Fuji vs. Nikon, who's right?

[belgiumreporter]

When i recently visited parai daiza, a very special zoo in the south of Belgium i wanted to travel light camera wise.

In my bag where the nikon P600 for the extra zoom reach and the fuji X10 for image quality and low light performance.

The test came in the "crypt",  a sub terrain part of an old monastry that's used as a home for all sorts of bats.

It's rather spectacular because the bats fly around freely whithin this confined space and very skillfully fly around you whithin millimeters.

Now about the cameras, both where on aperture priority,matrix metering, but as you can see in the pics they both got their own ideas of how to interprete a scene with extreme lighting conditions.

The fuji gave me 1/6th of a second @ f2 ISO3200 (image stabilisation working very hard!) while the Nikon thought 1/15th @ f3.3 ISO 6400 might be a good idea.

The nikon was closest to how it actually looked in the crypt, very very dark !

While the fuji gave an image that was nowhere of what i saw, but one could argue it is better as it was capable of showing more than the human eye could see in near darkness.

Still glad i took both cameras, now i can choose wich pic i like the best. Do let me know what you think.

PS. i most likely would have gotten better results full manual, but hey, it was a holiday trip so i took the laid back approach.



What the fuji "saw"







What the nikon "saw"

[hansz]

Get rid of the Fuji, or copy the Nikon values over!
(or use a Gossen handheld meter to light things out.... - this textballoon should be circled with a lot of flowers:-)
Hans

[SidW]

I definitely prefer the shadows of the Nikon picture. The Fuji scene has too much burnt out, too much white paper. They weren't taken from the same spot or same focal length, which has also made the Nikon image a much more successful picture. It usually helps to ask the questions first and then shoot, but I think you know that already, judging by many you have shown us. Were these auto exposures? I've always preferred aperture priority.

[julio1fer]

+1 for the Nikon shot, tones are much better, and I'd rather have noise than movement. IS has its limits, too.

[belgiumreporter]

Jun 22, 2016 17:44:11 GMT -5 SidW said:

I definitely prefer the shadows of the Nikon picture. The Fuji scene has too much burnt out, too much white paper. They weren't taken from the same spot or same focal length, which has also made the Nikon image a much more successful picture. It usually helps to ask the questions first and then shoot, but I think you know that already, judging by many you have shown us. Were these auto exposures? I've always preferred aperture priority.

The fuji was @ 29 mm, the nikon 24mm, so yes i took them with diffrent focal lenghts, all the other settings were the same for both cameras.
Aperture priority and let the camera take care of the rest. I' m going back on monday, maybe i'll try some other cameras, my wife loves the crypt and the bats she won't mind me spending some time there.

here she is watching the bats fly by ( made with the fuji)

[mickeyobe]

The Fuji captured everything except that small unimportant piece of sky. One may darken the picture to any degree desired for mood. It exposed for the shadows which is correct for film.

The Nikon tried to grab everything and consequently lost most of the detail in the shadows that can never be recovered.

Do you remember that old film user's saying "Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights."? There was usually some recoverable detail in the highlights.

The opposite is true for digital. What does not show in the highlights is gone forever but there is a great deal of detail in the darkest shadows that is just waiting to be illuminated.

[daveh]

Well I haven't posted for some time: I always seem to be doing something else.

Several points occur to me:
1. the Nikon at 24mm seems to show less than the Fuji at 28mm. Closer examination reveals that the photos weren't taken from the same place (as Sid pointed out).

2. With the above in mind, I wonder how the Fuji would have coped in the Nikon position and vice versa.

3. The Fuji has, I believe, a wide dynamic range mode (as well the HDR mode, which I presume both have). Was the use of this considered?

4. The Fuji photograph looks considerably "cleaner", but even with the image stabilisation there seems to be some shake. (The second photo is considerably sharper.

4. Highlights are burned out more on the Fuji, that is obvious to see. Does it not have a method to adjust exposure with the auto setting? If so and overexposure is a constant problem just set the exposure a stop or so down. Even leave it on permanently: as Mickey says shadows can be recovered, burnt out highlights can't

5. The Fuji appears to have more detail in the shadows than the Nikon. That detail can be seen, because of longer exposure but I'm not sure that the detail is there in the Nikon.

6. Were these RAW or JPGs?

7. Bats. I sat by a safari lodge swimming pool in Kenya at dusk twenty four years ago and filmed (well, videoed) the bats as they flew, as you say, within millimeters of me and the camera. (It was a Panasonic Palmcorder. More recent camcorders give significantly better results, and what's great compared to film is that it is easy to get sound and picture, and with both in perfect sync, even after editing.)

[camfiend]

I find something better for shooting bats is a 12 gauge.. they arrive in their thousands to eat berries from the line of trees in front of my house and when frightened (constantly) regurgitate as they take off, that stuff eats the paint from cars as quick as look at them... apart from that they stink... not one of my favourite critters

Bob

[belgiumreporter]

Went back with some heavier gear, nikon D3 with 20mm 1:1.8 1/25th 12.800 ISO handheld ( no image stabilisation in this combo) developed from RAW.

[hansz]

Quality counts!

[maisie]

thanks, this is very useful information! I can't wait to be able to use it in practice.

fixthephoto.com/corporate-video-editing