Andrew Reid

Dynamic range is also determined by the grade and how tolerant you are to noisy shadows, weird colour and iffy highlight roll off. I would take a LOOK over a NUMBER any day.

There's no link. One is somebody with his own blog, who gets to choose who he reads daily on the forum, and if it's bullshit he reads daily, he gets bored and fed up of it and then chooses to delete said bullshit and the person responsible The other is a film director with free-speech, who made appalling jokes on Twitter 10 years ago, in the guise of an Troma-style provocative act, then is witch-hunted 10 years later by a right-wing conspiracy theorist who raped his wife, and whom gets a man of good character and great talent sacked unfairly.

Go off and make your own forum, then you can ban or re-admit whoever you like. I wouldn't really call the entire cast signing a letter calling for his re-instatement, the court of internet opinion.

I was offered a test recently but didn't have the time. Could put you in touch? Only problem is I think the distributor are based in Berlin.

It does look like the knee-jerk reactionary "House of Mouse" execs will have to eat their words. He has broad public support as well. Pretty much 90% of the internet seems to want Gunn reinstated, with a lot of high profile sites running positive articles about him and the vast majority of the Reddit comments being along the lines of positive support, not of his tasteless jokes, but of the man himself. Which makes the vastly more angry and negative response on the EOSHD forums even more hard to comprehend.

I own both cameras and in the real world the D850 4k is the better looking - Fewer instances of moire patterns in full frame 4K pixel binned mode - A bit more fine detail on the D850 4K pixel binned mode - Both have similarly perfect S35 4K from oversampling 5K crop - Thicker files on D850, higher bitrate codec - Better colour on D850 Both have some aliasing in the full frame 4K mode. The DPR chart you point to doesn't really prove whatever your point is... The D850 shows some advantages on there as well. It's only the purple false colour on the extremes of the chart you might be picking up on as a weakness but since you don't say, it's hard to know. In those places on the chart the A7R III is showing extreme aliasing, moire patterns and garbled details. The fine text is also more natural looking on the Nikon output and the instances of moire are fewer.

This is why smartphone cameras should use a square sensor. Then no matter which way you hold the damn thing, it can do landscape 16:9 video with same horizontal field of view. Phones are easier to hold in portrait so you can't blame the general public for using them that way round

Raw is a box ticking excersise on the C200 to make it appear powerful than it actually is. In fact raw probably gets more use with students, artists, enthusiasts and Magic Lantern users than it does in professional film and television. C200 is clearly an FS5 competitor for low-end rental market and obviously crippled to make sure film and TV go for the C700 or C300 II. Makes no sense for Canon to sell a lower-profit-margin camera to these people. That is why the Ursa Mini Pro is far closer a competitor to the Alexa than the FS5 or C200. It should be a lot more expensive than it actually is, and some of that technology is trickling down to the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K. That to me is a much more interesting strategy to keep an eye on than what is going on at Canon, which is enough to give anybody narcolepsy. The one advantage of the C200, personally speaking, would be the very economical power requirements, small battery, low weight and of course Dual Pixel AF. I hope in future iterations, a camera appears between the Pocket and UMP from Blackmagic which has a low weight and C200 size battery, but all the benefits of the UMP form factor and features.

Haha. I hate both left and right extremes as well. Fed up of hearing their nonsense. We've had leftist new-age hippy conspiracy from JCS, and I had to let him go. We had right-wing conspiracies, and they are an even quicker way to get banned from any camera forum not just this one. I have a feeling a sub-forum makes things even worse, which is why LL had to close their coffee corner. There wasn't much coffee, but a lot of weirdos. Maybe we should keep the present situation, where the politics at least starts off filmmaking-related. Rather than actuals redneck threads one after the other.

You can go on contradicting the man who has visited the Nikon lab until you've worn yourself out and you need a lie down, but the fact is, you have never been to the lab, you have never been to a Sony factory and until you do, you will keep contradicting the facts in Dave's article until you're blue in the face. Your knowledge is mishmash of third-hand speculative nonsense sourced by reading rumors sites.

https://www.nikonprecision.com/products-and-technology/ 5nm.

