Prologue

I have been writing this article on and off for the last 2 and a half months.  If it wasn’t for Google’s writely.com, it would have taken probably a lot longer.  I originally started writing this article using iWork Pages on a lowly 12″ Powerbook.  I would say 70% of the article was written in the span of 2 days.  I decided not to finish it because I felt that I had to spend more time to really understand the camera so I can certainly brag about knowing the camera I’m reviewing than the average gadget freak.  But as time has passed, I have been lazy in documenting what I have learned about the D200, mainly because most of the time whenever I feel like updating my notes, I don’t have my Powerbook with me, and by the time I already have my PB to write it down, it’s either I have forgotten all about it or a re-run of Family Guy is on TV. 

Now with the launch of writely, whenever I have of a spur of energy writing this crap of an article, I just log on to writely.com from any computer…and voila!  It’s updated.   I also published this article though its built-in support for blog publishing. Now that’s a huge endorsement for writely.com.  I wish I can get paid for that.

All photos here are mine.  Unless you have the intention of selling them (why?!), chances are, I will let you use them if you ask nicely.

Introduction

 

 

  

I will not even remotely pretend that this is a professional-level review.  As the title implies, this is another opinion about the D200.  What I don’t want to get are comments regarding how WRONG I am about my opinions (seriously, that would be retarded).  Also, as this is one man’s opinion, I won’t try to evangelize that what I think should be worshipped by the readers…unlike some other reviewers who think they are so up there with their ego…but I’m digressing.  If you think you can handle it, move on and read it.  Otherwise, I suggest you stick with re-reading Popular Photography Magazine’s D200 review.

What is the D200?

It is a digital SLR that is positioned to be marketed as notch below Nikon’s flagship D2 series and above the popular D70s.  It’s not “full-frame.”  It’s not the same size as a 35mm.  People who whine about Nikon not going “full-frame” should either choke or grow up.  I cannot see how anyone should be limited by the the size difference between APS and 35mm.  If anything, we should be glad that Nikon stuck with the DX format, making the camera cheaper.  There’s a huge gap between prices of APS and 35mm sensors; I believe this will be the case for a very long time.

It’s made in Thailand.  Yes, I admit I have a beef against any electronics not coming from Japan.  Those who say that it doesn’t bother them are hypocrites; if you ask them that if they have two D200s with one made from Japan and one made in Thailand and the one made in Japan is $50 more expensive, I guarantee they will pick the one made in Japan.  I have nothing against Thailand or any country for that matter.  But for electronics, I always have a peace of mind when it says “Made in Japan.”  Sue me.

Auto-Focus

 

When I switched from Nikon (F5) to Canon (10D) to buy my first digital SLR, I somewhat felt that I downgraded.  While it is true that 10D’s auto-focus is more silent (and perhaps faster, though i never actually measured the difference), I was surprised at how large those auto-focus points are–so large you can’t really tell where those large “points” are focused on.  I was also surprised at how unusable the focus points are other than the center focus point.  I was so irritated by such inaccuracy that I just left the focus point on the center all the time.

Now you’re probably asking what D200 has offered to the table as far as auto-focus technology is concerned.  While I haven’t really measured how fast it is, I can fairly say that it is fast enough for my use; I usually shoot portraits and occasional landscapes so an even faster auto-focus is an overkill for my application.  One thing that I did notice about the D200 is how accurate the auto-focus is. It is more apparent with the use of split-focusing screens like the Haoda Fu  screen.  The D200 also features fancy grouping of auto-focus points which I’m not that all excited about.  It may be useful for sports and wildlife shooters, but not for somebody like me whose quickest subject is a 2-year old toddler who ate too much candy. 

There are two things that kind of disappointed me about the D200 autofocus: First, there’s only one cross-type AF sensor.  I would have been more excited about the new D200’s AF if it had more cross-type AF sensors rather than adding more sensors that are either vertical or horizontal (I guess that’s one reason the D2 series cameras are more expensive).  Second, that white-light AF assist lamp that can practically cause seizure when being used in low light.  I was wondering how much Nikon would have cost them to stick with IR assist lamp…probably not much.

