[sb in ak]

I recently purchased the D600 to replace my 5DII setup as I've been getting more into landscape photography and it's hard to beat the Sony sensors. Kind of feeling under the weather this morning so I decided to work on a little shootout. I also wanted to see how the K5 classic stacked up. This was a somewhat unscientific shootout, so take these with a grain of salt. The idea was to get a general idea though. But feel free to rip this apart

I shot them all with rough 50mm equivalents from a few feet away. All with same settings: ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/8 sec. from a tripod w/ timer. Auto WB & centerpoint AF. No noise reduction or sharpening in post.

5DII w/ EF 50mm 1.4
D600 w/ Nikkor 50 1.8G
K5 w/ DA 35mm Macro Ltd

First, uncropped shots. No uprezzing here...just to get a general idea. Stupidly, the 5DII shows up in the other shots. But like I said, this is more for generalities.

5DII:


D600:


K5: Something seems off w/ white balance/exposure here:


Then I did some some shots underexposing by two stops (raising the shutter speed to 1/30 on all cameras) then lifting the exposure by 2 stops in LR (no noise reduction). I then uprezzed the 5DII and K5 (resample using "best for enlargement" to the D600 res. and cropped 100%.

5DII:


D600:


K5:



A few thoughts. Unsurprisingly, much better background bokeh on the D600 and 5DII in the uncropped versions (they are FF after all and the 35Macro is not known for great bokeh at that distance). The bokeh is the best on the D600/50 1.8 I think. The white balance/underexposed issue doesn't work any favors for the K5, but if I spent the time to fix it in post I'm sure the image would look just fine. Overall, I think I like the D600 shot the most here.

Crops: As far as sharpness goes, the 5D wins here, oddly. I kind of wonder if the D600 may be just slightly OOF or perhaps the 50 1.8G needs to be stopped down a little more to reach a sweet spot. The 5DII is much noisier as that sensor lacks the DR of the other two cameras in this 2-stop exposure push. If I pushed this even further the 5DII would get worse. From my experience in the field, it doesn't take much for the 5DII files to start going to crap. The sharpness on the K5 is remarkably close to the D600 with a slight edge to the later (again making me wonder if the D600/ 50 1.8 needs a slight AF adjustment or something). Those extra 8MP should be doing something...the D600 is a little less noisy though.

To be honest though, all images deliver the goods. I'd say the law of diminishing returns is definitely present here, but the new Sony Exmors are definitely killing Canon in DR. And clearly and unsurprisingly, FFs deliver thiner depth of field.

At least as far as image quality goes, the K5 is a great value IMO at the current price point and sports a more robust body than the other two (D600 being the loser there, though the 5D is oddly cheapo in a few spots like the mode dial).

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Last edited by sb in ak; 12-05-2012 at 03:57 PM.

[normhead]

I look at those images and think I can live with any of them, Which is the same thing I thought with my own comparison. Thanks for posting... I'm still trying to wrap my head around this stuff. I'm also impressed you actually have photos that show the difference in bokeh. People can say it's better with an FF camera but without seeing photos to show the difference it's hard to understand what that might mean to you in real terms. It's great to have some image evidence to chew over.

[sb in ak]

I should also mention that all of these were shot in RAW and not tinkered with in any way other than the resampling for the crops.

[sb in ak]

I look at those images and think I can live with any of them, Which is the same thing I thought with my own comparison. Thanks for posting... I'm still trying to wrap my head around this stuff. I'm also impressed you actually have photos that show the difference in bokeh. People can say it's better with an FF camera but without seeing photos to show the difference it's hard to understand what that might mean to you in real terms. It's great to have some image evidence to chew over.