What tends to be the fashion in 2018, is that people ignore the facts, and keep repeating their divine personal opinions like a religion, repeating their personal mantra again and again until they are blue in the face and the discussion about the facts is long dead. I think our culture has gone seriously wrong. And what qualifies you to have insider knowledge about the process to that degree of detail? You're coming up with this stuff, from literally a speculative nowhere.

Camera fanboys are as bad as Trump fanatics.

@MdB Go look at the D850 4K in full frame, A7R III and let me know what you see there as well!

The facts are pretty clear to me! Fact is Nikon can design their OWN sensor independent of Sony. Toshiba were making Nikon's custom D5300 sensor at an independent fab before being bought by Sony, and this was another design that outperformed what Sony was doing at the time. Nikon can go to Samsung and have a custom sensor mass-produced that is unique on the market. They don't absolutely need Sony and it is not a case of just packaging up a Sony sensor, tweaking this or that...like @MdB is claiming. So you have to give Nikon much more credit... That they don't own the building where the mass-production happens, doesn't mean anything. It's the same with ARM... And nobody denies there are ARM chips in our smartphones. Because there are established design rules and pixel architectures that everybody uses because they work well. I wouldn't say the 36MP K1 II chipset is anything like a Nikon D850 + Expeed so I think the premise of your point is kinda flawed. Unless the K1 II suddenly gains 10 megapixel and starts outputting 4K video, it's not "A LOT like a Nikon sensor" Apart from talking about a complex sensor like a cake, do you really understand the implications of changing such a fundamental sensor architecture? It's not a topping like some butter spread on a pancake. It is an architecture which has a knock-on effect on the de-bayering, image processing, micro lenses, and a whole lot more. So all that needs to be customized as well. CMOS sensors are fundamentally printed circuits and the machines in Sony's factories use photolithography to produce a wafer of chips https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photolithography Guess who is one of the dominant supplier of these machines... Yes, Nikon! As far back as 1984 they had a large chunk of the semiconductor lithography market. So not only do they design their own camera CMOS sensors, they make the machines for Sony's factory and others. So a custom design, printed by Nikon's own machines... And yet some people still can't except that it is a Nikon sensor, must be a Sony off-the-shelf cake with a Nikon topping of icing?! Currently market share of Nikon in lithography is 20%

You still did not read either article. So very, very annoying. Not in the flagship two models. Only in the lower-end cameras. They've also used Panasonic sensors. And so what? iPhones are designed by Apple, with custom silicon involving ARM and in-house Apple chip designers, but it ends up being made in a Chinese factory owned by Foxconn. Does that make it the Foxconn iPhone? That's your logic here Rob! It does not come down to your simplification at all. If you define a "Sony sensor" as being any sensor manufactured in a Sony fab, then that is just over-simplification and wrong. Yes they do. They also continue to develop their own next-generation organic sensor with Fujifilm. Again like Nikon they have custom designs and custom image pipeline, from readout to bespoke image processor. You think X-Trans is a Sony technology? Pentax does take off-the-shelf parts, yes. Only the CMOS models. The CCD sensors were not Sony. Yes but they have also used Fairchild, CMOSIS, all sorts. To be honest Rob I still don't see how your point applies to Nikon designing their own sensors. You've mentioned a lot of other manufacturers. So what?

Fair points, but I didn't say design was MORE important - it is critically important, not more or less. You can't have manufacturing without design and visa versa. Especially the kind of design and simulation Nikon revealed in the article. When you are designing at the level of an individual photon and atom, it makes a difference. Canon's process is less well documented. Over the past 10 years there has been less useful inside information about Canon's sensor design and manufacture capabilities as there was about Nikon in that ONE article. I know Canon recently invested billions in new chip making facilities in Taiwan, but they are not at the Samsung or Sony level, that's for sure. The machines that MAKE the machines, of course are important and Nikon make that technology to don't forget, the chip lithography side of the business is doing very well. Until this Imaging Resource article all we had were SONY logos printed on Nikon sensors, pictured on rumours sites so not exactly a world class insight. We are armed with quite a different set of facts now. And yes, although it is something of a staged PR piece, it is backed by substance - both the facts and evidence are there for all to see. BSI sensor technology is a capability of the Sony fabs that make Nikon sensors but is not exclusive to Sony, and if you are simulating chip manufacturing at the level of fine detail Nikon is (at atomic level) then you are arguably using a fab in-house, to prototype your own designs, which is almost as good as having your own manufacturing facilities in-house. Nikon's team clearly are on the cutting edge and differentiating their image quality from Sony. If Sony turn around and decide not to take on contract manufacturing for Nikon sensors any more, there are plenty of other factories... they are 10 a penny Samsung for one. Canon only just moved to a copper process from aluminum, and it is one of the reasons they have lagged in video on high resolution sensors, as the readout on an aluminum chip is slower - the chip runs hotter, due to the higher resistance of aluminum vs copper. The manufacturing is more difficult and cutting edge behind a copper CMOS circuit, and that in turn was why Samsung were able to do a 6K sensor readout on the NX1 way back in 2014, before Sony and before pretty much everyone. Next innovation to be widely used is Quad Bayer, I think. It allows 2 exposure sensitives in one pixel, so HDR on chip, essentially. That's design, not just manufacturing. Patents are key and Nikon's team have quite a few. Canon with Dual Pixel AF have more. Design is important guys.

