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Home >> Photography >> Digital Photography Nikon D50
D-SLR Back in 2005, I was surprised that Nikon was going to produce another D-SLR, one aimed primarily at the entry-level consumer market. I was thinking, isn’t that what the D70 and D70s cameras were targeted for? Well, foolish me to think of the D70 in that regard, but now with the D200 firmly ensconced as the D100 replacement (and then some) we can see what Nikon had intended with the D50 introduction.
Nikon went from but one consumer/prosumer offering in the D100 to three cameras that occupy clear and definite steps within the hierarchy of photographers from the beginner to serious amateur. But this does not mean that professional photographers would not be interested in supposedly consumer cameras, as there are wedding photographers using D70 cameras and many D2 series using pros have bought D200 cameras as backups.
The price is certainly attractive to buy a D70 or D50 as a secondary camera compared to buying another D200 or D2 body. Below, Canadian dollars are quoted with prices coming from the Camera Canada or the Vistek websites:
I admit that I had some presumptions about the D50 before the review process, presumptions that went against the D50 as being a serious camera. Much of this presumptuousness had to do with the consumer orientation and the reduction of features and capabilities compared to the higher priced SLR offerings from Nikon. As I found, some of the assumptions held up and some did not not. The review process was primarily in comparison to my almost four-year old D100 and using my better lenses to take some test shots, as well as for some general Vancouver-area photos. Most shots were taken in RAW format and converted through Nikon Capture (Bibble Pro was also used here and there), as that is what I shoot almost all the time when I use the D100. Also, consider this more of a field review of how the camera worked for me rather than one that gets into every aspect of its performance and features – a two-week loan period only allows you so much time to really get to know a camera and I had to gloss over some features like i-TTL flash use.
About
the D50
The D50 has a control dial on the top left side of the camera, for PSAM shooting modes, as well as some easy automated scene modes for beginning photographers; the typical portrait, landscape, and night modes amongst others. The D100 on the other hand uses its control dial for white balance, ISO, and file quality settings in addition to the PSAM modes. This was one criticism of the D100, that by putting qualitative settings on the control dial, it forced the photographer to move out of a shooting mode (PSAM) to adjust one of the other parameters. If a shot came up quickly the photographer could lose the shot because he was trying to adjust something. At first read, it seemed significant, but in practice, it was not much of an issue in my four-years of using the D100. However, I certainly do accept that it is better not to have shooting modes on the same dial as the quality settings and the D50 addresses this by having individual buttons running down the left side of the rear LCD to allow direct access to the white balance, ISO, and file quality settings. Old habits die hard and I found myself reaching for the D50’s control dial when I wanted to adjust the ISO or white balance, just as I would when using the D100. Surprisingly, I found no direct control of the metering mode and had to dig through the menu to find access to Matrx, Center, and Spot metering choices. I suppose Nikon feels that the target buyer for the D50 would not be changing the metering mode too often to warrant a dedicated button as is found on the more expensive Nikon SLRs. Speaking of menus, after using the D100 for so long, using the D50’s menu system was easy and straightforward. A potential negative against the D50 is the lack of two control dials like the D100 has where the right index finger and thumb would fall to adjust aperture and shutter values if one were to shoot in manual mode. If you’re big into manual exposure mode shooting, the D50 probably won’t be to your liking because the single command dial is defaulted to changing shutter values and you need to simultaneously push a button and turn the single command dial to change the aperture. For contemplative photography like landscapes, this is not a big deal at all because you generally work methodically and deliberately for setting your exposure value. I don’t work too often in manual exposure mode, so I didn’t find the single command dial to be as big a problem as I thought it would be. I most often work in Aperture Priority mode and thus I only need a single command dial. Therefore, another potential issue is actually a non-issue for me, and I suspect for most people out there too that aren’t still tied to their FM cameras of yester decade. I found myself using a hybrid method of shooting in manual mode where I would set the D50 to A mode to set the