Image Quality

Intro Rant

I don’t like this megapixel race being held by camera manufacturers.  I, for one, cannot imagine going through 25 megapixel images on an APS/35mm sensor when just a couple of years ago 6 megapixels was touted as the holy grail of 35mm sensors. It’s not the resolution that cameras should improve, really: it’s the dynamic range.  Where’s my C-41 (Color Negative Film) equivalent?  As of today the norm dynamic range for DLSRs is akin to slide film.  While it addresses the contrast range in most shooting situations, it would be really nice if our RAW files has given us the leniency to shoot a few more stops of error room, especially when shooting a contrasty subject. 

Good news is Fuji S3 has began to address this issue although it isn’t perfect yet.  Rumors has it that Canon has been preparing their next-generation CMOS that can handle a wider dynamic range for a few years now.   I sure hope that Nikon is following the same path.

Attack of the “Pixel Nazis”

Yes, I have coined the (probably the most politically-incorrect) term “pixel nazi.”  I own it.  I will punch anyone who claims otherwise.  It’s much more cynical and politically-incorrect than the lame-o term “pixel peeper.”   BTW, I know who created that term but I’m not even gonna mention his name.  Eat my shorts.

(Damn it.  If I published this article a month earlier I could easily have made this claim) 

As you can see here, Comparing the photos between the 10D and the D200, the D200 is capable of pulling more details. 

The following photos were shot with the same lighting conditions, on a tripod and were exposed to the same settings as dictated by a light meter.

(Click on the image to see the original file)

Canon 10D

 
Nikon D200

 Nikon D200And comparing a section of the images

Canon 10D

 
D200

This isn’t exactly the best example.  Nonetheless, this should show that with the right lens and proper technique, the D200 should provide the best images suitable for most applications.

“OMG! LOOK AT TEH NOISE! LOL!!!”

I am going to say something that will make a Nikon fanboy’s head explode:  The D200 is NOISIER than the Canon 10D, a three-year old technology.  What’s worse?  The D200 is less tolerant to underexposure than the 10D.  That said, I have no problem with noise in the current generation.  No, really.  I mean, the noise that exists among images in ISO400 and above is a far cry from the ISO400 of  film cameras which is all I need.  ISO800 is great and useable and all, but I really don’t use it that often to warrant any complaints.  Again, this is me we’re talking about.  Your mileage may vary.

The noise samples below show that I’m not making these up.  I used SilkyPix to convert the images from RAW to TIFF and used Photoshop to convert it to JPGs.  In all shots I used 50/1.4 (with respective brands) and auto white-balance.

Sample 1: Plant by the Window, ISO800

Canon 10D

Nikon D200

Sample 2: Cereal Dispenser, ISO800

Canon 10D

Nikon D200

Sample 3: Bamboo Plant, ISO800

Canon 10D

Nikon D200

Sample 4: Black cap, ISO800

Canon 10D

Nikon D200

Sample 5: Casual shot, ISO1600

Canon 10D

Nikon D200

You’ll probably notice in this last shot…Nikon rendered the image with a pink cast.  More on this on the next section.

