I have been shooting 4x5 film (mostly black and white) for most of my landscape/nature work, but now with the announcement of the D700 i'm interested in doing some more color work (which in 4x5 is quite pricy)
Most of my prints tend to be 16x20 but I also print 30x40 if the image works at that size and the negative has fine details to hold up at that size.

I would like to know if a camera such as the D700 could produce sharp 16x20's without that fake digital uprez look to them providing i'm always on a tripod. I'm aware that a digital back is more suited for achieving the texture and detail required for landscape work but I do this as a hobby away from the computer so spending 40k on a digital back would be silly.

Can a 12mp camera look close to a 4x5 scan at 16x20 or should I not bother going there ?

I already have a D100 and a few full frame primes which is one of the reasons i would like to stay with nikon. I have a few images taken with it that hold up at 11x14 (where texture of snow and moss can be seen without trademark up-rezing artifacts) while others, especially if distant trees are present don't quite hold up.

Any advice about jumping in now or waiting for a nikon 22mp would be appreciated.

FWIW, I have been asking myself the same question. There are so many variables in terms of processing on both ends, film choice, personal taste, pixel-peeping, brilliance, dynamic range etc etc that I decided to wait until I can rent a D700 and see for myself.

I have a D300 and I understand that there is not a distinctive difference in "image quality" (however that is defined) between the D3/D700 and the D300. Again that is still to be confirmed by my own experience.

In the meantime I started experimenting stitching portrait-oriented digital images into a high-resolution panorama-type file to see how that holds up. Have a look at
on my flickr website here.

My opinion is no, not from a single capture. But if you stitch 2 or 3 captures then you can.

It's been a couple decades since I shot 4x5, so I'm a bit out of touch with it, but my opinion would be that my first response would be "no, it wouldn't". However, with digital tonality is maintained into larger print sizes even when detail retrieval goes away, so whether you'd be happy with a 16x20 print from a 12mp DSLR is going to depend on quite a few factors such as your viewing distance, choice of paper, and of course your technique and the quality of the glass as well.

I'd say you might want to see if you can rent one (or a D3, since it has the same sensor) and see if it works for you.

My own thoughts are that properly done DSLR work with the 12mp or so DSLR bodies can achieve what MF film can do - I totally realize there are still many folks who might disagree but in my experience what digital has allowed me to do is go "up" one "film category size" (ie, from 35mm to MF) in terms of output quality while working with the smaller camera size. My own 16x20's that I print on an Epson 3800, when done correctly, are better than anything I ever shot and printed on/from 35mm film and at least match anything I ever did on MF. I'm not sure I can say that about 4x5 though. When done properly, there are some aspects of 4x5 quality that "come through" to well done 12mp+ digital work, but detail retrieval is not one of them - it's more the way the image holds together.

One thing to be aware of though - if you do hold out for the higher rez body, you'll have to have the very best glass for it - a Nikon wide prime from the 80's will not cut it at all - you'll very much have to look into investing in the very best possible lenses (which you might even find, at least in Nikon, sometimes is a zoom) in order to extract everything from a 20mp+ sensor. You'll be okay on a 12mp FF sensor for the most part, but if you go into the 20+ arena, the game changes.

Sorry for rambling - you really, I think, need to rent a D3/D700 and see how it goes for yourself.

-m

Wanted to add to my earlier post that in your (and mine) type of / approach to photography trees, foilage, leaves, grass need to be reproduced in a certain way.

In other words, we're looking at tiny variations in sharpness, resolution, brilliance and dynamic range, perhaps more to than portraitists, marco, still-life photographers and the like.

That's why your own experience is key - and to be honest stitching has yet to provide the right answer for me (but I just started trying).

Would be a nice subject for Mr Reichmann though.

Mark

Well, I would agree with the previous posters than for subjects with significant detail, a single D3/D700 frame is a little bit short for 16x20.

A 3 images stitch will basically pretty much close the gap with 4x5 at that print size.



If you go higher in frame count, like in the attached image, then you can IMHO easily get in 8x10 realm.



Cheers,
Bernard

Well done!

Hi,

I agree with NashvilleMike. You can push digital a little higher, but I'm not saying that you'll get the same quality on a 16x20" print from a 12 Mpixel image and a 4x5 film scan. I know some fine art shooters that would agree that a 2x up-res is OK for fine art. So, consider a D3/D700 file on a 360 dpi printer: you can get a perfect 12x8" or you could push it as far as 24x16", with some (acceptable) degradation in quality. But again, some people will contest this :-)

If you take sensor sizes:

Nikon D700/D3 = 24x36mm
MFDB (crop) = 36x48mm

If you stitch two D700/D3 images you are almost on the 4x5 proportion of a MF camera (and just over 20 Mpixels).

