Which grass is considered greener (do nikonians complain as much as canonians)?

[sarangiman]

As a working pro stated earlier, shadows are important for the art...and shadows are supposed to be dark.

This is a loaded topic. You could argue that *because* today's monitors/output devices have pretty small DR (10 stops for the better monitors today), that you shouldn't try to pack more than 10 stops worth of DR into an image. This presupposes you want to maintain a linear relationship between tones - the same relationship you would've had in the real world. So is that what you want to do, or do you want to maintain the global DR your eye-brain experienced in the real-world for a particular scene? Or something in between?

It all depends on what you want to emphasize. If you want to emphasize light vs. shadow, you might even decrease the DR of what you captured by darkening darks and brightening brights past the relationship they had in the real-world. Or you might do that for some scene elements while retaining more global DR.

The point is that when your sensor introduces little to no noise over your image data, you have the freedom to do whatever you want. You even have the option of - in the future - one day going back to your high DR Raw files so you can reprocess them for that new HDR display that actually displays 18 EV of DR (the motion picture industry is very interested in HDR displays, e.g.). And a HDR display that doesn't just give you blacker blacks, but actually gives you brighter whites as well. Ever wonder why Velvia looked so beautiful on a lightbox? B/c it had 11-13 EV of output DR (though only ~5-6 EV scene DR), with a white point on your typical lightbox 5-6x brighter than your digital LCD monitor with its brightness maxed out. It actually expanded contrast - possibly getting closer to maintaining absolute brightness differences between objects in the real-world in the process... but I digress.

So when you say that shadows are supposed to be dark... that can really open up a whole can of worms. For example, if you shoot a sunset where you've shot to preserve the orange/red tones in the sky, the cityscape buildings in the shot might be completely black when you view it on your monitor - but they were perfectly visible when your eyes saw the sunset. These 'shadows' weren't exactly 'shadows' in the real-world, yet they're 'shadows' now on your monitor b/c your entire monitor's brightness scale is much smaller than, and on the lower end of, the brightness range we experience in the real world. So are they really shadows, or are they just shadows b/c of your exposure decision & your imaging hardware? You might decide they're not 'shadows' at all; that they should be darker midtones, say. Low read noise will enable you to pull those 'shadows' up to darker midtones, then assign some other even darker tones to 'shadows' so that your final image does have good output DR/contrast.

Look at Ryan Dyar's or Marc Adamus' landscapes for gorgeous examples of capturing a ton of global DR while still having shadows/dark tones in the image that give the impression of high contrast with low global contrast (high DR). That sounds counterintuitive, but they pull it off beautifully. And they effectively have to 'tone-map' for our LDR output devices & prints. I can only imagine how much more stunning they'd be on higher DR monitors - and of course that'd likely require entire re-processing from the Raw(b/c the tone-mapping would have to be different). Or not - maybe our eye-brain system does enough 'filling in the gaps' that we'd only really appreciate HDR display of such content in a side-by-side next to a LDR monitor.

Anyway, my point here is that how you define 'shadows' itself is flexible. I can tell you one thing shadows *aren't* supposed to have: FPN & read noise.

 

[sarangiman]

Just to be clear, I am only disappointed with the 5D III for landscapes and low ISO work.

Here's a link to a guy who's a hot topic on 500px at the moment, that CR members may enjoy seeing. Does he shoot D800 ? Does he shoot high ISO ?

http://500px.com/JakeOlsonStudios

The only noise comes from people complimenting his work.

When I see images like that, I think "Wow, that's one talented MFer."

"I wonder what gear he shoots with" is the last thing on my mind. I suppose that makes me a freak

I'm actually with you there, V8Beast

And everyone else makes fair points here.

sdsr - yup, how much it matters will totally vary based on some of the things you mentioned. And good point about adapting Canon lenses on the Sony bodies. Much easier to do than adapting Nikon lenses, which still have that mechanical aperture. Canon lenses are much easier to use on the A7 cameras. Definitely holding on to my Canon 1-5X 65mm lens. That thing's a beauty!

