The First Real World Nikon D600 ISO Test

The First Real World Nikon D600 ISO Test

I was planing on eventually buying a D600 but when I saw yesterday that they were “in stock” and ready to ship from Amazon, I bought one. I’m a Prime member so I get free 2 day shipping but for just $3.99 more they gave me over-night shipping. Patrick was over at my place packing for a wedding this weekend when the camera came in and we decided to quickly compare the cameras ISO performance to the D800.

nikon d600 iso test The First Real World Nikon D600 ISO Test

Let me first start off by saying that the D600 is significantly bigger than the D7000 (in a good way). It fits in my hand much better, but I am still looking forward to putting a battery grip on it. We put a Nikon 70-200mm 2.8 on a tripod and focused the camera in live view at F2.8. We then stopped the camera down to F5 and shot 4 shots with each camera from ISO 3200 up to “hi 2.0″ which is ISO 25,600. In our test both cameras performed almost identically, producing fantastic looking shots at ISO 12,800. Once we went up to “hi 2″ the noise became pretty severe but in many cases (especially black and white images) these files are still totally usable.

Full Res Nikon D600 Images:

Full Res Nikon D800 Images:

My biggest beef with the D600 so far is that you cannot change the Fstop while in live view. I shoot a bunch of video and that is going to be a big pain. The button layout and the rotating nob up top is also really cumbersome but I’ve learned to live with that since I’ve shot with D7000s for so long. I was hoping that the D600 would perform better at high ISOs since it has less megapixels but that doesn’t seem to be the case. What do you guys think about this cameras performance? Is it worth saving $900 and buying a D600 or should you pay a little more and get the D800?