aperture and then quickly turn the left side dial to M mode to adjust the shutter speed. Whatever works for you. One feature that does irk me is the use of SD cards instead of compact flash. I can see a certain logic in Nikon choosing SD format because the digicam market not controlled by Sony has more or less settled on SD format as the de facto standard. And given that the D50 is an attempt to get those digicam users to upgrade to an SLR, having the D50 use SD format is an easier migration path. But, I’m a compact flash card user with the D100, so it does dampen my enthusiasm for the D50 if I were to take to its qualities and want one to supplement the D100 (or future D200). Nikon supplied a 256 MB SD card to use with the D50 and setting the camera for just RAW capture indicated that I would get 33 captures per card. However, I typically got 40-45 captures per card with files ranging from just under 5 MB to just over 6 MB in size. The 33 files likely refers to the number of maximum sized RAW files that can be captured, but as with JPEG capture, your true final count will almost always be higher based on subject matter detail varying from shot to shot. The D50’s RAW file format is compressed, which makes me a bit uneasy because compression theoretically means tossing away some data, but the D50 processes those files briskly and as long as I held a steady shooting rate, I could shoot for a good while longer than with the D100. But we do have to keep in mind that the D100 is processing files generally about twice the size, which helps to explain the relatively quick exhausting of the buffer and why the 10 MB D100 RAW files seem to drag when uploading the files to the computer via a Lexar USB 2 card reader.
The basic D50 specs aren’t too much different than the D100. The D50 is rated for 2.5 frames per second and with RAW files the buffer figure indicates three shots if shooting very quickly. The D100 is rated for 3 fps and the buffer figure also indicates three shots, but 3 fps is highly optimistic for the D100 and real world is more near 2 fps. A person coming from the digicam world to a D50 is going to find it a revelation in handling and file processing speed. Even the best digicams like the Sony F1 are pathetic when it comes to shooting RAW mode with memory buffers seemingly an afterthought to packing in everything else under the sun. Before bridge cameras like the F1 can seriously challenge the SLR, it will have to match SLR shooting speeds for RAW files. A coworker with a Nikon Coolpix 8800 has often complained about this expensive digicam not being able to keep up with his shooting needs when set to capture the highest quality JPEG file. He finds it more satisfactory shooting the CP 8800 set for 5 MP capture. He’s the kind of photographer that Nikon would love to have move on up to the SLR world with a D50. This isn't to say that you'll be shooting a lot of sports or action with the D50, because it ain't that kind of camera, but it's quite acceptable for general day-to-day photography. Other basics are 1/4000 fastest shutter speed, same as the D100, but significantly, the flash sync speed is an incredible 1/500 compared to 1/180 in the D100. I always thought setting such a slow flash sync speed was brutal for the D100 given it’s prosumer status and popularity with many pros back in its day. Today we have a bit of a weird situation where the professional level cameras from Nikon (D2 series and D200) flash sync at 1/250, but the D50 and D70s at the lower end of the lineup offer 1/500. The D50 arrived in what I’d expect to be factory default settings. Program Auto mode, single frame capture, focus priority set, auto pop-up flash on, and JPEG capture. Not at all how I would setup my own cameras. After setting the D50 to the same kind of settings as the D100 then I found that it’s not such a bad little camera after all. Go from JPEG to RAW mode, pop-up flash off, continuous focus priority turned on, continuous frame rate turned on, focus assist light off, and a biggie, remove focusing from the shutter release button to the AF/AE button at the back. For those that edit and print their own photos, make sure that the color space is set for Color Mode II, which is Adobe RGB. For the consumer users, setting the D50 to one of the sRGB modes is more appropriate given that most will probably take their files straight to a mini lab using a Fuji Frontier or Noritsu digital printing system, and these systems output their best with sRGB tagged files. In normal use, I found little to differentiate the D50 with the D100 other than the smaller physical size. Frame wise and shot to shot, the D50 wasn’t much different, but it is very fast in formatting the SD card compared to the several seconds it takes the D100 to format a card – even after taking into account the larger capacity cards I use with the D100. Shutter noise of the D50 is different than the D100 with the D50 sounding more raw and mechanical compared to the dampened and smooth sound of the D100's shutter.