LostBoyzNZ - A7r is nice, for sure, but sometimes adapting wide-angles gives me a lot of trouble in terms of edge-to-edge and corner performance. Not surprising once you consider the effects of adapter mount variations, and the variations in the thicknesses of cover glass on the sensor (http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2014/06/the-glass-in-the-path-sensor-stacks-and-adapted-lenses)

Also, A7r shutter shock is a real problem for longer focal lengths. Electronic first curtain on the D810 is incredibly welcome.

 

[barracuda]

Just to be clear, I am only disappointed with the 5D III for landscapes and low ISO work.

Here's a link to a guy who's a hot topic on 500px at the moment, that CR members may enjoy seeing. Does he shoot D800 ? Does he shoot high ISO ?

http://500px.com/JakeOlsonStudios

The only noise comes from people complimenting his work.

Thanks for posting this link. At least now I can say that it hasn't been a complete waste of time reading this thread.

 

[AcutancePhotography]

i think one reason why lots of people hang out here who don't actively shoot nikon gear is that this is the best rumor forum on the internet.
I open Nikonrumors and Sonyalpharumors just as often as I open Canonrumors, but on those sites I usually just read some comments and don't get involved.
Canonrumors has the best forum for discussion regarding rumors that I have found.

I would agree. I haunt both Canon and Nikon sites. The Nikonrumors site, while informative, is not as exciting (in a reality TV sort of way) as Canonrumors. On the Nikonrumors site, people ask questions and they get answer. Educational, but hardly entertaining.

On Canonrumors there is always a thread (or ten) where it is just fun to watch.

I think that Canonrumors is still one of the most enjoyable photography forums to read on the Internets Tubes.

 

[Maiaibing]

Does he shoot D800 ? Does he shoot high ISO ?

http://500px.com/JakeOlsonStudios

No.And no.

He shoots almost exclusively iso 100 w/flash (or other light additional source)...

Nice shots. However, not my style.

 

[Loswr]

As for DxO's 'image science', hallmarks of good science include transparency about methods with disclosure sufficient for someone skilled in the field to fully reproduce the experiment/test, and attempting to avoid bias. DxO does not disclose their formulae or weightings for determining their Scores, and what they do disclose of their methods shows that their scores have intentional bias.

I don't disagree with the bit about disclosing methods, being a scientist myself. You saying they have 'intentional bias' requires more proof than your simple claim, though. Bias towards what? Any formula has inherent bias, as any weighting system must. It's when people imply that there's a brand-specific bias that I take issue. I'm not saying that's what you're implying, but there are certainly those who imply it.

You could argue that they weight base ISO DR too much, and if you don't care about base ISO DR, then I can see how that'd bother you. OTOH, I think it's perfectly fine to weight base ISO DR far more heavily than high ISO DR b/c: (1) not doing so runs the risk of rating all similar size sensors roughly the same, and how does that help a consumer actually understand the *differences* between sensors?; and (2) if you shoot in an 'ISO-less' manner (even partially), you can - for a sensor with high base ISO DR - retain far more DR at high ISOs than the actual measured DR for any given higher ISO. Which - for me - makes the higher ISO DR numbers meaningless, and only the base ISO DR number relevant.

The low ISO bias is one example, yes. It's not just their DR measurement, their 'color depth' score is also taken at base ISO for calculation of the overall Score. Color depth is basically a measure of chroma noise, something essentially not visible in practice at low ISO, yet it figures prominently in the overall score (where two of the three Subscores are at base ISO).

