Derrel
Mr. Rain Cloud
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2009
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- USA
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- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos OK to edit
The D2X is the oldest pro-dslr that would even approach the image quality of your d5100, and it would still lose. Although if someone offered me both cameras, I'd probably take the D2x.
The D2H and d1x aren't worth the $$, but the D1h can be fun for the $$ (seen them sell for as little as $125). Don't let the low MP of the d1h fool you, it uses far less aggressive interpolation then most other DSLRS and hence it's comparable to 5-6mp alternatives. The D1h also has acceptable iso performance--better then my d200, but not as good as a d300 or d5100. Just make sure you get a new battery with it. Of course your d5100 will blow it away in almost every area besides build quality/weather proofing.
Can you explain this in more depth?
Don't let the low MP of the d1h fool you, it uses far less aggressive interpolation then most other DSLRS and hence it's comparable to 5-6mp alternatives.
One thing is this: a few years ago, Nikon itself released some information on the D1h, stating that it used a sensor with 10 MILLION pixels...not 4.1 MP, but 10 million pixels, in the camera, and that is one reason the pixels are of such good quality. I am not confused about the up-sampling of 5.4 MP files from the D1x to create eventual 10 megapixel image files; this is a HARDWARE feature (sensor) in the D1h that Nikon revealed several years after the camera was made obsolete!!
The article is still somewhere on-line in Nikon's morass of web articles.
Secondly: "large pixels" act like "large buckets" when collecting the rain that is a photo stream...with the technology available when the D1h was made, the camera's electronics and its sensor were pretty much state-of-the-art for 35mm style CCD sensors. By using 10 million pixels and "binning" the data, Nikon devised a way to make the D1h's nominal 4.1 megapixel images actually quite good for their time! Why Nikon elected to reveal this information only well into the D2x era possibly has to do with the very ingrained idea that the final image output size is the way "megpixel count" was, and still is, determined; it's possible that Nikon did NOT wish to be thought of as using a low-MP count sensor and then using software-based interpolation to up-rezz the images, the way Fuji was doing with the S1 pro and S2 pro cameras, and the way Bibble Labs figured out to do with the D1x and its 5.4MP sensor...
Or maybe Nikon did not wish to publicly come out and say, "We've been using 10 million data points in the D1h" and binning (evaluating and combining) the pixels to make a killer 4.1 MP sensor...that would not have been a good idea to trumpet that publicly, until well,well after the technology was passe.
Let's put it this way: D1h files, shot in RAW uncompressed NEF mode, with proper white balance and proper exposure are VERY easy to work with, and at the per-pixel level, are very good. D1h files compare very favorably with any 6MP APS-C camera that I have seen.