Nikon D600 'Cheaper' Full Frame

Cheese&Apple said:

I have a great deal of interest in this camera as well the OP.

I've been looking to make the leap into the DSLR market for some time and had just about made up my mind to pick-up the D7000 (starting from scratch so no existing lenses to consider and chose the Nikon over Canon for no reason other than the feel in my hands).

Recently, I've been following rumours about the D600. It sounded like the perfect opportunity to get into an affordable (for me) FF camera. I had hoped and anticipated that it would launch much lower than $2180 (Canada) so that it would be an easy decision.

Now, I'm really not sure...

Comments, thoughts & suggestions are most welcome.

Cheers!

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You can't go wrong with either a D7000 or a D600. In my opinion there is a large step up in image quality between the D7000 and the D800. The D600 looks to be closer to the D800 than it is to the D7000. That said the D7000 is no slouch.

The Rose between the thorns -

Gadger Snr said:

The Rose between the thorns -

Just got home from work, with the D600 Nikon. Certainly like the smaller size compared to the other full framers 5D ll & lll. I'll have a go tomorrow.

My Canon 24-70 2.8L is larger than the 28-300 Nikon. I don't expect the same quality, but hope its good. My object is to travel lighter, when flying. Otherwise cruising from the UK is not a problem.

Image

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I am really interested on your opinion in Nikon's ergonomics being a Canon user.

Now the D600 is out and DXO did its thing, I still go for the D800. I think it is worth extra 600€ for the right looking eyecup alone, and the rest of the D600 looks sht too. I think the D700 just has the right weight, so the D600 will be too light for me.
I also need the direct ISO/WB buttons.

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Gadger Snr said:

My Canon 24-70 2.8L is larger than the 28-300 Nikon. I don't expect the same quality, but hope its good.

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With a Nikon and Capture NX2, the lens is less important than you might think. The combination eliminates aberration, distortion and vignetting, no questions asked. The on card written JPEG will look better than anything you pull out of your Canons. But don't throw your NEF's at Lightroom, you will be set back a lot.

blanka said:

Now the D600 is out and DXO did its thing, I still go for the D800. I think it is worth extra 600€ for the right looking eyecup alone, and the rest of the D600 looks sht too. I think the D700 just has the right weight, so the D600 will be too light for me.
I also need the direct ISO/WB buttons.

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Huh? The D600 does have dedicated buttons for this, it's just that if you're in playback mode, these are repurposed for locking and zooming in. Or am I missing something?

I was at my local camera shop this weekend and I played with the D600 for a bit. In my opinion the camera was a little to small and light for me. I have big hands and I would need the battery grip. I think I would save up the extra money and get the D800.

Cheese&Apple said:

chose the Nikon over Canon for no reason other than the feel in my hands

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Perfectly good reason. Why I shoot Nikon and not Canon (not even generally, just when I went to buy my first SLR the Nikon I could afford felt better than the Canon I could afford).

Cheese&Apple said:

I had hoped and anticipated that it would launch much lower than $2180 (Canada) so that it would be an easy decision.

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Me too, but I still bought one. Love it.

OreoCookie said:

Huh? The D600 does have dedicated buttons for this, it's just that if you're in playback mode, these are repurposed for locking and zooming in. Or am I missing something?

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Yeah, puzzles me too. The buttons work as advertised.

I probably missed the iso/wb buttons. But what if you press them after a shot? Do they zoom or do they alter iso?

blanka said:

I probably missed the iso/wb buttons. But what if you press them after a shot? Do they zoom or do they alter iso?

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If you have Image Review on, then they will zoom; if you have it off (the default) they alter WB/ISO. See pages iv and 212 of the manual.

Or just press the shutter button half way to turn off the preview mode.

Don't know if I'm going to like it. I alter WB most of the time with the previous not-right-wb image on the screen.

Huh.

I leave it in auto WB and shoot RAW and batch set it in Aperture when I do my cull/edit.

On the D600 I'm stuck with the JPEGs for now until Apple or Adobe update their RAW convertors right now, but for shots that need it I can wait.

NoNameBrand said:

Me too, but I still bought one. Love it.

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Details please NoNameBrand. What do you love about it?