Handling Just because your hands are small does not mean that we hold onto most things with a tightly clenched fist, like with a hammer. For cameras, I like my right hand to be splayed comfortably around the grip and that means needing a grip height about double what a clenched fist would need. If I were a D50 owner and a vertical grip was available for it, I’d buy it immediately. The D50’s rubber cup around the viewfinder is nicer than the stock D100 rubber surround. I used to have an accessory eyecup for the D100 that made it more comfortable to use, but I have to remind myself to replace it after losing it a little while back. As with the D100, the D50’s focus selector pad is small and feels cheap compared to the pad found on my F100 film camera. I was surprised that pushing the pad in one direction did not allow the focus point to continue cycling to the opposite side as is the case with the D100. What I mean is that with the D100 when I press down on say the right side of the focus selector pad, the active AF point will shift to the right focus point. Pushing it again will move the active AF point to the left side, and as long as I keep pushing on the selector pad, the active AF point continues to cycle through right to left, or left to right, or top to bottom, or bottom to top. With the D50, no such cycling occurs. The rubber grip of the D50 doesn’t feel quite as nice as the D100, but that’s a pretty minor grouse. Overall the two cameras feel largely the same, but the D100 does have the edge with more metal parts construction whereas the D50 is pretty much all polycarbonate. I’m less intense about plastic construction these days than my younger days, but I’d still prefer more metal than plastic for my cameras and lenses.
Metering The D50 does not follow this tradition of conservative Matrix metering. When I first looked at the test shots for high ISO performance I was thinking, wow, everything people said about the D50’s high ISO performance is true, the noise is minimal compared to my D100. Normal ISO 200 photos seemed wonderfully saturated and bright compared to the D100’s drab looking images, but upon closer scrutiny of all aspects of the D50’s image capture, I saw that the D50 was actually biased for shadow detail and highlights that were preserved by the D100 were blown out by the D50. Ask most serious amateur and professional photographers how they would prefer their meter to be biased and I suspect nearly all would say that preservation of highlights is more important and that they would prefer a camera that underexposes than overexposes. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been photographers that would not prefer overexposure. Wedding and portrait photographers that shot the low contrast negative films would often underrate the marked ISO to in effect overexpose the film for better shadow detail. However, digital capture is not like negative film, it’s like slide film and slide films are finicky about exposure. Once I got a handle on what the D50 was doing metering wise and after I equalized the exposure and white balance with the D100 then I was doing an apples to apples comparison and could see what the D50 is capable of. With equal settings, the D50 is still better for saturated colors and even better than the D100 for preserving highlights (with slight blockage of the shadows), as seen in the sample shots below. For photographers doing some serious work, close inspection of the histogram and some judicious minus compensation will be the order of the day. How much minus compensation is dependent on the lighting and subject matter. In bright sunlight conditions, I found minus 1.7 stops to be about right, but in overcast conditions, it might be as little as minus 1/3 of a stop and in controlled, constant lighting conditions, the meter might actually be bang on. A bit of an enigma until you get a handle on what the meter does under a variety of shooting conditions and shooting RAW definitely helps to retain some post-production control.
Resolution After checking out the first sets of photos, it became rather obvious that the D50 uses an anti-aliasing filter that is weaker than the one used in the D100. Images have superior sharpness; however, there is also a greater risk of moiré artifacts and color fringing. I didn’t set out to purposely test for moiré, some of my test subjects just happen to have the right type of detail to reveal the artifacts quite easily. If you shoot RAW you can edit to minimize the artifacts, but it comes at a cost of resolution as the editing filter softens the details, as seen below. If the D100 can be considered too aggressive with its anti-aliasing filter then the D50 is too conservative and a user will have to be aware of the type of subject matter and detailing that will show off such artifacts. Rather than lose the sharpness and resolution of the file through software filtering, I’d rather convert the image to B&W if the subject matter causes the moiré to be seen.
