Now swapping to a D90 will give a much better camera with better ergonomics, but the plain image quality can only be worse on a D90 than a D3100, or at least to visibly different. The D90 still takes excellent photos and was the leader in its class (now the D7000 is the leader in its class).
So Dan should be able to make great photos with a new D90 , but this doesn't mean all D3100s have problems. They don't. A littler over 10 years ago people would have paid over $50,000 for a camera that could take such photos


EDIT: What you may be noticing is the fact that 14MP is a very high pixel density. This mean diffraction effects are much more noticeable and the sensor is extra picky about what lens perform well.
E.g, on a D80 you could use f/16 and not really notice diffraction. The D3100 will show diffraction from f/11. You also have to bear in mind that the theoretical limit for green light and f/11 is around 7MP for an APS-C sensor, the sensor resolution beyond this is simply oversampling and helping to reduce effects of the color filter. The actual image data wont increase much beyond around 7MP. This is why the camera with 6-8MP performed so well, and the jump to 12MP-18Mp is not doubling any visible resolution.
What everyone is noticing is lenses like the kit 18-55 are out resolved by the sensor, yet on the older 6-8MP sensors this lens was considered very sharp. With the new 16M D700, lenses which were thought to be outstandingly sharp for their money, 18-105 and were good enough for the D90, now are noticeably softer than the 16-85 or 17-55 2.8

The effects of this will be to make images at 100% look softer and less detailed. Maybe this is why you think the sensor resolution was interpolated. Get a 50mm 1.8 prime, stop down to f/4 and take a photo, then you can start to see the true sensor resolution.

Otherwise don't look at 100% screen views, only prints, or down-sample to 6MP and view at 100%.
 
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ahhh, at last...

Photos that actually look good, on the D90!! it even feels like a camera, I know as mentioned earlier i'm a total beginner BUT I know what the end product should look like and knew instantly that the d3100 just wasn't that clever (for whatever reason) anyway, D90 is now in hand and i'm going to the local camera club tonight so thanks for all the posts, see you in the next thread
 
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