I have been to my local shop a number of times to check out the D600. Initial reaction is that I think it hits the sweet spot for me in terms of size, weight, overall feel and anticipated performance.

Only problem now is that I'm struggling with the cost of the D600 over the D7000...it is substantial for me.

Cheers

Cheese&Apple said:

Details please NoNameBrand. What do you love about it?

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I've been shooting as a hobbyist for a dozen years. I purchased my first SLR in 2005. I'm upgrading to the D600 from a D90 which is worse in every way to the D7000.

So: I love the big bright view finder. I love the speed and accuracy of the AF. I love that it meters with my lovely 30 year-old glass and that I can shoot those lenses with my off-camera strobe. I love how it feels to use and how the world looks through my lenses on it. There may be $2100+HST worth of cognitive dissonance/post-ex-facto justification at play, since the D7000 can do most of that.


My suggestion is to buy the D7000. It's far, far better than having the D600 and being homeless or having no SLR. If you're really keen on full-frame, only buy lenses that will work on a full-frame and when you can afford to jump up you'll be ready. Do a camera search on Flickr to see what the D7000 can do. I think some of my D90 and D50 shots hold up very well over time.

Especially for wide-angle and macro, Kijiji and Craigslist are your friend for wonderful old AI-S glass.

Tried the D800 at the camera store - a bit too big for me, the D600 would be perfect. But still too pricey and I'd have to upgrade my lenses to FX....

The D800 was great, and nice to see the D600 at $1,999 fall below the $2K for Nikon full-frame.

NoNameBrand said:

I leave it in auto WB and shoot RAW and batch set it in Aperture when I do my cull/edit.

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Ditto. You get much more consistent results and since RAW means you have all of the sensor's data, the white balance the camera chooses is not very relevant. I leave it on Auto.

NoNameBrand said:

On the D600 I'm stuck with the JPEGs for now until Apple or Adobe update their RAW convertors right now, but for shots that need it I can wait.

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Can you make us a little jealous by posting some first impressions?

Cheese&Apple said:

Only problem now is that I'm struggling with the cost of the D600 over the D7000...it is substantial for me.

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Don't struggle, glass >> body. And the D7000 is a terrific body. I know that for a fact, because I've owned one for a year-and-a-half. I've had multiple slrs and dslrs before (Nikon F50, Nikon F80, Olympus E-20, Nikon D70, Nikon D80) and this camera just blows them out of the water. To me, the two biggest improvements over the D80 are (1) the AF and (2) high-ISO performance. With the D80, only the center point was reliable in low light/low contrast situations. With the D7000, the off-center AF points are dead-accurate and useful. Even with my big gun (80-200 mm Nikkor), the focus is spot-on. I shot a wedding with it last year and I could reliably focus on the correct eye even wide open. I don't use the 6 fps or however many photos it can churn through each second. Silent mode is also great, I use it quite a big.

The D600 is more attractive in part is because it's newer and shinier But as I said, invest in lenses, that'll more than compensate for any potential »downsides« the D7000 has over the D600.

OreoCookie said:

Can you make us a little jealous by posting some first impressions?

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I like it. I like it a lot. I haven't shot 35mm/full frame in an SLR before. It's fantastic. I've posted a few edited-from-JPEG shots on my flickr, this is the first, just go newer.

Shot a street BBQ on Saturday, tons of kids running around. AF was fantastic, but I should have set the auto-ISO to be faster on the automatic minimum shutter speed, I got some motion blur (though in other cases I tracked the kids well enough that the background is blurred instead of the kids. Can't have it both ways, I guess).

NoNameBrand said:

I've been shooting as a hobbyist for a dozen years. I purchased my first SLR in 2005. I'm upgrading to the D600 from a D90 which is worse in every way to the D7000.

My suggestion is to buy the D7000. It's far, far better than having the D600 and being homeless or having no SLR.

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OreoCookie said:

Don't struggle, glass >> body. And the D7000 is a terrific body. I know that for a fact, because I've owned one for a year-and-a-half. I've had multiple slrs and dslrs before (Nikon F50, Nikon F80, Olympus E-20, Nikon D70, Nikon D80) and this camera just blows them out of the water.