In reviewing prints made from the D50 and D100 of the industrial scene (using the 70-200 VR lens), at 8x10 size the differences are noticeable when purposely looking for them, but it's less apparent than viewing at 100-percent magnification on the monitor. The D50 provides a crisper print, but the D100 holds its own at this print size. I also interpolated the files to 12x18 inch equivalent and printed crops at letter size for comparison. At this print size, again, the D50 is crisper, but the D100 can still hold its own and to my eyes, does not give all that much to the newer camera.
High
ISO Performance I’ve used ISO 1600 with the D100 regularly for professional and personal photography and it’s always been with a bit of queasiness because of the amount of noise seen before judicious processing through a noise reduction program like Noise Ninja. Some people question why high ISO should be an issue at all since even the D100’s ISO 1600 can still produce usable, printable photos. True, we’ve become spoiled and ever more greedy, but if we become complacent we won’t be putting any pressure on the camera companies to improve their wares. The D50 offers up to ISO 1600 with no provision for a High 1 or High 2 as with the D100 that correlates to ISO 3200 and ISO 6400 (neither of which is usable IMO). There are also no intermediate steps between the full stop ISO settings of 200, 400, 800, and 1600. This is no big deal to me as it’s much easier to think in full stops than half or third stop increments. I rarely use intermediate settings on the D100 because I usually need as much shutter speed as I can squeak out of the high ISO settings. The D50’s high ISO performance is, compared to the D100, potentially stunning in the right conditions. In low ambient light shooting, I see nearly a full stop improvement in noise levels from the D50 over the D100, as in the D50’s ISO 1600 is more like the D100’s ISO 800 noise. In brighter ambient light conditions, the differences are less stunning, but the D50 still serves up better noise performance while maintaining good resolution compared to the D100. My sample shots were taken in the same room, but at different times with the low light shots taken with just overhead incandescent lighting. The other shots were taken during the daytime with indirect sunlight. First sets of sample shots were taken in low ambient light levels, requiring the cameras to use their built-in noise reduction process for some of the shots. Room was lit by overhead incadescent bulbs.
Second set of images were taken during daytime with no noise reduction required of the cameras. The results are less dramatic than the first sets of samples taken in low ambient light conditions, but still shows the superiority of the D50 over the D100, especially for resolution.
Flash
Use Built-in flash units are not powerful because they have to be compact and can take a while to recharge if you’re popping them off at or near maximum output. Where they can be useful though is for outdoor fill flash where large power output is not necessary unless the subject is very distant, but then a built-in flash unit isn’t going to help in such circumstances anyway. If I’m going to spend a good chunk of coin to buy a D-SLR, I’d definitely pay a little extra to get an external flash unit like an SB600 for consumers or an SB800 for advanced photographers. An SB600 flash unit was supplied for review. I used it a few times, but I didn’t really get into doing too much flash photography with the D50. I did some quick snaps of the family indoors and outdoors to see how i-TTL works compared to D-TTL with the D100. I didn’t have enough time to get into checking out any of the funky CLS lighting capabilities of the SB800 and SB600 and likely won’t until I buy my own D200 and additional SB800 units. For outdoor fill flash, the SB600 with D50 produced more natural looking flash illumination than the D100 with the SB600. Nikon’s i-TTL appears to finally be the real deal in giving its users fill flash photos like we got using Nikon film cameras and any Nikon flash unit since the SB25 and avoids the problems of D-TTL output of older Nikon D-SLRs. Direct flash used indoors is a necessary evil, but if you can bounce the light then the evil is tamed and you can get nicer looking flash-lit photos.