White Balance, Saturation, Et Cetera

This is the feature that kind of took me a long while to understand.  Let me dabble on this a little bit.  While I don’t understand it fully yet, this is what I know: I’m sure you’ve read a million times already, “Nikon Digital is a LOT better than Brand X when it comes to skin tones.”  In my opinion, is rather stupefying to make general statements like that.  Remember during the film days, you’ll hear/read about this equivalent: “Fuji Velvia is awful for skin tones.”  I said it’s dumb to make general statements like that if you’re not saying what kind of skin tones we are talking about.  For Fuji Velvia, it’s bad for light skin, but it’s delicious for dark skin.  This is the same for claims Nikon Digital.  What skin tones are we talking about here?  Here are the problems I see: Especially for brown skin, for me the D200 is just AWFUL in its default settings; it is too biased to magenta.   Second, the default saturation (Normal) is too saturated, and the Color Mode I (which is supposedly “optimized” for skin tones) just adds more saturation.  So how did i go around this?  I set the color settings to AdobeRGB, and set the saturation to Moderate.  This, I believe, is more faithful to the original colors of the subject. 
The other thing that irks me about this color rendition is white balance.  The D200 has inconsistent white balance for indoor shots even if the lighting condition has not changed!  Why is this happening?  Worse, there is also a strange shift to magenta (magenta should be the official color of Nikon) when you underexpose for indoor shots.  I hate this the most.  Look at these photos. 

   

In this series (only 3 were shown but there were about 20 of them), these were shot indoors: every freaking one of them are PINK.  Again, in this regard, the 10D seem to perform better and more consistent.  If Nikon is going to release a firmware upgrade, this has to be addressed.  It’s very annoying.

User Interface

I’ve been reading some generalized comments and written reviews about how nicely designed Nikon DSLR user interfaces are.  I mean, not to put it so bluntly, but I sincerely believe that whoever thinks that must be smoking crack–at least as far as D200 UI design is concerned.
I have a fairly quick rule of thumb on judging how good or bad a User Interface is: If I need to look at the manual to check out what a button does at least twice, that user interface is awful in my book.  Guess how the D200 UI fared?  Let me make a rundown:

• What is up with that CF door?  I struggled for a whole 5 minutes before figuring out how to open the CF door.  That little lever on the lower right with that small pac-man symbol opens it.  You open this door a LOT.  Seriously, I have very little faith on this door design being to able to withstand normal usage.

• Image information.  How on earth would one know that you need to push UP on the D-Pad in order to display the shooting info and/or histogram?  You know what other cameras have, Nikon?  an INFO button.  Or a label to indicate that pressing up brings up shooting information

• Do you know what “Optimize Image” means?  Neither do I, but apparently for Nikon it’s menu section that enables the user to change image settings like Sharpness, Saturation and Contrast.

• Image Playback Zooming.  Get this: In order to zoom, you need to press “Enter” then hold the zoom button plus the function wheel.  Tell me, does that sound intuitive to you?

 

 

• “What the hell does that button do?”  OK, this button releases the lens, the other one is a DOF preview button…and this, uh, what does this thing do?  Apparently it’s multi-function button, defaulting to FEL in shooting mode.  Why on earth did Nikon put it there?  Confuse users out of spite?  There is NO way you can figure out what the button does without opening the manual.

Look, I’m not saying the Nikon D200 interface is unuseable.  But let’s get real, it’s not the best out there.  You want to know what a good camera user interface is?  Check out the Ricoh GR-D.  Actually, I’d go out on a limb that the Canon 10D has a better user interface.  Don’t go out celebrating, just yet, Cannon Trekkies.  We’re not even halfway through the review yet.  And again, this is just me.  What do I know?

RAW Conversion

No matter what Nikon fanboy tells you about how cheap the Nikon DSLRs compared to its Canon counterpart, two facts still remain:

• You need to spend at least another $100 to buy a decent RAW converter. 
• There isn’t an existing *decent* RAW converter that doesn’t require short of a supercomputer.

The first one irritates me the most.  Canon provides THREE FREE converters; even the professional-level converter is FREE.  Charging $100+ for that dog-slow Nikon Capture software is Nikon’s way of showing what arrogant bastards they are.  As for the second one, let’s get real for one moment: only 3 relatively-affordable RAW converters out there that is capable of converting the NEF images of your cats and ugly children.  And those three are Bibble, SilkyPix and Nikon Capture.  Period.  Not Adobe Camera Raw.  Not Capture One. I tested them all (except that overpriced Aperture). All of them suck at converting NEFs except for the aformentioned three.  I don’t have the energy nor the bandwidth to justify why this is so.  This is not the focus (pun) of the review, anyway.  If you don’t agree you always have the option to get bent.