The D600 is more attractive in part is because it's newer and shinier But as I said, invest in lenses, that'll more than compensate for any potential »downsides« the D7000 has over the D600.

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Thank you both very much for your feedback. Honest and unbiased opinions based on experience are hard to find. A little reality check doesn't hurt either.

NoNameBrand, I did have a look at your some of your D90 & D50 shots and, I have to say, they are outstanding! Again, nice reality check and a great reminder that it's not so much about the hardware.

I'll be doing a little more reading and research now to see what glass I want to match-up with the D7000.

Cheers and thanks again!

OreoCookie said:

The D600 is more attractive in part is because it's newer and shinier But as I said, invest in lenses, that'll more than compensate for any potential »downsides« the D7000 has over the D600.

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^ Great advise right here!

Having a new and shiny body is nice and all, but good, quality lenses far outweighs that new camera body.

OreoCookie said:

Ditto. You get much more consistent results and since RAW means you have all of the sensor's data, the white balance the camera chooses is not very relevant. I leave it on Auto.

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That is a very common mindfuk. Measuring in the situation is important. The used white balance affects the light measurement. Especially in bad lit tungsten or filliament lamp lit places, you loose a lot of RAW headroom if you make pictures on AUTO WB. Nikon's have a perfect easy to use custom white point setting, and it delivers way better results than post-editing. When you set the WB right when shooting, you will see where the image will clip right away, and you can avoid clipping very precisely. With auto-WB I get measurements that are 1-2 stops off in bad lit places. The custom WB option also gives you a way easier procedure to pick a weird white-point. In RAW-conversion, preset lamps are always not-exactly-what-you-want. It needs a lot of tweaking. Grab a grey-card, tap the shutter release button on Custom-WB, and you are set! It even works with all the AF points you choose.

And besides that, the WB option in Lightroom and Aperture is a joke, as it only allows you to use an eye-dropper to pick the grey point. They are kidding! A single point (some do 5x5 pixels WOW)! With the chroma noise at higher iso's, this is going to deliver pretty random behaviour.
With NX2 you can at least select an entire area for custom WB. I really like that for skies with nice gradients between different colours. They do not have a grey point, yet with the area selector you can easily balance between pinkish, yellowish and blueish areas.

blanka said:

That is a very common mindfuk. [...] With auto-WB I get measurements that are 1-2 stops off in bad lit places.

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Thanks for your comment, I always appreciate new input. Just one question: when you say with »auto-WB you get measurements that are 1-2 stops off«, do you refer to the light meter and the exposure it suggests?

blanka said:

The custom WB option also gives you a way easier procedure to pick a weird white-point. In RAW-conversion, preset lamps are always not-exactly-what-you-want. It needs a lot of tweaking. Grab a grey-card, tap the shutter release button on Custom-WB, and you are set! It even works with all the AF points you choose.

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I'd just take a picture of that gray card and then lift the white balance as determined from that shot and paste that onto all of the other photos. At least that's how I've done it so far.

this will be on everyone's Christmas list.

Finally bought mine the other day, now the D600 is finally settling into a decent price bracket - for the UK.

I'm really impressed with it, going to really enjoy using this camera

MagicWok said:

Finally bought mine the other day, now the D600 is finally settling into a decent price bracket - for the UK.

I'm really impressed with it, going to really enjoy using this camera

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what lens or lenses are you using/planning on buying?

MagicWok said:

Finally bought mine the other day, now the D600 is finally settling into a decent price bracket - for the UK.

I'm really impressed with it, going to really enjoy using this camera

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puckhead193 said:

what lens or lenses are you using/planning on buying?

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Great choice MagicWok. I picked up a D600 last week after selling the car and putting the kids to work (or was it the other way around? ).

The D600 is perfect for me in terms of size, weight and performance. It's more than I had planned on spending for a DSLR but, as you mentioned, it's impressive.

For the lens, I started with the 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 kit lens (trying to keep cost down) but after a weekend of shooting, exchanged it for the 24-120mm f/4 to gain the extra reach and constant aperture. And, why not...after the money I got from selling the car (or was it the kids? ).

Have fun and enjoy your new D600...I am.