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ithackermike
I love my D800. It has relegated my D300 to the 2nd string body in the bag. Now this D600 is begging to take its place… 2FFs w/o the “which lens to put on the DX/FX” choice would be awesome. If only I could get $500 for my gripped D300.
http://www.facebook.com/rol.hernandez Roland Hernandez
I’d love to see the difference in quality versus the D700. I love the D800 but the file size is just insane to deal with on a daily basis and the D4 is out of my budget so I am really looking forward to seeing what the D600 can do. If the D600 isn’t that much of an improvement then I’ll probably look into getting a D3s.
Patrick Hall
Thanks, I tried to bring my A game :)
Patrick Hall
Yeah it has manual controls in video mode. The only “live” control it lacks is aperture…you have to set the aperture and then hit live view unlike the D4 and D800 which let you change it live. Kind of a pain if you plan on shooting anything less than wide open
Patrick Hall
I don’t think any Nikon camera could survive that. Honestly I think the weather sealing should be fine…this camera feels much more like the D800 than the D7000. Maybe it’s in the middle, more like a D300s with the layout of the D7000. I don’t think I’d have a problem using the D600 in light rain.
Patrick Hall
yeah of course. I can’t give details right now but they are much smaller.
Patrick Hall
I’ll have to test the D600 AF this weekend at my first wedding with the new cameras. Honestly I found the D7000 to autofocus way faster than my old D700 I sold a while back. The D7000 seemed to snap in focus while the D700 gave me a lot of trouble at times (esp before that first firmware upgrade). I will say the D4 and D800 AF has been the best yet especially with the new Tamron 24-70 2.8 lens. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a faster focusing setup that those cameras with that lens (including my Nikkor 24-70s).
Patrick Hall
If either of us still had our D700s we’d love to test as well….trouble is finding a D700. That camera is about 4 years old now so I’m sure the D600 smokes it. Heck the D7000 looked pretty good for a DX camera.
Adrian Robles
I’d love to tag along for this Nikon D600 swim, haha!
If you look at the BTS video that Florian Schulz made, http://vimeo.com/49443048, he gave the D600 a nice workout in some tough conditions. Also, Corey Rich (http://news.coreyrich.com/2012/09/announcing-the-nikon-d600.html ) used it above 21,000 feet above sea level and neither photographer had issues with it. I’m excited to get my D600 on Tuesday.
vonwong
Tam ur such a nerd haha
http://tambnguyen.com/ Tam Nguyen Photography
Whoops, forgot to say QED after my proof :)
http://www.facebook.com/simon.b.munch Simon Bjakov Munch
love the website, just so i wont sound like an old fart.
thing is that the test is… not invalid…. “therycrafting” wrong. but usefully not correct.
since the D800 has much more MP’s than the D700 and D4 people often take the picture, and ZOOM in to….. 200-400%
the problem is that with the d800 you actuly zoom much more in, than with the d600, to see the same amount of pixels. if that make sense (im from Denmark so sorry if my english is abit bad)
lets say, that you take a picture of a car. (fill the frame) with the D600 you zoom in 300% and se the hole cardoor, with the D800 you zoom in and se only ~60% of the car door, so you are much more zoomed in.
to see a visual compare between the two cams, you need to make them not same size but to make the visual size or same Crop if that make sense?
but ceep up the god work im following you everyday.
Patrick Hall
knock on wood, out of the 10 DSLRs I’ve owned over the last 7 years I’ve never had a single one of them break or malfunction. I only wish I could say the same for my lenses!
http://www.facebook.com/lane.shurtleff Lane Shurtleff
Maybe I wasn’t clear, I need to know if after setting the shutter speed and aperture while in Manual mode. you can hold a button somewhere on the body and “lock” the dials from changing the exposure settings (f stop/shutter speed). Like the D3s and D4 does. I know the D800 does this too.
sasasa
no resolution is not just a pixel count.
it´s a common error by none technical people… but ask any engineer and he will tell you what “resolution” is.
resolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution
Note that the use of the word resolution here is a misnomer, though common. The term “display resolution” is usually used to mean pixel dimensions, the number of pixels in each dimension (e.g., 1920 × 1080), which does not tell anything about the resolution of the display on which the image is actually formed: resolution properly refers to the pixel density, the number of pixels per unit distance or area, not total number of pixels. In digital measurement, the display resolution would be given in pixels per inch. In analog measurement, if the screen is 10 inches high, then the horizontal resolution is measured across a square 10 inches wide. This is typically stated as “lines horizontal resolution, per picture height;”[1] for example, analog NTSC TVs can typically display about 340 lines of “per picture height” horizontal resolution from over-the-air sources, which is equivalent to about 440 total lines of actual picture information from left edge to right edge
sasasa
yeah well a misleaded nerd often…
sasasa
your wrong.. but hey… pat your own shoulder as much as you like.
sasasa
another proof you are wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_resolution
“None of these pixel resolutions are true resolutions, but they are widely referred to as such.”
technically (and im an engineer) the pixel number without a given length or surface area is not a resolution.
QED
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1374609376 Tim Krueger
well said Lee
Nathan Mollison
Cool. I’d love to see an evaluation of the D600′s hypersync performance if you guys get the chance! I know it’s a bit of a specific request but I figure if anyone will do it, it’s you guys.
How it goes with hypersync is my make or break on the decision to purchase. I want to be able to get the same performance as my D3s (1/800 with speedlights on 1/2 power with only a tiny bit of falloff).
http://www.facebook.com/ericcgould Eric Gould
I used my D600 last night for the first time. I was not able able to get the Live View (shooting stills) to represent the changes I was making to my shutter speeds. In other word I was moving the shutter from 1 second to 5 seconds and could not notice the change in Live View. Any ideas…
http://twitter.com/luisfaustino luisfaustino
Yeah, D3 has dedicated button, D800 has a menu item. D600 should have it too me thinks.
http://twitter.com/luisfaustino luisfaustino
Ah, just use old lenses with aperture rings :)
http://twitter.com/luisfaustino luisfaustino
I think its model lineup segmentation purely.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1254895019 Chris McCrackin
So you’re 100% sure switching to Photo mode allows live view aperture updating and carry’s over to video live view? I could live with that work around if it works.
apollo
Can you say, how D600 compares to D4 at High ISO? I think that D4 is better but not as much as most of us would think.
http://twitter.com/luisfaustino luisfaustino
No one seems disappointed by the missing audio-out connection…? That is a major drawback if you are doing film mostly.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=720765223 Ole Martin Wold
