Question ... I'm used to my D3, where they didn't even HAVE a screen for the LCD on the back. On the D600/610, how many folks use the little plastic screen and how many don't? Is it really ... needed?

Neil

The power and performance of the D610 is enough to satisfy just about any photographer. It still offers the same smaller and lighter body of the D600, but keeps the performance and image capabilities of a full-frame camera. The lightning fast AF system features 39 points and works all the way down to f/8, giving you more capabilities with long lenses and converters.

http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-reviews/nikon/d610-dslr/nikon-d610-dslr-review.html

The D600/610 cameras are really quite nice rigs. Using them in professional portrait work, studio & environmental, with needs for images to 40x60 inches, they're fast to set and work with, easy to adjust, and the image quality is a joy.

Do you have some stills to show?

Why bother taking up bandwidth though ... the small files one uses on the 'net do not really show how they look when large prints are made, so ... if someone wants to see the kind of things we do with them, they can go to our websites. :)

Just show here smaller images with link to full size ones.

As a portrait photog, the main image quality I've been concerned with is how prints and especially large ones appear to the viewer. Haven't figured out anyway to get that on the 'net, even if you post a connection to a digital file of that size, now ... pixel peepers tend to love that.

Sorry, I not completely understand. Good photo is good photo.

Plus all printed photos are by default inferior by gamut and DR just due to tech limitations.

Quite the other way around. No monitor can come close to a silver print on chemical processed photo paper. Also, a monitor is shining colors at you, a printed photo reflects colors.

You are incorrect as use emotions instead of data. Printed photos parameters are easy to measure - they have inferior and limited gamut and limited DR. You can just go any check test of photo printers (used for most exhibitions now) or photo papers.

I'll let rNeil weigh in on the technical comparison. The point is still valid, if a photographer shoots his work to be printed, if even using the lowest tech printing technology, then that is how he wants it viewed and though.

I do not understand that is "shoots his work to be printed". I can understand color accuracy requirement, even requirement of monitor/paper size (it is more debatable, but still). But not understand idea of shooting anything so it'll be only printed on paper.

Also, Vitaliy, you're not really thinking about what I'm saying. Are you looking to argue? Prints reflect color/luma, monitors shine it at you. You can't get around that ;)

:-) Btw, it is partly because reflection color/DR is always inferior :-)

@Vitaliy_Kiselev

I think maxotics understands my thoughts more easily than you have, and I appreciate his comments. I don't approach this from a technician's standpoint, but one based more on the emotional response to my work. Many people my wife and I know ASSUME that because we are professional portrait photographers we are essentially camera nuts. That we do this because we love playing with cameras, and will therefore point the cameras at anything and everything. Which always has us shaking our heads.

Cameras are a tool ... and however much we appreciate fine tools, that's ALL they are ... an inanimate object we use as part of a process to create that which is far more important than the tools involved. We rarely take our cameras anywhere but where we are working.

In our photos, what we are about is making something that when hung on the walls of someone's living space (home, apartment, whatever) changes the ENTIRE mood and feel of that space. Something visible easily anywhere in the room, and that SAYS something about the people in the image AND the people living in that space. We found out many years ago that the size of the intended image as far as viewing goes compared to the distance of viewing makes a HUGE difference in how one composes that image. An image meant to be viewed comfortably at say a two-meter diagonal from anywhere in a 4 meter by 6 meter room needs a different composition than the same subject designed to be seen close-up in something say 8" by 10".

Our work is all about emotional impact, not pretty or detailed pictures.

When we choose images for PPA competition, we also need to be aware of the size of the image/proportions & size of subjects/distance of judges from screen or print ... all of that ... while choosing and prepping images for that competition.

