Nikon d3s or canon 1d mark 4 for BIF

[pradeep jain]

Hello Community,
I am on tenter hooks as whether i need to choose a Nikon D3S or a Canon 1D mark IV coupled with their respective 500mm lens for primarily Birds in flight....or woud u suggest a 600mm f4 lens...i have many questions with regards to the Image quality differences and ease of manoeuvrability on field...
My Advance thanks and cheers for advice and help
PK

[allanrube]

The D3s is full frame and I would recommend the 600. Nikon lens tester usually consider it a bit sharper than the 500.
I can't compare but I thought I would add that tidbit.
Oh, Nikon long lenses are harder to find (fewer made) than Canon long lenses. If you want to buy both lens and camera check on availability of the Nikon lens you want.

[Grant Atkinson]

Hi Pradeep, the Canon mk4 will give you more reach in terms of pixels on your subject, and might make it easier for you to get better images of smaller subjects, and the greater pixel count will allow more cropping, but for absolute low-light performance at iso3200 and beyond I believe the D3s will give you cleaner images with less noise.
Both seem to be great cameras
cheers
Grant

[pradeep jain]

Thanks for your input sirs, i agree with both of you 1D mark IV being a 1.3 crop sensor will give a reach of about 800mm reach without any tele converters or extenders as the case may be but d3s will have an edge on low light performance , but with an aperture wide open at f/4 which of these will have an edge , i appreciate the obsevation of Allanrobe about the 600mm Nikon being a tad lil sharper than 500mm
Thanks againg
p

[David Stephens]

Hello Community,
I am on tenter hooks as whether i need to choose a Nikon D3S or a Canon 1D mark IV coupled with their respective 500mm lens for primarily Birds in flight....or woud u suggest a 600mm f4 lens...i have many questions with regards to the Image quality differences and ease of manoeuvrability on field...
My Advance thanks and cheers for advice and help
PK

Your choices are very good, but I'd like to suggest the 7D with 500mm lens, with and without the 1.4x TC. With the TC you're talking 700mm before considering crop factor. It has 8-fps and excellent AF characteristics.

Speaking of FF vs. crop, I've got the 5D MkII and the 7D. If you crop the 5D2 images to equal the 7D you end up with about the same pixels on the subject. The real advantage of a crop sensor, in my view and experience, is that the BIF subject is much larger in the frame, making it easier to keep a single AF point on the target. In the case of the 7D, you pick up faster AF and the higher fps. The "pro" cameras you're looking at also do this, but at a much higher cost. The 7D is well sealed and really close to a "pro" body. It will not AF a 2xTC on an f/4 lens, but it's fine with a 1.4x TC.

I'm not suggesting the 7D as a way to save money, but as a genuine alternative in a smaller, better handling (IMO) package.

Of course, with the lenses your suggesting, you'll be budgeting $1200 to $1600 for a superior tripod/gimbal solution.

You don't say which system you're coming from. Generally I'd suggest staying with the same brand, unless you're coming from one of those brands with no valid super-tele alternatives, then, you're right, you either need to switch to Canon or Nikon. As said earlier, the big Canon lenses are easier to find and, in most cases at this long end, much less expensive.

I've got the current generation EF 500mm f/4L IS and I'm blown away by it's image quality, with incredible sharpness, contrast and accurate colors. It's mostly mounted on my 7D, but occasionally winds up on the 5D2 when the target is other than BIF.

[Roger Clark]

Thanks for your input sirs, i agree with both of you 1D mark IV being a 1.3 crop sensor will give a reach of about 800mm reach without any tele converters or extenders as the case may be but d3s will have an edge on low light performance , but with an aperture wide open at f/4 which of these will have an edge , i appreciate the obsevation of Allanrobe about the 600mm Nikon being a tad lil sharper than 500mm
Thanks againg
p

Pradeep,

Crop sensor cameras do not give you more telephoto reach. Look at it this way, say you have a full frame camera and when you get your image home, you crop the image on the computer. That does not give you more telephoto reach. Cropping does not change a 600 mm lens into an 800 mm lens, it only changes the field of view.