Et Cetera…

What is up with the File Counter?

With the Canon 10D, by default the file counter just increments by one per image taken regardless of whether you switch cards–regardless of whether you deleted or re-formatted the card.  It doesn’t reset the counter unless you change the camera’s default configuration.  Even better, the camera creates a new folder in the card every 100 images.  With the Nikon…umm…by default, it resets the counter per new card…and it resets again when you format the card.  This gets very annoying when transferring images from the CF card to your computer (read: duplicate file names).  As of this writing I am not sure when exactly the camera creates a new folder–I think it’s every 1000 images.  That’s too many images in one folder.

“It’s the lens lineup, stoopid.”

I’m quite surprised that nary a review out there has ever mentioned about the huge advantage of Nikon over Canon as far as lens line-up is concerned.  I know what you’re thinking “Nikon having a HUGE advantage?  Are you nuts?”  Of course, I am…but I will explain to you why I’m right, anyway.

When gadget whores (who call themselves “photographers”) talk about lens lineup, they usually talk about the current ones with the latest whiz-bang thingamagigs including image-stabilization and silent-wave motors and advanced coatings and all that technology that makes lenses uber-expensive.  Think about those current fast prime 300mm lenses being offered by Nikon or Canon.    If you’re an average 9-to-5 Joe, do you ever think you’ll be able to afford one of those?  You need to spend at least $800 for a used, beat-up 300mm f4.0 lens.  Yeah, sure, you can get one of those above US$1K (after selling one of your kids and/or both kidneys on eBay) and convince yourself that you’ll be a better photographer by having one of those manly lenses, but why do so when there’s an alternative?  

Prior to the current age of auto-focus and silent-wave motors and vibration-reduction lenses, the great selection of Nikon’s equally great AI and AIS manual-focus lenses. 

I can already hear laughter.

If you quickly browse eBay for “Nikkor AIS” lenses, you will be surprised on how affordable these lenses are compared to the auto-focus counterparts.  You can find a Nikkor 300mm prime lens for less than $200.   Better believe it.

(As of this moment, at least 25% of Canon users reading this review has put up their equipment for sale/auction.)

Wait, Canon users must be thinking, “Well, we can also use those lenses using an adapter!  We even have stop-down metering!  Take that!”  Not so fast, buddy.  This is the part what I like about Nikon D200 (Sorry, D70 and D50 users, your mojo don’t have this feature): full backwards-compatibility.  With Nikon AI/AIS lenses, not only is it mountable without having to buy an overpriced adapter, you also get the following features:  Matrix metering (refer to p. 174 of the manual).  You are not limited to center-weighted or spot-metering.  Of course, this is not the latest and greatest 3D matrix metering, but for 90% of your use, this “regular” matrix metering is enough.  Moreover, Lens focal length and aperture is recorded on the image EXIF.  For P-type manual focus lenses (like the 45/2.8P), you don’t have to do anything, you can even use the thumbwheel to change the aperture.  For Non-CPU (AI/AIS) lenses: embedded in the D200 menus is “Non-CPU Lenses.”  You can designate the focal length and the maximum aperture of the lens.  After setting, as you move the aperture ring (no, you can’t use the thumbwheel to change aperture), the aperture information is reflected on the viewfinder.  Of course, this is painful when using zoom lenses (especially variable-aperture ones), since you need to set it again as the focal length and/or maximum aperture changes, but it’s better than having “f0.0” as the recorded aperture on your EXIF.  Flash behaviour for SB800 and SB600 (and built-in flash) is adjusted accordingly.  You don’t have to set the flash zoom manually if you have P-type lens or if you programmed the lens information onto the camera.  Is that cool or what?
(As of this moment, there is an additional 1% Canon users has switched to Nikon.  The rest could care less because their 1Ds’s are always in Program mode and could not fathom the idea of using Aperture-priority let alone manual-focus lenses.)