I've been practicing with this for a while and I strongly recommend it!

Regards,
Luis

My experience agrees with the others. At 12MP you can get nice 16x24 prints if you do everything right (tripod, MLU, cable release, good glass, careful processing). But for really detailed scenes the print won't compare well to 4x5 on close examination. But at arm's length they'll look good.

That said don't understimate stitching. In addition to panning I've also found tilt/shift lenses useful for quick 3-image stitches that give me about 25mp or so and a nice boost in print size.

I think i will just need to rent one and see. Stitching is a good way to go if the scene is static, but once you involve moving water, wind, or any other subject where motion needs to be frozen, a single image capture is really the only way to go. It would be nice if nikon put up some D3 nef's on their site of landscape work so people could print them and evaluate for themselves.

You may be surprised. Stitching can sometimes work very well with moving water, esp. if longer exposures are involved.

There are many cases where such subjects can be handled with stitching.

Just a 3 years old sampe to proof the point:



Regards,
Bernard

Stitching works under most circumstances - but I'm still unsure how to get that specific largeformat look that the original poster and I are after.

This one is from 5 portrait images - see here for tech details.

Based on what I am seeing from a 5D to the 1DsMK3, a 22mp Nikon would get you a lot closer to what you are looking for with 16x20's. How long that might be I'm not sure, but so much speculation about this fall it may be worth waiting for.

Only got to printing this image last night on a 13x19 sheet out of Lightroom.

Wow - this technique is definitely something to remember. With handheld shots getting a 4x5 style resolution is within reach! Wholeheartedly recommended. Never expected it to be this easy (aka beginners luck). So the trick is measure the light and focus, put everything on manual (exposure/focus/iso), make portrait pics with at least 30% overlap, not too much wideangle.

My next step: try and combine this with HDR bracketing.

Pretty cool to keep finding out new tricks and techniques after 35 years of shooting.

Mark

Great! Thanks markhout for the info. This 30% overlap is important to know, I'll try it later.

Thanks!

Luis

Just shoot enough pictures so you can print your stitches at 360 DPI on the print.

Another huge advantage of stitching is that every part of the image is the optical "sweet spot." For most of the possible image projections there are no discernable edge distortions.

In addition to HDR, "fusing' with Tufuse, Enfuse, and a few others are a great way to achieve dynamic ranges well beyond film. There are also a few programs that can automatically fuse together focus brackets to give you any depth of field you want.

I'm in exactly the same position: currently shooting 4x5 b&w and a 6x7 back for colour due to cost and am eyeing the D700.

I don't feel the D700 at 12MP is going to match even imacon scanned 6x7 slide at larger print sizes given the 5D was only approaching 645 (cue flame war!) and my ebony will remain safe from ebay. The recent advances in software stitching means DSLRs could work well as a landscape camera for larger prints and I will also have a great tool for portraits and other handheld (and low light) work. The excellent zeiss manual focus lenses work with it as will my old nikon ais lenses.

My concerns are as follows:

I'm sure shooting enough frames to stitch and also focus bracket is going to be even slower in the field and more hassle than using my non-folding ebony RSW45 with lens tilt. For high contrast scenes this number gets silly.

I am also unsure I want to drop £2k on a camera that has the same image quality at low iso as the 5D (see dpreview D3 vs 5D tests) which is available at half the price even before the inevitable price drop after it's successor is released.

I have no personal experience with the D700 IQ, but FWIW - the above panos were shot handheld, probably in less than 10 seconds. Remember that for the stitching only you don't need a zillion pics - 5 or so is plenty (unless you want to have a real pano).

I also liked the solution proposed at gigapan.org which I can hopefully try sometime this year.

Mark H

IMO if you're shooting low ISO primarily (less than 800) then you gain nothing from the D700 files in terms of image quality compared to the 5D. This is particularly true if you're stitching because apparent noise will always be less in the stitched result. IMO the primary advantage of the D700 is operational (very nice to use in the field) but again if you're stitching you're likely working pretty slowly so the difference is lessened.

The appeal of shooting handheld and getting results of that quality is very interesting, especially given the very impressive high iso capability of the D700 makes this possible in low light.