Their Lens Scores are another example of their intentional bias. Does it make sense that the Canon 50mm f/1.8 II receives a higher Score than the Canon 600mm f/4L IS II? Is the nifty fifty a better lens? Well, if you intentionally bias your scores based on 'performance in 150 lux illumination' (light level of a dim warehouse), I suppose it does. Similarly, comparing a Canon and Nikon lens pair (e.g. a supertele) where the lens measurements show the Canon to be sharper, have less distortion, less CA, and equal transmission, the Nikon lens receives the same (or sometimes a higher) lens Score. Why? Because the sensor score of the bodies on which the lenses are mounted affects the lens Scores (and ironically, a sensor score biased toward low ISO performance then artificially inflates a lens score based on a dim light, i.e. high ISO, use case). Bias on top of bias...bad science.

 

[Loswr]

Does he shoot D800 ? Does he shoot high ISO ?

http://500px.com/JakeOlsonStudios

No.And no.

He shoots almost exclusively iso 100 w/flash (or other light additional source)...

Nice shots. However, not my style.

Flash and reflectors. He also has some wicked processing knowledge, which I think in part is where is amazing boke comes from. He teaches a class...I might take it just to learn his PP techniques.

Why would you pay someone to learn their techniques when he is obviously foolish enough to continue using a camera system that imposes a huge, burdensome requirement to...

...spend a lot of time and use a lot of special techniques and extra tools that add to your total cost to make the photo look good...

 

[Sporgon]

Does he shoot D800 ? Does he shoot high ISO ?

http://500px.com/JakeOlsonStudios

No.And no.

He shoots almost exclusively iso 100 w/flash (or other light additional source)...

Nice shots. However, not my style.

Flash and reflectors. He also has some wicked processing knowledge, which I think in part is where is amazing boke comes from. He teaches a class...I might take it just to learn his PP techniques.

Why would you pay someone to learn their techniques when he is obviously foolish enough to continue using a camera system that imposes a huge, burdensome requirement to...

...spend a lot of time and use a lot of special techniques and extra tools that add to your total cost to make the photo look good...

His techniques are for portraiture, something I have little skill in but still love. My primary issues are with landscapes, where the use of flash and reflectors during shooting do squat to change the dynamic range of the scene.

And 'squat' is how much flash and / or reflectors have done here - 'cos that's not how he has achieved this look.

 

[sarangiman]

As for DxO's 'image science', hallmarks of good science include transparency about methods with disclosure sufficient for someone skilled in the field to fully reproduce the experiment/test, and attempting to avoid bias. DxO does not disclose their formulae or weightings for determining their Scores, and what they do disclose of their methods shows that their scores have intentional bias.

I don't disagree with the bit about disclosing methods, being a scientist myself. You saying they have 'intentional bias' requires more proof than your simple claim, though. Bias towards what? Any formula has inherent bias, as any weighting system must. It's when people imply that there's a brand-specific bias that I take issue. I'm not saying that's what you're implying, but there are certainly those who imply it.

You could argue that they weight base ISO DR too much, and if you don't care about base ISO DR, then I can see how that'd bother you. OTOH, I think it's perfectly fine to weight base ISO DR far more heavily than high ISO DR b/c: (1) not doing so runs the risk of rating all similar size sensors roughly the same, and how does that help a consumer actually understand the *differences* between sensors?; and (2) if you shoot in an 'ISO-less' manner (even partially), you can - for a sensor with high base ISO DR - retain far more DR at high ISOs than the actual measured DR for any given higher ISO. Which - for me - makes the higher ISO DR numbers meaningless, and only the base ISO DR number relevant.

The low ISO bias is one example, yes. It's not just their DR measurement, their 'color depth' score is also taken at base ISO for calculation of the overall Score. Color depth is basically a measure of chroma noise, something essentially not visible in practice at low ISO, yet it figures prominently in the overall score (where two of the three Subscores are at base ISO).