Thanks. Though I'm sure I did a few things "wrong" in the tests, the idea was to get a general view and none of them were shocking or unsurprising differences. Things were a little unfair for the K5 as I think those shots are underexposed, but I wanted to keep all of the settings the same (should I have increased the shutterspeed here?) Though I will say that the Exmors are pretty revolutionary compared to Canon's offerings, especially when shooting high DR scenes outside. The 5DII is a little old as far as modern cameras go at this point, but I really don't think the 6D is going to perform much better/worse. Of course, this is talking pure image quality and not handling, AF, etc.

I think I will be parting with the 5DII soon and be using the D600/K5 combo with the later as my WR bad weather camera.

[jogiba]

I look at those images and think I can live with any of them, Which is the same thing I thought with my own comparison. Thanks for posting... I'm still trying to wrap my head around this stuff. I'm also impressed you actually have photos that show the difference in bokeh. People can say it's better with an FF camera but without seeing photos to show the difference it's hard to understand what that might mean to you in real terms. It's great to have some image evidence to chew over.

Vimeo

[dylansalt]

Then of course there's the little OMD E M5 that redefines what a smaller sensor can achieve and can easily reproduce (IQ wise) what my D7000 can and thus the K5 and by your investigations even the D600!

Taken off DPREVIEW



OMD-M5 - a set on Flickr

[JinDesu]

I do think white balance makes a little bit of difference - if not quantifiably, then more aesthetically when looking at the shots for comparison.

[sb in ak]

Should I have increased the exposure time for the K5? I wanted all of the settings to match, and while the scene metered correctly for the FFs, but the K5 wanted a little more exposure time.

I've seen some great shots from the Olys. It would have been interesting to see how it performed in these tests. My guess is not too far off, though it would need even more light than the K5 and the DOF at 5.6 would be even wider. There are certainly advantages to the bigger sensors but it does become a game of diminishing returns.

[Rupert]

My K5 underexposes, it just does. Not a problem as long as you know how much to correct when shooting, and the very liberal ability to adjust the Raw file makes it a non issue. Otherwise, the results are as good as I could expect from any camera out there, or better. WB is also a little tricky, but again, if you have the Raw file, it is not a problem.

I have people ask me what is the best camera, this happens quite often. With all the makers turning out fine cameras, I always say the same thing, the best camera is the one you have with you.

Regards & thanks for that little test.......if you had any one of those cameras with you, you would be a happy shooter!

[KungPOW]

to sb in ak,

Did you happen to try to see at what aperture the 35 ltd needs to be set to in order to create the same amount of background blur as seen with the 50mm's on the FF bodies?

Thanks.

[sb in ak]

to sb in ak,

Did you happen to try to see at what aperture the 35 ltd needs to be set to in order to create the same amount of background blur as seen with the 50mm's on the FF bodies?

Thanks.

I didn't....at the time I actually wasn't concerned with the bokeh (and later I noticed that it was sort of a good test for that). The main goal was stopping down the lenses for good performance. From that distance, the 35 Macro bokeh usually isn't very good (though it does get nice and creamy when actually shooting macros), so a better test would be using the FA 35 or something. If I had one!

[normhead]

The one test I did, I shot the same thing with a 35 and 50 , from the same distance, the DoF on the 35 was 12mm and the DoF on the 50 was 12... the reason the bokeh came out pretty much even was that the shot I wanted was closer to the flower than the 50 would focus. Framed properly with the 35 you were 5 inches closer and had pretty much the same bokeh. Those are the kinds of things that make these kinds of discussions so pointless. You wold never here that kind of situation mentioned anywhere in the theoretical discussions on this board, but you get out in the field and it's pretty much standard practice. You do the best you can with what you got, and it doesn't always go down the way you think it should, because of some factor your theory didn't anticipate.

[sb in ak]

I'm not following you exactly but I think I agree

[wildman]

After looking at these shots my feeling is - any difference that makes no difference (or, at least, a real world practical difference) is no difference.

[sb in ak]

When I have the chance and we have a nicer day here, I'd like to go shoot a landscape scene to test them (that is my primary use). Stay tuned.