Now I got the opportunity to take my new camera for a test drive. I didn’t have a lot of time, but I managed to find some situations where I could test different aspects of their performance.
I need to keep in mind, that I am still shooting with a DX (APS-C) lens on a full frame sensor, so i utilize only about 2/3 of the sensor area. But anyhow, there are some interesting observations. For each image, I will compare the camera generated JPG with the RAW file as I would have worked with it as well as with the original RAW file.
Distant, well lit object where lightning should be evenly distributed
This is the way I developed the image from the RAW file. as you can see in the histogram, light is evenly distributed, with a bit of overhead on the light side.
As you can see in the lower, the camera JPG processing is very neutral using the standard parameters as expected on a Nikon. These can of course be tweaked in camera, but should they? For me each image is unique and even though there are some commonalities as to which parameters I change in the RAW processing, usually there are several that differ.
As you can see in the upper picture, for a subject like this, I want to lift the blue in the sky and the lake, as well as add to the contrast. In the example above this results in a quite dare stair leading to the entrance. Looking at the histogram reveals that there had been some room to increase exposure slightly. Let’s look at another example.
B&W shot with very light and very dark areas
This is an image I really wanted to see as a monochrome image. The background is quite dark and two of the gravestones are in direct sunlight. As you can see in the histogram, the majority is in the darker third, but there is a slight overexposure visible
I won’t compare the JPEG to the neutral RAW, since it is almost the same. Very neutral RAW processing again. But let’s have a look at the original RAW and the processed RAW
Here, I removed the color in a neutral way. I had considered an equivalent of a red filter, to darken the gren gras, but decided for a neutral perspective. Contrast was increased slightly as well as a slight raise of the gamma curve.
As with the former subject, I can see that in cases where I want to utilize light and dark, I may need to keep the histogram in perspective. The first picture could have gotten batter with EV -1 to increase its exposure, while the latter could have improved with EV +0.5 or +1 to avoid overexposure of the areas in direct sunlight. I think that is a valuable insight and I will try to use that in my next pictures. And now to the final image.
A close up with limited depth of field
Again, this is the way I want to see this picture and it differs a bit from the original RAW or JPEG. These are again similar and I wont compare those. Very neutral processing by Nikon again.
As you can see in the histogram, the original image is more on the darker side, with an even spread across the colors. A very different distribution as compared with the first image.
Restarting Photography 