"The Power of Pixels"

As many of you already know I recently made the change from Canon to Nikon. I gave my analogies on the Nikon system and my reason for changing on an earlier post a few months ago.
I first bought the D5 as I knew it was going to be the main body I wanted to shoot with as I enjoy flight and action photography and the speed and AF were what I was looking for. Also the ISO is very good with this body. I shot with it for a few months and really enjoyed the great autofocus of the new Nikon system and I got many beautiful frames that I wasn't able to get with my old system.
A few of my friends kept telling me to get the D850 because they told me that the 45mpxls was a huge difference and they loved theirs. I didn't have a backup camera anyway so I decided to pick up the D850.
The first day I took it out was to my peregrine falcon spot. It was a bit overcast and when I got back home and looked at my files I was not overly excited about them. The images looked fairly noisy and the action captured wasn't very crisp.
I was pretty bummed out and felt as if I had wasted my money on this body. Maybe it had an application but it didn't look like it was going to be good choice for me. I threw it in the closet and it sat there for months.
Just recently when we found our new burrowing owl location I decided to try it out again on a nice sunny morning to see how good it did in Fair-weather. When I got back from the shoot I was actually pretty blown away of how good the images looked and how much detail there was. Much better than my D5 and my Canon bodies.
So it does have a good application for me. In good sunny conditions it performs very well, and as shown in this image, the Crop-ability is amazing. I have never been able to crop images like this before and I am a big-time pixel peeper.
When we were shooting this male kestrel I decided to change from the D5 to the D850 do a good comparison. To be honest there was no comparison. I figured this was about the perfect range for the D850 and 840mm lens combination. It's a pretty common distance for bird photography as we all would all like to be very close but something like this distance is more realistic for most raptors and flighty birds. We estimated the distance to be about 30 meters or 90 feet. Doing the math I came up with an 83% crop on this image from the original!! A bit tighter than I would normally crop but I wanted to push it to show the ability of the camera.
That is pretty amazing considering how good the fine feather detail is and this downsized image doesn't do the Image justice as the master TIFF file is awesome and you would think that I was much closer to the subject. Looks like I have a new camera to play with:bg3: That's the power of pixels :)

D850---840mm---f6.3---ss1/2500th---ISO640---Hand held from truck@7:40am---83% crop!!

Thanks as always for looking and for your input. I appreciate it.

David

Hey Dave, Rock Star Hall of Fame for you! This IQ is gorgeous and this is certainly pretty amazing quality for an 83% crop. The colors are rich with sheen, and i love the head details. Nice to have this to switch over to whenever the situation presents... Thats how i use my 5DMiv...

Thanks Ann!!

Yes that's exactly the case. I shoot the D5 if the subject is hunting or antsy and if it settles down and kicks back I do the switch-a-roo and snap on the higher megapixel body. Kinda nice having the best of both worlds.

Pretty impressive indeed for that big crop. It may become a challenge when "heat haze" becomes a factor? In any case, nice to have that flexibility. Great subject as well.

Nice view of this kestrel the light looks pretty nice and a killer background. Image quality held up phenomenally. Are most of your photos cropped? If so how much would you say in general? i know this probably depends on a lot of things, Just curious.

Considering the crop, the results are noteworthy. That kestrel sure did give you a perfect pose and head angle!!!

Thanks everyone!

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Originally Posted by John Mack

Nice view of this kestrel the light looks pretty nice and a killer background. Image quality held up phenomenally. Are most of your photos cropped? If so how much would you say in general? i know this probably depends on a lot of things, Just curious.

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Thanks John,

Yes, I would say that almost every image of mine is cropped in one way or another.
Most of the birds I shoot aren't going to be right in your face so cropping is almost mandatory. That's why it's so important to have good gear and shooting technique.
You have to start with a very sharp image to begin with, then you have some room to crop without to much degradation.
I typically crop 30% to 40 % off of the original RAW file for a standard action or flight capture. Once you go above 50% with a D5 or 1DX the image starts breaking down a bit. This is where the D850 has the edge.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Very interesting result, thanks for posting the original and the edit/crop. I've also heard a lot of good things about the 850 but ultimately decided to stay put with Canon. As an interesting reference, the plover shot I posted yesterday represents 6 million of the 30 million available on the 5D4, so an ~80% crop (basically comparable to what you show here). I'm just mentioning this as the crops happened to be really similar. Together they show that a perfectly focused image from any gear will stand up to a decent of of cropping.