What about third party lenses?  Please.  Call me a first-party lens snob.  I don’t care.  There’s a reason I am; I’ve had a share of those brands of lenses, and I’ve had issues ranging from build quality to lens flare and color casts.  Yes, this includes the Sigma/Tamron/Tokina lenses.  The only exception to the case is the latest Carl-Zeiss ZF line of lenses.

Flash Technology

Nikon’s flash technology involves pre-flashes to determine the reflectance of the subject along with the distance (with D-designated lenses) AND the existing ambient lighting is taken into account so D200 can control the amount of light its flash sould emit.  Nikon calls this “i-TTL.”  The technology has matured enough that it also works with multiple flashes.  It works very well fill-flash and in conditions where there’s a lot of ambient lighting, and having this ability to do this with multiple flashes is just icing on the cake.  Speaking of multiple flashes, there’s a setting in the D200 that enables the built-in flash to trigger an external SB-800 or SB-600 flash in TTL mode; in manual flash mode, you still need the cable and/or wireless flash trigger accessories (surprise! surprise!)

Even with that almost foolproof technology, there are instances that regular TTL works equally well or at times even better, especially when you’re working with one flash and the flash is the only source of light.  Knowing when to use the i-TTL and regular TTL is still valuable, as the latest and greatest technology cannot read what’s inside your head about how you would want to expose the image, just like in ambient-light metering.

 

 

In this photo an SB800 (with orange gel, triggered by wireless iTTL) is behind the subject, the main light is the D200’s built-in flash. 

Did I Miss Something?

It’s quite difficult for me to cover every feature and faults of the camera, especially when I don’t care for let alone use them. 

I have also didn’t write about the controversial issues, like the so-called “banding issues” with the camera, which only appears in very extremely contrasty images, and you don’t see it until you blow up the image to 100% in Photoshop.  For one, I have not encountered it.  Even if I did, it really wouldn’t bother me at all; the condition where this banding occurs is a shooting condition I very rarely deal with.  Second, I don’t crop my images in a way that those banding would even come up in web sites or prints.

Conclusion

 

  

I’ve listed a lot of complaints regarding the D200, but don’t get me wrong: There’s no doubt that the Nikon D200 is probably the most capable camera with the best price-to-feature ratio.  The 10.1 megapixel sensor with the ability to record images at high ISOs can satisfy even the most demanding photographers.  The only thing I can find faulty with the image quality is the inconsistent indoor white balance and the severe color shift with underexposed images.

All in all, the image quality, unequalled flash and metering technology coupled with backwards compatibility are, to me, the selling points of the camera–and the selling point of the Nikon system as a whole.

 

 

Who Am I And Why You Should Ignore Me

I don’t consider myself a great photographer; I don’t even consider myself as a good one.  That said, I have a better knowledge than most snapshooters who own thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment and yet they always have their camera in “P” mode, and for that reason alone I believe I am qualified to provide technical insights about camera equipment.

I am so tired of hearing from photography snobs who keep blabbing that “it’s the photographer and not the equipment who makes the image.”  Really, if you’re one of these hypocrites, get off my site.  I have several words for you: You cannot create the images that you have without your ultra-expensive gear.  Don’t compare yourself to a painter who doesn’t need expensive brushes and paints to create a masterpiece; it’s a bad analogy–and you know it.  If you’re really that great of a photographer, why do you have those expensive gear in the first place, hmm?  Why not just purchase a digital point and shoot and go take award-winning images (instead of hanging out on dpreview.com forums)?  Look, don’t be an arrogant SOB.  You tell people that maaaybe 98% of the image is the photographer, 2% is equipment…but don’t say you did it all yourself. 

That little rant has nothing to do with who I am, but I just thought I should mention that because there’s nowhere else more appropriate to do it.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 11:35 am and is filed under Photography, Reviews, Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.