Their Lens Scores are another example of their intentional bias. Does it make sense that the Canon 50mm f/1.8 II receives a higher Score than the Canon 600mm f/4L IS II? Is the nifty fifty a better lens? Well, if you intentionally bias your scores based on 'performance in 150 lux illumination' (light level of a dim warehouse), I suppose it does. Similarly, comparing a Canon and Nikon lens pair (e.g. a supertele) where the lens measurements show the Canon to be sharper, have less distortion, less CA, and equal transmission, the Nikon lens receives the same (or sometimes a higher) lens Score. Why? Because the sensor score of the bodies on which the lenses are mounted affects the lens Scores (and ironically, a sensor score biased toward low ISO performance then artificially inflates a lens score based on a dim light, i.e. high ISO, use case). Bias on top of bias...bad science.

You keep quoting the overall score as why DxO is bad science, never mentioning the value of the individual metrics, which they publish. Very few of us ever quote DxO scores - we quote the individual numbers. The score is very one-dimensional, as it must be b/c it's a single number. Perhaps you'd like them to create fancy 3-D plots with various things - like illumination, focal length, and aperture - changing along X different axes in X-dimensional space. Because that'd be more easily digestible.

The simple fact that they average the performance across the focal length range & aperture range already makes it useless for me. But that doesn't make their data useless. And calling the entire site biased b/c they try to distill everything down to one score based on what they think is most important (and they try & tell you what they consider 'important' for their score) really requires some perverse logic. You may as well call every site that ranks anything based on one score completely biased and therefore utterly meaningless.

Because the sensor score of the bodies on which the lenses are mounted affects the lens Scores (and ironically, a sensor score biased toward low ISO performance then artificially inflates a lens score based on a dim light, i.e. high ISO, use case)

OK, that's probably fair criticism. And yet another reason I never even look at the lens overall score.

But OTOH, yes, attaching a similar resolving power lens to a higher resolution body does, lo and behold, lead to a higher P-MPix score.

Does he shoot D800 ? Does he shoot high ISO ?

http://500px.com/JakeOlsonStudios

No.And no.

He shoots almost exclusively iso 100 w/flash (or other light additional source)...

Nice shots. However, not my style.

Flash and reflectors. He also has some wicked processing knowledge, which I think in part is where is amazing boke comes from. He teaches a class...I might take it just to learn his PP techniques.

Why would you pay someone to learn their techniques when he is obviously foolish enough to continue using a camera system that imposes a huge, burdensome requirement to...

...spend a lot of time and use a lot of special techniques and extra tools that add to your total cost to make the photo look good...

Neuro - you always wake up on the wrong side of the bed? jrista himself still shoots Canon; he just points out one of the things about the system that he finds limiting, and you suddenly find it necessary to mock him for wanting to take classes from someone else who shoots Canon?

Logical much?

IIRC, Marc Adamus makes his images with both Nikon and Canon cameras. Those of us who find Canon sensors limiting are - most of the time - not oblivious to the fact that you *can* make fantastic photos with almost any system. People made fantastic photos with the limited DR of slide film, for crying out loud. Your snarky comments add nothing to the conversation.

And as an aside - I can't believe I'm here defending someone who himself called my work 'bull' when I tried to point out that the 'ISO-less' nature of the D800 opened up opportunities for shooting the 5D3 didn't allow years ago. These forums are really something!

 

[sdsr]

As a working pro stated earlier, shadows are important for the art...and shadows are supposed to be dark.

This is a loaded topic.

[snip]

The point is that when your sensor introduces little to no noise over your image data, you have the freedom to do whatever you want.

[snip]

Anyway, my point here is that how you define 'shadows' itself is flexible. I can tell you one thing shadows *aren't* supposed to have: FPN & read noise.

Exactly right (including, of course, all the snipped bits) - even if for most people, most of the time, it doesn't matter enough to affect the overall market.

 

[Loswr]

You keep quoting the overall score as why DxO is bad science, never mentioning the value of the individual metrics, which they publish. Very few of us ever quote DxO scores - we quote the individual numbers. The score is very one-dimensional, as it must be b/c it's a single number. Perhaps you'd like them to create fancy 3-D plots with various things - like illumination, focal length, and aperture - changing along X different axes in X-dimensional space. Because that'd be more easily digestible.