Hi David ... nice shot and a good demo of todays IQ produced by the equipment.

But be honest ....the IQ has suffered ( no wonder by such a large crop ) and it is unacceptable for i.e. printing large IMHO . Might be good enough for web presentation , but this does not show the real quality .

TFS Andreas

Dorian that is really good to know. If anything, the image quality on the BBP held up better I think than the IQ on the kestrel. While the results of this crop are very good considering how deep the crop is, the image quality has suffered a bit for sure. It is not as good as it would be if you were closer to the bird.

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Originally Posted by Dorian Anderson

Very interesting result, thanks for posting the original and the edit/crop. I've also heard a lot of good things about the 850 but ultimately decided to stay put with Canon. As an interesting reference, the plover shot I posted yesterday represents 6 million of the 30 million available on the 5D4, so an ~80% crop (basically comparable to what you show here). I'm just mentioning this as the crops happened to be really similar. Together they show that a perfectly focused image from any gear will stand up to a decent of of cropping.

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Thanks Dorian.

That's right, and that's what it's all about, getting close sharp images. A lot of people don't realize that if the image isn't razor sharp, the crop- ability is greatly reduced, and yes, almost any good system with a fair amount of pixels should be able to be cropped moderately with a razor sharp frame.

Like your 5D, the extra pixels make a fair difference when working with a sharp image and cropping.


Thanks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Andreas Liedmann

Hi David ... nice shot and a good demo of todays IQ produced by the equipment.

But be honest ....the IQ has suffered ( no wonder by such a large crop ) and it is unacceptable for i.e. printing large IMHO . Might be good enough for web presentation , but this does not show the real quality .

TFS Andreas

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Hi Andreas,

Haven't seen you on the bird forums in quite some time so nice to see you commenting.

This is only an example to show the amount that this image was able to be cropped and still retain decent feather detail.
It isn't meant to be printed large or even displayed as one of my higher quality images. It's been degraded by downsizing and I am posting it at a fairly large size. Of corse the IQ has suffered. Any image taken from that range and cropped more than 80% will have the same outcome.
Actually the master TIFF looks pretty darn good compared to this downsized image.

Not trying to post a smoking detailed image, just showing how much can be cropped at that range.
Closer is always better and is what I strive for, but when you are on the edge of being close enough, the extra megapixels sure helps.
And yes, this isn't showing the real IQ.

Thanks again

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Originally Posted by Isaac Grant

Dorian that is really good to know. If anything, the image quality on the BBP held up better I think than the IQ on the kestrel. While the results of this crop are very good considering how deep the crop is, the image quality has suffered a bit for sure. It is not as good as it would be if you were closer to the bird.

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Hi Isaac, Thanks, and yes he sure did give me a nice stare and pose!

Yes the IQ isn't my normal IQ but I wasn't posting this for the reason of "Look at this killer IQ", otherwise I would have just posted an image with Killer IQ.
I am just showing for that big of a crop, and that distance, it sure ain't bad and can make the difference between a keeper and not.
The same image shot at the same time with the D5 isn't a solid keeper. Just a hare to far for the 20megapixels, even though its razor sharp.

Also Dorians BBP image is gorgeous but isn't a good comparison of the two images and crops displayed on BPN.
His image is posted much smaller, 1400 px wide compared to my 1800 px wide. Also the kestrel is not only posted much bigger but the kestrel is much bigger in the frame than Dorians BBP.
That's a Big difference when we do the math on those differences so the perceived sharpness isn't an even comparison at all.
As you very well know, the smaller the posted size and the smaller the subject, the sharper it will look, and vice versa. As we have mentioned before, they all look pretty good on the phone:w3

Thanks as always

The details are impressive.

Both the IQ and FFD both look very good to me. For the most part, I have been using two D850s while my D5 sits on the shelf. I have no problem at all with the higher ISOs thanks to NeatImage.

with love, artie

looks very good Dave, I have made 90% crop (i.e. 90% thrown away) with my D850 and no one in the world can tell. Since I have become used to 45 mega pixel files the 20 mega pixel files don't impress me anymore, the detail is just not there.

The IQ looks great from where I am sitting, there is no loss or such thing. I think Andreas needs a new monitor or printer perhaps, or hasn't seen an American Kestrel yet :)

good work buddy

Thanks everyone. Glad it looks good on your monitors. Looked pretty good over here, for 82%, so I figured I would share it with the group.