What is important for detail on a subject is focal length and pixel size. Sensor size only controls field of view. Next, what controls signal-to-noise in those pixels is lens aperture and pixel size. So if the lens aperture is the same, and the detail on the subject is the same, using two different cameras with different pixel sizes, with lens focal length changed to keep the same pixel size on the subject, the noise will be the same and both cameras will have equal low light performance.

The D3s has 8.4 micron pixels. With a 500 mm lens, one pixel sees 3.5 arc-seconds. Raise the focal length to 600 mm and you get 2.9 arc-seconds (smaller is finer detail).

The 1D4 has 5.7 micron pixels, so a 500 mm lens gives 2.3 arc-seconds per pixel.

In other words, for the same focal length lens, the 1d4 will give 8.4/5.7 = 1.47 times more pixels on a subject than a D3s. Put a 1.4x TC on the lens with the D3s and it will then give about the same detail on a subject, and it will then have about the same signal-to-noise performance. (It is basic physics.)

More on this subject in my latest article:
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/telephoto_reach/

The 1DII in that article has almost the same size pixels as the D3s, so you can use the images and data for the 1DII as a proxy for the D3s (just the D3s would have a larger field of view).

Roger

[Alan Lillich]

Another factor is lens weight, if you have the budget. Considering the weight reduction in the new Canon 400 f/2.8, I have big hopes for the coming 500 f/4 and 600 f/4. My wife and I shoot Nikon, will jump to Canon if the new lenses are as light as I hope.

[Doug Brown]

They are both excellent choices. I'm a Canon guy and have no experience with the D3S. But the Mark IV is an exceptional body for flight. If flight is your primary focus, high ISO (>1600) performance is a secondary concern IMO. Flight shots look best when there is decent light on your subject, not in extreme low light. A much larger concern for flight (as pointed out above) is the size of the subject in your viewfinder; this is extremely important for AF tracking. That said, I prefer the overall image quality of the Mark IV to that of the 7D. Also the Nikon doesn't have sufficient pixels to do much cropping.

I love the 600mm f/4 for flight, but I hand hold it. To me the ability to hand hold is extremely important for BIF; if a 600 is too much for you weight wise, then go for the 500 and hand hold that lens.

[David Billingsley]

I agree with Doug on all points. I was using a 40D when I purchased the 500 F4 and experienced less than desireable BIF results. After going to the 1D4 my BIF keeper rate is so high is I seldom discard because of focus issues.

I am 71 and hand holding the 500 was quite a challenge - but over time it has become much easier and the results are outstanding. In a "don't know were they are coming from" environment - hand holding is a must in my and others opinion.

Have a God blessed day - dave b.

[Arthur Morris]

Operator skill level is a much more important factor than the lens or the camera.

That said, be aware of the new lighter, sharper, 4-stop IS Canon 500 and 600mm lenses coming next year along with the Series III TCs.

[Paolo Piazza]

Operator skill level is a much more important factor than the lens or the camera.

That said, be aware of the new lighter, sharper, 4-stop IS Canon 500 and 600mm lenses coming next year along with the Series III TCs.

How much lighter the new 500?

[Arthur Morris]

How much lighter the new 500?

That is the $64,000 question. The weights of the new 500 and the new 600 have not been released. But they will work with the new Series III TCs. I will surely buy one of them, maybe both :) To go with my 800.

[Aravind Krishnaswamy]

How much lighter the new 500?

No one knows for sure, but I think we can make some intelligent guesses based on the weight losses of the 300 f/2.8 II and 400 f/2.8 II which were 13% and 28% respectively. Basically, it seems the larger the lens, the larger the proportional weight loss.

My guess for the 500 will be an approximately 20% weight loss and since the current one weighs 8.5lbs, that could put the replacement at around 6.8lbs. That would be a noticeable and significant weight loss for the hand held shooter.

[Arthur Morris]

6.8 pounds would be mega.... I am not sure that the proportionate percentages will hold... I hope that I am wrong. How about 6 even???