The simple fact that they average the performance across the focal length range & aperture range already makes it useless for me. But that doesn't make their data useless. And calling the entire site biased b/c they try to distill everything down to one score based on what they think is most important (and they try & tell you what they consider 'important' for their score) really requires some perverse logic. You may as well call every site that ranks anything based on one score completely biased and therefore utterly meaningless.

As I've stated many times (probably >100 by now), I find DxO's Measurements to be useful and generally well done (except when they screw up, as in the infamous now-corrected 70-200 II, or the still 'live' acutance data showing the mush-in-the-corners 17-40/4L being superior to the 16-35/2.8L II across the frame). It's their Scores which are biased, thus my reference to them being BS (which conveniently is an abbreviation for both Biased Scores and Bovine Scat). I don't believe I've ever 'called the entire site biased' as you imply that I've done. FWIW, I use DxO Optics Pro as my RAW converter, and since their DxOMark data are generated in the course of their sensor and lens profiling for the Optics Pro correction modules, that is 'putting my money where my mouth is' as far as my feelings on the utility of their Measurements. Nevertheless, generating biased summary metrics from generally good measurements is still bias.

A related issue is that others besides DxO pick out the Scores and report them out of context – SnapSort, DPR, etc. – propagating the bias.

Those of us who find Canon sensors limiting are - most of the time - not oblivious to the fact that you *can* make fantastic photos with almost any system.

Judging from some other posters on CR forums, it seems many people are oblivious to that simple fact, or choose to ignore it.

Your snarky comments add nothing to the conversation.

But DRones who turn any thread to the discussion of DR, or trolls who start new topics to do the same...those are what, public service announcements? :

 

[sarangiman]

Your snarky comments add nothing to the conversation.

But DRones who turn any thread to the discussion of DR, or trolls who start new topics to do the same...those are what, public service announcements? :

No, but expect a certain amount of counter-argument when Canon apologists start touting broad generalizations like 'DR doesn't matter b/c Canon's doing just fine' and uncontrolled unscientific comparisons/claims like 'oh look at this shadow recovery example I did therefore Canon's just fine' or blanket statements like 'the 5D3 AF system is superior to Nikon', etc. Extending sometimes to as broad a generalization as: "Canon 5D3 is a more capable camera overall'. Or myths like 'Canon high ISO is better' or 'use DPP for more DR' (and on that latter note: those differences are simply down to the type & extent of NR).

These myths often persist b/c of erroneous information constantly propagated on forums such as these.

I'd say the reason that some feel the need to step in & make people aware of some of this stuff is b/c perhaps, many years ago, they were mislead by the same myths that keep recycling.

On the specific topic of DR: at least now, on these forums, there's a general awareness & acceptance of the DR differences (albeit usually accompanied with a bitter 'let's not talk about it anymore' sentiment). I remember when years ago people had to fight just to get their clear, controlled comparisons showing the vast DR differences - and implications - accepted. Over and over again, persistently, just to convince people of what would be clear if you just did a proper side-by-side.

And now you complain it's brought up too often... anytime anyone mentions it.

Talk about a Catch 22...

 

[Loswr]

On the specific topic of DR: at least now, on these forums, there's a general awareness & acceptance of the DR differences (albeit usually accompanied with a bitter 'let's not talk about it anymore' sentiment). I remember when years ago people had to fight just to get their clear, controlled comparisons showing the vast DR differences - and implications - accepted. Over and over again, persistently, just to convince people of what would be clear if you just did a proper side-by-side.

And now you complain it's brought up too often... anytime anyone mentions it.

Personally, I've always believed DxO's data on the better low ISO DR of Nikon vs. Canon sensors. What I questioned – and continue to question – is the overall relevance of that difference. IMO, it falls into the 'nice to have' category.

