Digital talk          Nikon D2X samples and comparison with D1X          © Mill House

 

by Fred Kamphues

 
March 17, 2005 - Today I attended the Nikon D2X Introduction Day, organised by Inca BV in The Netherlands. I was able to shoot under various conditions, both indoor and outdoor. There were a lot of other photographers, alle eager to try the new D2X, so there wasn't an awful lot of time to try various camera settings. I only tested at the lowest ISO values (100 and 125), which are important for my type of photography.

The resolution of the D2X has increased substantially with respect to the D1X (12.2 vs 5.9 effective MPixels, or 43% more resolution), so I brought a D1X for direct comparison. I've used the (interpolated) 10 MPixel output mode of the D1X for the 100% crop samples below.

The first noticable difference with the D1X is the huge 2.5" display. This enables proper viewing and zooming of the image and allows more room for data display (e.g. a histogram of all three colour channels).

There have been several useful additions made to the menu, the most noticable a history menu with the last 8 settings that have been changed on the camera. This allows quick restorage of the old settings, without having to scroll through the whole menu.

I will not discuss the various differences and improvements of the D2X in this article, but just concentrate on the output: the images itself. I have posted two full scale images (right and below). Please note that they have been compressed quite heavily to save website bandwidth. The original NEF files do not show the JPG artefacts.

 

 

 

Nikon D2X

 

click on the image to open full size sample

(compressed JPG)

 

Inca BV enabled us to shoot both outdoors and indoors. The light conditions outdoors were very poor (fully overcast), so the images look a bit dull (the car is grey, which doesn't help either). Nevertheless, it was a good opportunity to experience the D2X and the AFS VR 300 f/2.8. I also made a couple of shots with a AFS 80-200 on both the D2X and D1X for direct comparison.

The amount of visible detail on the D2X images is quite astonishing and is the most noticable improvement over the D1X.

Dynamic range has also clearly improved, with smooth transitions in the highlights and more than adequate visible detail in the dark areas.

The new 4-channel parallel processing of the D2X allows for a fast frame rate of 5 fps (compared to 3 fps for the D1X). The large buffer takes 15 RAW files (compared to 6 for the standard D1X) and write times have been drastically reduced (the D1X is very slow, even with the latest CF cards). This makes the D2X a very good action camera. If 5 fps is not fast enough, the D2X can be used in a special 6 MPixel cropped mode which enables shooting at 8 fps.

 
Indoors it was possible to shoot various subjects in a studio setup. I am mostly an outdoor photographer, more at home in a Land Rover in a remote desert, but sometimes I shoot indoor product shots as well.

I do not want to discuss colour settings, printer profiles and skin tones here (there simply wasn't enough time to properly setup the cameras and test all these parameters), but mostly show some examples of the increased resolution over the D1X.

There is a full size (compressed JPG) sample on the right and several D2X/D1X samples below.

 

I should post a note of warning here: I shoot exlusively in RAW mode. This allows better control of white balance and other exposure parameters in post processing. And while working with 6 MPixel RAW files isn't particularly fast, the step to 12 MPixel RAW files significantly increases the post processing time.

I have made some measurements of opening RAW files on a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB of RAM:

Nikon Capture:             D1X RAW files: 7 s          D2X RAW files: 14 s

Nikon View:                 D1X RAW files: 4 s          D2X RAW files: 1.5 s

        (yes only one point five, a huge difference with the D1X files!)

Adobe Photoshop CS:    D1X RAW files: 10 s         D2X RAW files: 24 s

It is clear that working with 12 MPixel RAW files requires lots of processing power and lots and lots of storage memory (although D2X compressed RAW files are ca. 10 MB, compared to ca. 8 MB for the uncompressed D1X RAW files).

 

click on the image to open full size sample

(compressed JPG)

 
 

D2X samples:

 

 D1X samples:

Nikon D2X + AFS 80-200 f/2.8

 

Nikon D1X + AFS 80-200 f/2.8

 

100 % crop (D2X):

 

 

100 % crop (D1X):

 

Nikon D2X + AFS 80-200 f/2.8

 

Nikon D1X + AFS 80-200 f/2.8

 

100 % crop (D2X):

 

100 % crop (D1X):

 

Nikon D2X + AF 60 Micro

 

Nikon D1X + AF 60 Micro

 
100 % crop (D2X):

 

 100 % crop (D1X):

 

Nikon D2X + AF 60 Micro

click on the image for a 100% crop

 

Nikon D1X + AF 60 Micro

click on the image for a 100% crop

 
 

Conclusions

 
A short test like this, is certainly not enough to fully evaluate and compare the performance of the new Nikon D2X (I'll leave that to Phil Askey on DPReview.com), but it was a good occasion to obtain a first impression of this camera.

I must say, I was more impressed than anticipated. The extra resolution is quite significant and will definitely show up in large prints.

There is also clearly an increased dynamic range, which gives a better reproduction of the highlights.

Colour reproduction seems to be more accurate as well. The red butterfly wasn't as red as the D1X image is showing. The D2X image is much more accurate. Also note the correct white background, which is more blueish in the D1X image.

The extra frame speed and faster in camera processing, combined with a much larger buffer than the standard D1X, is extremely useful, especially if you do a lot of action shots like the one on the right.

 

A lot of other aspects of the D1X have been improved as well. Probably the most important feature is the introduction of a Li-ion battery with a much improved battery life, which was the achilles heel of the D1X.

One word of concern: the large D2X NEF files are slow to process and Nikon Capture 4.2 is very memory hungry. A RAM upgrade to 2 GB is highly recommended. And anything with less processing power than a 2 GHz Pentium 4 is pretty much useless (3 GHz or more is recommended).

The D2X is certainly high on my list of equipment to buy. Unfortunately this list is very long and includes some very expensive lenses as well...

 

Fred Kamphues

 
Digital talk

 

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