As long as the different point of view isn't an obvious conspiracy, unethical, racist or just a blatant lie, there's no need to insult. Unfortunately... A lot of people's politics revolve around all 4 of the latter!

The D850 46MP sensor does outperform the latest Sony 42MP. It is a newer design, Sony has tweaked an old design for the latest A7R III and will presumably do a proper revamp in the next model. 1. Higher overall DXO Mark score. 2. I own both the A7R III and D850. The Nikon has the edge for dynamic range at low ISOs and superior resolution. In video mode, it produces a cleaner 4K full frame image from the sensor, with less moire, due to a superior readout. The design and manufacturing are both important. Yes, Sony and Samsung have the most cutting edge fabs, but since design is so important, Nikon can still differentiate on performance. Nikon have a history of their own in-house sensors with dramatically different performance and specs to Sony. The engineers and people are not '10 a penny' they are some of the most respected experts in the industry and very experienced. Starting with the D1X's CCD sensor way back, which used a Nikon bayer pattern with pixels larger vertically than horizontally. Then they produced JFET-LBCAST sensor type, different to both CCD and CMOS technology with the D2H. The D3X sensor outperformed the Sony rival at the time, also a 24MP full frame CMOS, in the A900. I own both the D3X and A900 and can confirm the difference. Mainly noise, especially readout noise. The D5 uses a radically different sensor than in any Sony camera. Regarding supposed sales of Nikon-designed sensors to Pentax (D800 36MP) and Fujifilm (D7200 sensor), these were not Nikon sensors. The Nikon sensors were the D500 (20MP APS-C) and D850. Canon also sometimes uses Sony off-the-shelf sensors, such as the 1" 20MP chip in the G7X. It is clear, reading these responses, that Nikon do need articles like Dave's as part of a PR push, as there are MANY misconceptions out there.

Oh dear. Is it ignore the articles and talk out of your ass day again?

So rare we go higher than 12,800. Especially at fast apertures.

How do you explain why the Nikon design out-performs the Sony from the same foundry then?

Dave Etchells has a background in chip science and finally had the very rare opportunity to visit Nikon's sensor design labs. It's long been the perception in the photographic and filmmaking community that Nikon leans heavily on Sony for off-the-shelf sensors and is handed down parts. It's led to opinions like "why would Sony give their best sensor to rival Nikon?" being quite common on camera sites and forums. The answer, in actual fact, is that Nikon can beat Sony at their own game, with the 46MP full frame sensor in the D850 proof of the pudding. It does better 4K video quality than the A7R III at a higher megapixel count and edges it for stills quality too. Now let's hear about some of the science behind it. Read the full article

Sony went through the same thing. Before the A7 they only had the NEX 7, etc.... with APS-C lenses. If Sony had stuck to the smaller sensor and not created the A7 series, where would they be now? Especially as the Canon and Nikon competition is about to hot up big time... You need to compete like-for-like. Panasonic, Olympus and even Fujifilm must do it...

It's a mixture of everything bad and good. Overall, it's a good thing but with a lot of issues and complexities. There are some great YouTubers I follow and some wonderful talent on it, but every one of those 3 poll options describe something about the site, so you can't sum it up by choosing just one.