 

[Loswr]

Personally, I've always believed DxO's data on the better low ISO DR of Nikon vs. Canon sensors. What I questioned – and continue to question – is the overall relevance of that difference. IMO, it falls into the 'nice to have' category.

That's because you don't seem to consider what that additional DR is really useful for. It usually doesn't change the outcome.

—snip—

More DR, less work. More DR, more flexibility. More DR, more recoverable botched shots. That's really what it's about. Not just the end result...but the journey to the end result.

What makes you tihnk I haven't considered it? Let's take your desctiption of the utility of more DR: less work, more flexibility, usually doesn't change the outcome. That's a quintessential example of 'nice to have', which is exactly how I described it.

The DR debate, as I understand it now, has never been about what you can ultimately achieve...the DR debate has always been about how you achieve it, and the amount of effort required to achieve it.

That's a bit of revisionist history. The DR debate on these forums has been all about Canon sensors are old, outdated tech, Sony/Nikon sensors are modern and better and can do things you just can't do with Canon sensors. Note that I'm talking about the debate as it has existed for years on these forums, not about your current viewpoint on the issue.

 

[sarangiman]

At the moment the big differences are just at low ISO. Low ISO is generally the realm of different kinds of photography, photography where it's difficult to impossible to actually control the lighting, and where dynamic range can easily surpass 11-12 stops...and the differences really are significant. Maybe it's just the number "two" stops of DR. Two is a small number, it doesn't seem all that meaningful. It is a factor of four difference in the range of usable tonal levels. Four is still a "small" number...so when you get right down to it, it's basically the difference between having 12-bit or a 14-bit data...now THAT number is big. That number is 12,288...which is a really big number. That number is a better indication of the differences between a Canon sensor and an Exmor. If we regularly talked about differences in dynamic range with big numbers like that, maybe the real benefit of having "two more doublings" would be more obvious.

Try 3 stops of difference between the 5D3 and the D810. More if you account for FPN.

If you need DR, then I would offer that DR is more than just a nice to have. If you NEED DR, then having more DR is essential. I don't need DR in all my photography...when I do need more DR, I already have some tools that help me resolve the issues with having less...GND filters for example. HDR is another option, albeit one that is imperfect and adds work. More DR is more DR...having two more stops is huge...it's very meaningful, and much more than just a nice to have. It reduces the amount of time I have to spend figuring out which GND filters to use, how many to stack, how to blend across the contrast divide, etc. Instead of three filters, maybe I can get away with just one. With two more stops of DR, I could get away with a heavier shadow lift instead of having to apply an LR/ACR gradient filter in post. More in-camera DR, work. Less work with literal filters, less work in post.

Don't forget that GND filters are *still* useful for Exmor, to combat shot noise. You may or may not care if somewhat noisier shadows (b/c of noise in the sampling of light itself) don't bother you - since they're generally less visible.

The other way to do this for a scene that does fit within the DR of your sensor is to shoot a number of frames where you've exposed for the highlights, and then average them. This decreases shot noise (importantly: in your shadows), and allows you to then process the single averaged image. And image averaging is much easier than HDR merging - I can't stand the results most automated HDR software produce. Hence I do it all by hand. Which can be quite painful.

What I just explained above is a significantly better way to shoot HDR scenes than what I typically had to do with Canon. And the best part is - if you don't care about some shot noise in your shadows (a +3 EV push of ISO 64 shadows on the D810 is pretty much like ISO 500 FF levels of noise, which might be perfectly acceptable), then you just use your single frame.

And btw, I have a feeling the A7s has a slightly different architecture from most other Exmor sensors - giving it slightly more downstream read noise (so a bit of a base ISO DR cost, though nowhere near a Canon DSLR) and very low upstream read noise at higher ISOs (which gives it higher ISO DR). So, in a sense, it's a nice compromise btwn low ISO DR and high ISO performance. Slightly better ISO performance at ISO 25.6k doesn't matter to me, and neither does high ISO DR (since I shoot using ISO-less techniques, which actually gives the A7r more DR at higher, lower - above base ISO - DR, if that makes sense), so I prefer the A7r.