Usage On a tripod, the smaller physical size and lack of dual command dials were of no consequence. It would have been nice for Nikon to have included a 10-pin connector so that I could use my MC-30 remote cord, but I also like the idea of a wireless remote trigger too. Nicer still if the wireless remote was included and not an extra cost optional accessory. For handholding shots, while I would prefer a taller handgrip, I got used to the size quickly and could manage without any problems for good grip although my right pinkie would sometimes be left hanging, seeking a grip. With the D50 using the same type of rechargeable Li-ion cell as the D100, I just used my own EN-EL3 batteries during the review period. With one of my four-year old cells, the D50 started to show less than full charge after about 700 frames (with minimal chimping and file review on the LCD) had been taken and then only the very first battery section was down. This indicates acceptable battery life and I like the low battery indicator popping up in the viewfinder to warn you to be ready for popping in a fresh cell. Nearing 800 frames had the battery indicator down to about half and after about 900 frames I was down to the last battery life indicator, so I’d expect at least a thousand frames per charge using the camera regularly. I didn’t actually drain the battery down to nothing because I needed to recharge for some early morning shots in low light and the last thing you need is a dead proprietary battery in a digital camera. 1000 frames isn’t as much as it sounds these days, not when the D2X can go for 2000 plus frames on a single charge, but still, 1000 is going to be plenty for most everyday users of the D50 and remember, I was using my own old cell for quick convenience. One of the features I really like with the D100 is the on-demand grid lines that help to keep lines straight and it would have been nice to have this available for the D50. Some abhor this feature because they feel that it diminishes the brightness of the viewfinder for manual lens focusing. While I don’t have much issue with the viewfinder some people do and it’s the squeaky wheels that get greased and I’m sure the better viewfinder of the D200 is a result of all the squeaks about the D100/D70/D50 viewfinder quality. Viewfinder quality has diminished since the 1970s due to auto focus technology and the need to reduce costs in production for consumer level cameras. However, because of my lack of history with manual focus lenses and because I don’t wear glasses, I don’t have the same demand for an expensive all glass, high eye point, high contrast viewfinder in a low cost entry-level camera that should also wake me up in the morning and brew me a cup of espresso (with tongue firmly in cheek).
Shooting
in JPEG Mode RAW versus JPEG has been hashed repeatedly and I’m not going to repeat the argument here because I’m a confirmed RAW shooter, but because the D50 is an entry-level camera, it stands to reason that most of its intended user base will shoot in JPEG mode, just as they did with a digicam. Thus,
as any good reviewer should, I used the
D50 the way I figured a typical D50 buyer would use it in the beginning. I walked around downtown
After the first session, I was a bit dismayed at seeing some of the exposures after loading them into the computer and checking them out with Nikon View. While the bias for the shadows was appropriate for some exposures, in others, highlights were blown out. Then I recalled that Bibble Pro provided the ability to edit JPEG files as if they were RAW files. I fired up Bibble Pro and the image files were instantly looking better as the way Bibble was rendering the JPEGs was more convervative than Nikon View. I had set the white balance for cloudy so I was fine for that and while Bibble Pro provides a highlight recovery tool, I was seeing a little less blow out in most of the images than in Nikon View. However, I still tweaked the exposure compensation downwards, about 1/3 of a stop down in most cases. Bibble Pro is not only a great RAW converter, but also a great JPEG editor and for people big into JPEG capture instead of RAW, definitely worth a look and tryout. However, for my own shooting needs I’d still prefer the greater range of tonality available from 16-bit RAW files than from 8-bits with JPEGs. For
another outing, I was in the same cloudy, rainy conditions as the
first session, but I used the 28-70 f2.8 AF-S lens instead of the kit lenses. While I had no concerns about
the big pro lens being used in the rain, the D50 is not noted to
have any weather sealing like Nikon’s professional bodies; however,
a little bit of rain did it no harm. I used the same ISO 400 setting as before, but having a fast f2.8
aperture available was definitely appreciated and needed for some
of the shots I took in the back alleys of
The JPEG files that didn’t suffer from blown highlights looked pretty good and I’d expect excellent looking 4x6 prints from a mini lab. I printed some unedited JPEGs with the Epson R2400 at slightly smaller than 4x6 size (4 per letter sized sheet) and the prints were very crisp with nice colors. After editing some of the JPEGs through Bibble Pro and/or Photoshop, I ran off some larger prints using letter sized and 11x17-size paper (6.7x10 and 10x15 inch photos). These larger prints still maintained good crispness given that some were handheld shots and where I thought some of the prints went soft could be chalked off to shallow depth of field of the lenses and apertures used.