[Alan Lillich]

The weights of the new 300 f/2.8 and 400 f/2.8 are known, which is what has a lot of us salivating for the new 500 and 600 info. The 300 went from 6 lbs to 5.2 lbs. The 400 went from 11.7 lbs to 8.5 lbs. A 28% reduction for the 400!

Here's the great part: The current 500 weighs 8.5 lbs and the current 600 weighs 11.8 lbs. Traditionally the 400 f/2.8 and 600 f/4 from both Canon and Nikon have weighed about the same, that is the 2 Canons were similar and the 2 Nikons were similar. So there is reason to hope that the new 600 f/4 will weight about the same as the current 500 f/4. The 500 5/4 won't loose as much weight, a 20% reduction for it would still bring it down to 6.8 lbs.

To complete the picture the 800 f/5.6 weighs 9.9 lbs, and for comparison the Nikon 200-400 f/4 weighs 7.4 lbs.

[Aravind Krishnaswamy]

My understanding is that a major part of the weight loss comes from the elimination of the piece of protective glass on the front. The current super telephoto designs (all of them (except the 400 DO) use the same lens group/element layout) use a UD element as the first in the optical path. UD glass is softer than crown glass and so a protective piece of glass was added to the front. My understanding is that the new super telephotos have a different optical formula where the first element is no longer UD glass, thus a protective piece of glass is no longer required.

The reason the weight savings is higher for the larger lenses is because the volume of that protective glass (and thus the weight) is larger for the bigger lenses.

The other contributing factor to the weight loss is the use of titanium in portions of the barrel.

Anyway, these are all guesses, we'll know for sure in a short while I guess.

[Aravind Krishnaswamy]

I used to shoot with a D3s for several months this year and even had it along with a 1D4 along for a couple of trips so I'll try to offer a couple of perspectives.

First like Artie said, operator skill level is far more important that the capabilities of these bodies.

That said, a key deciding factor should be how far away your subject will be and how close can you get to it. You are talking about a 12mp FF body vs. a 16mp 1.3x crop body and these two cameras will put a very different number of pixels on your subject. It is my belief that rather than competing, these two bodies compliment each other quite well.

IF you can fill your frame with your subject on the D3s, then the image quality with the D3s is going to be better at ISO 1600 and higher (becoming significantly better at ISO 6400 and beyond). If you end up having to crop your D3s images heavily because you can't get close to your subject, then a major part of its strength gets lost. Also keep in mind what ISOs you typically shoot at and what your final output (print size) is with each image.

In terms of auto focus performance for bird photography, I'm not sure there's much to really separate these bodies and certainly not anything that a competent operator with sufficient experience can't work around. My most generalized observations were that the D3s managed to eek out a couple of extra frame or two with the subject in focus when tracking a small subject against a very busy background (a bird that is close to trees with lots of branches or shrubs). However, it was also my observation that the 1D4 delivered the most entire sequences with the subject in perfect focus when the subject was pulled away from the background a bit. In the end though, I wouldn't choose one camera over the other for autofocus performance (at least not for bird or wildlife photography).

In terms of handling in the field, I'm not sure there's much to separate these two bodies.

[Arthur Morris]

Aravind, Thanks for sharing your thoughts above. You are in a unique position to comment. Though you have just arrived, yYour participation here is both welcome and valued.

[Danny J Brown]

Another thing to consider is that compactness (as mentioned above) is not necessarily a plus when mounting a camera to a supertelephoto as you will probably need a battery pack to balance it out on your gimbal thus making it similar to a pro body in size and weight in the end.

DB

[David Stephens]

Just fyi, with the 7D and the 500mm on the Arca-Swiss/Sidekick combination they balance perfectly. Using the long, Wimberley quick release foot, there's plenty of extra room to move for and aft, even with a teleconverter added.

I'm a little surprised that some gimbals require a heavy body to balance. Perhaps a key is to use a long quick release plate. I don't know what's going on in this regard with some gimbals, but it would be a reason to avoid those gimbals.