 

[sarangiman]

jrista: I think you continually refuse to accept the increase in SNR for downsampling, hence have issues with DxO's print DR. Don't know what else to say at this point. You do realize that as you average images, SNR goes up by the sqrt of the # of images averaged, yes? From this you should be able to easily mathematically prove that normalization for DR figures works.

I'm not saying that print DR are the end-all be-all, since you can chose different resolutions or just downsample using different algos & measure the normalized DR yourself. But I am saying that screen DR in no way tells the full story. It puts higher resolution sensors at an unfair disadvantage. A significant one, IMHO.

And there's some talk that the A7s uses some form of dual conversion gain circuitry to further decrease read noise at higher ISOs. There's some conjecture that it's something about this circuitry that leads to lower base ISO DR. So there are differences.

 

[Loswr]

I think you, and other people such as myself, sarangiman, LTRLI, etc. don't see it the same way. Is this a case of you assuming that your personal opinions reflect the opinions of everyone else? This is a gray area, obviously. For some, it's a meaningless nice-to-have.

Maybe it's as simple as the highlighted word above. 'Nice to have' isn't meaningless...it means (to me, that is) something I value, perhaps value highly, but is not absolutely critical. For much of what I shoot, excellent AF is critical. Excellent telephoto lenses are critical. 12 fps is nice to have. AF on my macro lens is nice to have. ISO 51200 is nice to have, ISO 204800 is dispensable. Fisheye lenses, green square mode, ALO and Picture Styles are dispensable.

 

[sarangiman]

I fully understand. I know how averaging affects SNR...it's why the stacking technique is better than HDR. It's why stacking 100 astro subs together reduces noise by a factor of 10x. I'm saying it's irrelevant as far as editing goes. You don't edit downsampled RAW images...you CAN'T downsample RAW images. You have to edit them at native size. I agree that, in the end, once you done with all your edits, you can then downsample for smaller prints or display online. However, that's after all the editing has been done. I would also offer that it's less likely that your going to downsample to 8x12 than to something smaller than that. Downsample to something smaller, say 1920x1200 or even 900x700, theoretically you gain even more DR...but, you can't really do anything with it. Your at the end of your journey...you've done all the processing your going to do. All the increase in DR means is less visible noise. Not that that's a bad thing, it's a very good thing...it's just...irrelevant as far editing latitude.

No, it's not irrelevant. Edit 'zoomed out' such that image fits on your monitor screen. There, you're editing a downsampled image.

Unless you always adjust shadows to taste at the 100% pixel level. Kind of silly with a 36MP image... unless you have a retina display.

 

[sarangiman]

I don't think downsampling tells you anything more. It doesn't tell you how much editing latitude you'll have with an actual RAW in an actual editor where your doing all the actual processing of your images.

Again, that's only true if you're editing at 1:1 pixel view. Which most people don't.

Everything else we're in agreement on. But I think you underestimate the importance of normalized comparisons.

When you're evaluating if shadows are too noisy or not - do you do that at the pixel level, or when the image zoomed to fit on your screen? Or a print? If the latter two, then it's the downsampled figures that matter (albeit, not necessarily downsampled to 8MP equivalent...)

 

[lo lite]

After 76,643,917,265 topics and 54,781,245,232,107,412 posts (and counting) in this forum about the better performance of SoNikon's sensor at base ISO, I was wondering if even SoNikonians sometimes complain, for example,
- about their Lenses price / range
- because they don't have STM lenses or Dual Pixel Autofocus
- etc.

and, in general, if SoNikonians spend more time taking pictures or complaining about their brands.

Any thoughts?

They do, read the comments here: http://nikonrumors.com/2014/09/12/nikon-d750-full-frame-dslr-camera-announced.aspx/#more-80280

Different brand, same story.