Now, video ... that's a different beast, isn't it? It's one I'm just getting into, professionally, and of course ... most everything I've done and will for some time is destined for monitors and tv's and yes, smartphones at times. And it's very interesting to go back and forth. I now do some blending of stills and live-action video in the same product ... and the composition choices are different than what I've done for years. Intriguing, a good challenge, and something I do expect to master ... although maybe not this year. A lot of work at it, but mastery even in a small craftsman's ways, does take time.

Neil

Vitaliy and others ... one of the things that we struggled with earlier in our careers was figuring out how to create an image like some of our more experienced peers clearly did ... that when displayed on a wall in a home simply dominated the space, and set a mood for the room. It wasn't just a size issue. We could have our family or individual portraits printed that large, and they did NOT have the same feel. It took classes with those who did this consciously and practice and experience to get "it" down.

And that is what we've been about for lo these many years. Not making pretty pictures, that's easy enough. But designing an image that takes over a room and sets the mood a family wants there. It starts with knowing the minimum and "average" distance of the eventual viewers once the image is placed in the intended location. It's knowing how head-size relates to the emotional reaction of a viewer at the appropriate distances. How body language of those in the image needs to relate to how the friends and family of that person see them in "reality". The use of space ... both filled and empty ... to give dimension and "placement" of the subject in the room besides in the image and the frame (if a frame is used).

Think of it as a combination of graphic design on a wall/room-size base, thrown in with psychological understanding of humans relating to images of humans, coupled with a knowledge of actual photo-image composition and technical capability. Applied right, we can plan, execute, and create an image or even a group of images that emotionally command a room, giving it a particular emotional feel. One that is comfortable for viewers most anywhere in the room without the need to approach the image, yet ... when approached to say a meter (think of it as over a couch or tables or bookcase) is still comfortable to look at. Head-sizes still not overlarge compared to the space the image occupies, but comfortable views of the eyes (if shown) and expression from anywhere.

I've known a number of shooters for gallery exhibition, and talked with a few owners of galleries. Wow. Most of them are (to me) people who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing. Far more interested in who's signature is in a corner than what the image really is. One owner did stand out, had a marvelous time listening to him. And his biggest problem? Getting his client to buy the right image for where they were going to put the blame thing. He was the only gallery owner/shooter I've known who actually took that final location into account.

His clients would decide they wanted an image and he'd ask what they were going to do with it. The vast majority of the time, the place/space they were talking about would be ca-ca for that image ... but how about this image over there? No ... they wanted that image ... and they'd take it home ... and then complain it just didn't look as good there as in his gallery for some reason. Well, of course it didn't. Which didn't say anything about the intrinsic quality of that image ... just that the particular space it had been placed in was stupid for that image.

The aesthetics of placement matter. Unless of course one has no sense of aesthetics, then any durn print anywhere is as good as any other. Those aren't my clients, of course. Particularly they won't pay enough to make a living working with them.

I would note, in the motion picture realm, there are entire long discussions about the placement of content and background within the parameters of the edge of a theatre screen. You better believe the director is thinking about content placement, color palettes, viewer distance and comfort levels affected by normal human emotional reaction to visual elements. You better believe they take many of the same things into account we've learned to.

Neil

Your comments about field-of-vision and all are spot-on the sorts of things we were drilled on in learning to shoot for the emotions & aesthetics of image placement in a particular space. For a specific person/family. I am so used to thinking that way with a camera that i have to "stop" my brain in that just to take family snapshots. "Just take the dang picture, twerp!" I have to think at times. Talk about programmed brain.

Vitaliy has suggested perhaps a new discussion over in "skills" about portrait/people photography and the problems, ideas, and solutions that one finds. Might do so. And you are right, most modern cameras are so quick and easy to make images with we shoot too much and think too little. My wife and I are as guilty of that at times as anyone. Sigh.