Summary One concern is the metering bias to bring up shadow details at the expense of the highlights. If I seem to make much of blown highlights, it’s an outcome of four-years of D100 use and conservative metering, as well as being influenced by repeated admonitions to retain highlight detail. Certainly push the histogram as far to the right as possible to ensure that you’re using as much dynamic range available in the digital file, but don’t blow out the highlights. The D50’s metering bias is the opposite of Nikon’s traditionally conservative approach to metering that favored preserving the highlights at the expense of the shadow details. The traditional approach makes imminent sense because it’s easier to bring up and reveal shadow detail than it is to try and recover blown out highlights. While Bibble Pro and Nikon Capture offer tools to recover highlights, how likely is it that a beginning photographer will know about highlight recovery and which tools to use to do so? For the serious amateur or professional, seeing an image file that seems darker than it should be is not a big deal, because we’re expecting or expected to do some post production work with our files. However, the consumer-level photographer shooting JPEGs is likely to prefer image files that come out looking good straight from the camera and into the one-hour lab for printing 4x6 prints. On this basis, I can understand why Nikon chose to bias the D50’s meter to produce a brighter looking picture straight away. For photographers like me, it means that if we desire to buy and use a D50, I’ll have to be a bit more careful paying attention to the histogram or consider minus compensation in most shooting conditions. Another concern is a give and take. Nikon gave us sharper photos straight out of the camera thanks to the use of a weaker anti-aliasing filter, but this takes away from the ability to effectively control moiré and color fringing. Given my experience with the D100 and its stronger filter, I’m use to doing generous unsharp masking of those files and I can’t recall ever coming across any harsh artifacts like I saw very quickly with the D50. Given the difficulty in controlling those artifacts post-capture, I’m in favor of stronger filters and stronger sharpening being applied – I don’t necessarily mean as strong as the D100, but a midway compromise. The biggest potential issue for me, so far as when I would want to use a D50 (wedding shoots in dark churches), is the lack of shutter release control when the D50’s auto focus points are over a subject that doesn’t have enough contrast to allow the D50 to AF. This is not what I’d expect with the camera set to AF-C mode where the bias is suppose to be on shutter release priority rather than the focus priority of AF-S mode. Much of the perspective that I write from is that of a part-time wedding photographer. Although I’m not terribly busy at the moment (early spring 2006), wedding photography is always a major consideration in the purchasing decisions I make and which tools would help me do my shoots. I can live with dialing in some minus compensation to workaround the metering. I can live with converting moiré afflicted images to B&W as a workaround and I would love to have the D50’s better high ISO performance for low light wedding shoots, but I would find it difficult to live with a camera that won’t release the shutter when I want it to if I just happen to be focusing on a low contrast subject. However, I need to be mindful of demanding too much of the D50 when I should more appropriately be looking at Nikon’s top-end D-SLRs. With those three main negatives out of the way, the one aspect of the D50’s performance that struck me and could still make it a compelling purchase is the high ISO performance. The noise level at high ISO settings can be remarkable and easily best the D100 at ISO 1600. Beyond these image quality factors, the initial concern about the D50’s lack of features is a non-issue for the way I set up and use my cameras. A dual-command dial camera is a convenience, but not a factor in a decision to buy or not. The use of SD cards would be a bigger factor in my personal buying decision and that’s only because I already have a SLR using compact flash cards and my future D-SLR upgrade will also use compact flash cards. For those that demand more from the camera, they should be looking at the D200 or D2 series of pro cameras as being the appropriate tools for use in demanding environments with commensurate performance. For the intended market Nikon is catering the D50 towards, consumers wanting better quality than high-end digicams, the D50 has a good mix of features and capabilities and the various D50 kit prices are competitive with high-end digicams that can’t match the speed, handling, and high ISO performance of the D50. Given the choice between say the Sony R1 and the D50 with a kit lens, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that I’d take the D50 that offers much better flexibility and ability to grow with you as one develops as a photographer.
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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The
D50 is noticeably smaller than the D100 without as many buttons, but
does have a larger two-inch LCD at the back. It has a built-in flash
that automatically pops up unless you adjust a custom function to stop
this behavior. After discovering this trait, 
The
D50 is about as small an SLR as 
