D70s beats D300

[Eric Rose]

Just did a bunch of testing using a Nikkor 60mm macro lens on a Nikon D70s and D300. Guess what? The images from the D70s are much nicer. Better colour rendition, more pleasing skin detail, surprisingly better shadow detail and just plain nicer to look at. Technically the D300 has much better specs but the proof is in the pudding.

Naturally you can blow the D300 images up bigger and it will do better I suppose in low light (didn't check it out) but for 9x12 prints, web images or magazine print I would rather use the D70s. Some say it's because the D70s uses a CCD sensor while the D300 uses CMOS. I don't really care about all that, I just want images that please me.

Honestly didn't see this coming. I was all ready to spring for a D300 but will save my money. Although I do miss my D700. I've moved to m4/3 for all my gigs but was pining to use my Nikkor glass for personal projects.

 

[lantau]

Are you talking about OOC jpegs? Maybe Nikons in camera processing went with the taste of the time and your taste is more reflected by the older software. What do you think about the D70s colours vs m4/3? I often find it being remarked that the Olympus colours are supposedly so beautiful with good skin rendering and that their jpeg engine is one of the best. But maybe you are using Panasonic.

I myself am using two Olympus cameras but just like I mostly cannot see what people mean when talking about some films tonality (except Acros, that one really does produce a 'look' quite often), I couldn't say that a picture has the Olympus look. In fact I hardly ever use a camera jpeg as a final result. I don't do much with raws but I definitely want to adjust contrast and exposure. I need prefer a little glow in my pictures.

 

[Eric Rose]

All NEF raw files processed in ACR and viewed on Mac with Retina display that has been calibrated. I find the Nikon tonal palette very agreeable to my taste. My sweetie has a Canon 5DMkII and I find skin tones to be to cool. Can't speak to Olympus.

 

[williaty]

I have a D70, D300, and D810. Shooting lossless RAW, using a ColorChecker to develop a unique profile for each camera, untwisting each profile with dcptool, and then white balancing off a ColorChecker in each lighting condition, each successive camera is an improvement over the previous one. The step from the D70 to the D300 is significant but the step from the D300 to the D810 is absolutely staggering.

That's a roundabout way of saying that I have the same cameras and my D70 is spanked heartily by my D300 in a fair fight. Better dynamic range, better color accuracy, better color gamut all go to the D300. Obviously, better resolving of fine detail goes to the D300 as well. You are probably just better at working from the starting point the D70 gives. Profiling both your cameras properly, including using dcptool to untwist the profiles, and some practice would almost certainly yield huge improvements in the look of your D300 results.

 

[shutterfinger]

Its your software and processing. I have a D300 and some P&S Canon digital cameras.
When I first picked up the D300 I tried converting the nef files in PS and never liked the results. Next I tried Nikon's free download software NXD. NXD beats ACR hand down.
I'm on a Win 10 on a Dell XPS 8500 with CS5.1.
http://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/index.html its available for Mac also.
Try it, you may change your mind.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...NXD beats ACR hand down...

I don't have ACR. Coming to serious digital only lately, I refused to rent software from Adobe and went instead with Serif PhotoPlus X8. Today I'd go with Serif Affinity Photo.

NEF files from my D810 are not handled well by PhotoPlus X8. However, opening them using Nikon's free Capture NX-D, then exporting as a TIFF to PhotoPlus X8, I end up with images that perfectly match the camera's display. At that point I edit to taste.