I´m keen to see the D600 up against the D4 as well. Would be good to see if that could be the replacement body for my aging D700. As a second body that is.
apollo
There’s port to headphones which is partly the Audio Out. But who needs Audio out? If you have external recorder, you won’t plug the mic to camera and then send audio out from the camera to the recorder. You put the mic to the recorder and that’s it.
http://www.facebook.com/mascai Marco Medina
When sell at south america?
http://www.facebook.com/thekingjulian Julian Jones
What about shooting in Live view in Aperture priority mode? You may need to preset your aperture out of Live View mode and then turn Live View Mode on. And I believe adjusting the EV values would change shutter speed appropriately. Also, if you want an alternative to having Aperture control using the camera, or any camera, use a lens with an external aperture ring, you have to create a slip to block the camera’s “button” that the aperture or lens would press when locked on the camera.
http://www.facebook.com/thekingjulian Julian Jones
I agree, when they start making larger sensors that incorporate larger pixel senor sizes above 8.45 microns, then I’d consider selling the D3s and shelling out some cash. These new cameras they’re coming out with, are taken a given size of the sensor, and making the pixel sizes smaller to obtain higher MP counts while making it more affordable, it’s the Canon move if you ask me.
http://www.kjbethel.com/ Kriston Bethel
I’m definitely not an engineer, but wouldn’t the [almost] identical sensor size of the two full-frame cameras provide the length/surface area you’re looking for? So the increase in pixel count over an unchanged area would increase resolution. I assume that’s what everyone was getting at.
http://www.facebook.com/samuel.eriksson.52 Samuel Eriksson
Ofcourse, more pixels, same sensor size means higher resolution.
What was being said is that two times the pixels is not equal to two times the resolution.
Double resolution on an AREA (not line nor cube) will always mean four times as many pixels.
All this is although cocluded already but i went for a summary ;)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635923357 Praneendra Kuver
I’m really just trying to get you guys to take me out on a boat. I can bring beer.
http://www.facebook.com/lane.shurtleff Lane Shurtleff
Why do so many complain about file sizes of the D800? There’s 3 image size setting available in FF. Large-36Mp,Med-20Mp, Small-9Mp. When you don’t need the huge files of 36Mp just use the appropraite setting.
http://tambnguyen.com/ Tam Nguyen Photography
”Double resolution on an AREA (not line nor cube) will always mean four times as many pixels.” <~~~ you wanna elaborate on this? I'm confused. Can you prove that my math above is wrong?
billf79
Hi Chris-
I tried it tonight and it worked. I set a large aperture then entered video live view and shot a few seconds video. Then switched to photo live view and closed the aperture. Then switched back to video live view and the display was dark. I had to increase the iso to compensate for the smaller aperture. I took a few seconds of video and compared the two. The second one clearly had a larger DOF.
If you look in the front of the lens you can see the aperture change when switching from photo live view to video live view. Another interesting thing is that while you are changing the aperture setting in photo live view, the aperture of the lens doesn’t change. It only changes when you take a still shot, or switch to video live view. If you take a still shot, the lens changes to the aperture you set, then stays at that aperture.
Hope that helps.
Bill
Lanskymob
Fellas, I really appreciate your initial comments. Can’t wait for a full review after you’ve taken it thru its paces on a shoot. The 3 questions for me at this point are quality/speed of the AF, max top speed of 1/4000, and sync speed of 1/200. I’ve saved enough for the D800. But the 600 might be all I need, and I can also get a nice piece of glass as well. If it turns out the AF is super snappy, and the lower numbers don’t severely limit your ability to” get the shot”, I’m there.
http://www.patrickhallphotography.com Patrick Hall
I think at some point the camera can’t calculate what a long exposure will look like in live view. With video it’s 1/25 because it’s shooting at 24p. Maybe the same is true with stills
http://www.patrickhallphotography.com Patrick Hall
How does this help though? Switching in and out of live view is just as much of a pain as switching between video and photo live view
billf79
I agree – it’s a pain all around. I originally mentioned it because in all the talk about live view I didn’t see anything about the two different modes.
I never understood why you couldn’t change the aperture in live view on the D7000. I really don’t understand why you can change it in one mode and not the other on the D600.
http://www.facebook.com/ericcgould Eric Gould
This is one area where Canon just makes my Nikon eyes weep. The LCD on the back of the 5d mark iii is so, too use an old expression, WYSIWYG – makes shooting at night such a painless and fun experience. Let me know if there are any work arounds, external monitor etc. for the Nikon. Also, kills me is zooming into focus on the Nikon LCD – it looks like a TV from the 50′s – especially at night. Unfortunately the same problem on the D800′s. Please Nikon get me a solution – today. (It’s ok to call late in the evening – I’ll stay up way passed bed time to see this dream a reality.) This works fine on Canon – even the Rebels outshine Nikon here. So, if your asking – yes – I do have a serious case of LCD envy.
drukknop
Apart from the higher pixel count, I wouldn’t buy a D600, D7000 nor a D800. None of the new camera’s really impress me much. Just get a cheap D700 and you’re good to go. If you want light and small get a nice micro 4/3 system like the Olympus OM-D.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Marius-Mariakinas/100000351634405 Marius Mariakinas
So Lee how was the wedding? :)
Gab Labelle
Well you can actually see the screen dim and adjust without the aperture without going back and forth many times.
http://twitter.com/OmarSV11 Omar A. Sierralta
After reading Ken Rockwell’s D600 review, Im convinced too that this is just marketing stuff, D4 D800 and D600 have the same innards but just packed differently and with an adapted firmware for a certain target market. And makes sense seeing the performance in dxomarks.com they are so close, that’s suspicious. And if Canon did it with the 1Dx and the 1Dc (swapping just firmware to have a whole new cam) pretty sure Nikon did it too…
http://www.facebook.com/christopher.zeller.52 Christopher Zeller
My D70 never bumped modes but my D7000 mode dial is both taller and looser and it bumped modes all the time coming in and out of a holster bag or on my shoulder.
http://www.facebook.com/christopher.zeller.52 Christopher Zeller
It doesn’t do this unfortunately. Maybe a firmware hack?
Stephen Hunt
You are both right.
We have “pixel resolution” which is the number of pixels (h x w) – Tam is right, Then we have “Spacial Resolution” which is the number of pixels in a given space (e.g. pixels per inch) – sasasa is right.
So basically if you are going to put someone down and call them a misled nerd, then you should make sure they are wrong before you say it.
and considering you love using wikipedia, here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_resolution
Edit: I see you added this link. Maybe you should have read it.

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