Back when shooting Mamiya RB67 Pro-S cameras, 120/220 roll-film from 1977-2003, it cost about USD $1.25 per image exposed between film and processing to proofing images, whether 4x5 prints or the little "slides" that were positives on clear film to use in standard slide projector that we normally used. That 10 exposure roll cost me $12.50 to get ready for presentation to clients ... except oh yea, someone had to take a couple minutes to match and number negatives and proofs by hand. By the time we took 20 images (common session) we had $30- $35 hard costs before the client saw an image. Really helped us think before shooting!

Neil

Video sample - http://www.3dnews.ru/assets/external/illustrations/2013/12/23/789990/DSC_2575.MOV

http://www.3dnews.ru/789990

@LPowell

Nikon has never handled such issues differently. They seem to be an engineer-driven company in many ways ... and when there are either questions as to problems with a released model or decisions as to how the features are applied ... even in their top-of-the-line "pro" models among their top pro shooters! ... they get terribly testy and silent. Their reaction is of one who doesn't like to have their problems EVER discussed in public, nor their design choices and decisions questioned. They know who they are, and that is someone who makes the finest technical masterpieces that anyone who knows what they know could possibly want.

That there are those out there who might not agree with them is irrelevant. Or seems to be. Wish it weren't so, but ... that's the way it is.

I've known of shooters in the 'still' segment who were on NDA's and early-testing of pre-release brand new single-digit-line cameras. Who were dumped from that post simply because the engineers they met with did NOT appreciate being told that a function or feature ... wasn't. As implemented. And needed a change in implementation.

My D3 is one of the most amazing professional tools I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Also ... a few frustrations. Such as ... there are two different "banks" for storing operator-chosen settings. Way cool idea, right? Not so ... well as one would like to see it implemented, however. Go into the camera, chose a name for each of the 8 setting banks, the options that each one gets ... and now go work with the camera.

Say you've got one you've called up, but while working, you change some setting on the camera that can be saved to that bank. Good job ... you've now changed the settings stored in that bank. Then what good is all that time spent creating those banks? Zero zip nada.

Several of their pre-release testers complained of the inability to lock in a "bank" once you'd set it ... and attempted to explain and even demonstrate how, with the way pros need to adjust on the fly, that negated any value in setting up the banks. What they got were stony stares ... the engineers KNEW they were right, and that this photog was a rude idiot. These photogs, as several at least complained. One strenuously enough that on the second meeting with the engineers over his testing of the not-yet-released camera, when he mentioned again the problem with the non-lockable banks, they simply got up and left the room. Meeting over. And within days, his NDA/internal-connection was hosed and he was persona non grata ... and left assuming that this had been the final straw in his relationship with Nikon.

So ... this isn't any different. You're right, it's a bad way to run things especially in this time and typical public perspective. But it's so Nikon.

Neil

@maxotics

Yea, we just need to pic & choose eyes wide-open. Our Nikon gear has all worked very well for us. And we've run quite a bit ... including two Fuji S5 cameras that were of course mid-Nikon bodies with Fuji sensor/electronics. Those ran for years in our studio and that of a friend's. D200, D3, D600's ... and a bunch of Nikon, Tammy & Sigma glass. As a user, I don't have close connections to the engineers. Probably a good thing.

The one thing about being an early-tester is ... supposedly, you're there to rag the crap out of the thing and tell them what it was like for you in your part of the professional world to use the thing. One supposes the engineers are actually expecting you to tell 'em what you think, and how it works for a photographer and not for an engineer. For the engineers to summarily dismiss any discussion about a particular choice of usage on their part and be totally unwilling to even listen to the photographers they hired is ... churlish? ... on their part. Or at least a sub-optimal choice.

Yea, I set up the banks of my D3 on purchase ... tried using them a time or two and gave up. Totally useless "feature", and could have been fixed in firmware.

The D600/610 "user setting" banks, even though there are only two of them ... are SO much more useful because they ARE "locked-down". Finally. Wish they'd go so far as to give a new D3 firmware revision so my cam could have that ... ah well.

Ain't none of us past mistakes, that's for sure. :)

Neil