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April 26, 2006
The Nikon D200: Initial Impressions
I was fortunate enough to receive for testing a brand new Nikon D200. Right out of the box, the camera feels more like a professional camera than the D70; I’m not sure if it is the rubberized coverings, but the camera doesn’t feel plastic. The other thing you notice right away is the weight; the camera weighs considerably more than a D70. If anything, the weight of the D200 is closer to that of the D2X.
If you’re familiar with Nikon’s D2-series of camera, then getting started with the D200 will be a snap. It’s controls and custom function menus are similar to the rest of the D2-series.
The viewfinder differs from the D2-series in that Nikon has eliminated the information display from the right of the viewfinder, and now all information is displayed along the bottom of the viewfinder or via head’s up display icons that appear on the image area itself. I turned on the camera without a memory card inserted, and an icon started flashing in the viewfinder just below and to the left of the focus marks. Nikon has made an interesting change with the focus spots in the viewfinder; instead of brackets appearing constantly, the focus spots appear as small circles except for the selected spot, which appears as a bracket. The eyepiece is larger than the D70’s but not as large as the D2X. The viewfinder did exhibit a strange behavior that I personally would find annoying: when the camera’s AF was on, a red glow appeared in the viewfinder. Unfortunately, the glow wasn’t limited to a focus spot (in the way that the D2X will flash briefly to highlight the focus spot selected); the glow appeared across all of the focus spots and more.
The placement of the memory card slot is different, as is the orientation of the card. With the other Nikon digitals, the card goes into the back of the camera with the top of the card facing to the right. As oriented, the D200’s card slot loads the memory cards with the top of the card facing the back of the camera. The addition of the lock for the slot cover is nice, although the cover is somewhat awkwardly placed. Unless you have long fingers, you’re probably not going to be able to continue holding the camera by its grip and at the same time load a card into the slot.
Nikon claims that the D200 is capable of five frames per second. While the rate of firing is greater than that of the D70, it seems somewhat slower than the D2X’s 5.3 frames per second. The built-in flash on the D200 extends higher than the flash on the D70; however, it is still not high enough to permit the use of the 17-55 without the lens hood casting a noticeable shadow on the images.
The ISO settings for the D200 range from 100 to 1600 in the expected increments (and unlike the D2X, it has a 1250 setting). Unlike the D2X, there are three high ISO settings being third-stop increments from 1600 to 3200.
With the default noise reduction, images at 1600 appear generally clean. However, shadow areas are still a problem, and result in very noticeable noise.
The D200 seems to use a new set of white balance and noise reduction algorithms, and these produce results noticeably different from what the D2X produces. To produce the test shots below, I used a 300/2.8 on the D200 and D2X. Exposure was 1/60th at f/2.8 at ISO 1600. The default noise reduction settings and auto white balance settings were used on both cameras. Given the low light, I was not surprised that the D200 had difficulty focusing; however, I was surprised at how much faster the D2X’s focusing was under the same conditions, and the D2X had no difficulty focusing.
In the test shots below, the results from the D200 have a noticeable color cast. Sure, this is easy enough to correct with curves, but in comparison, the D2X image needs less correction. The more interesting difference seems to be in the noise reduction feature; the algorithm used by the D200 results in a slight softening of detail. The 100% crops below are without correction or sharpening.
Sample Images
Figure 1: A cropped D2X image.
Figure 2: A cropped D200 image.
100% Views
These are 2" x 1.5" crops of the images above, and at full size (clicking on the image will open a window with the full size image) they are 100% views.
Figure 3: D2X 100% crop; click on iamge to view 100%
Figure 4: D200 100% crop; click on image to view 100%
Posted by slewis at April 26, 2006 1:33 PM
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