Nikon D700 and Nikon D60: Comparing Image Quality

This is a semi-technical article, comparing the image quality of the Nikon D700 and the Nikon D60 in controlled lighting conditions.

If you don’t want to plough through the details, the cropped images from the two cameras are at the end of this article – take a look and let me know what you think.

Why We Are Interested In Cameras At Quillcards
All the photographs for the ecards here at Quillcards are ours and unique to this site. That means that we have more than a passing interest in cameras. As always, it is a balance between cost, weight, image quality, ruggedness, and ease of use.

From 'The Friendly Horse' Series
From 'The Friendly Horse' Series

Cameras We Have Used
The cameras we have used are the Nikon D200, The Nikon P5100, the Nikon D60, and more recently – the Nikon D700.

The P5100 is a high-end compact camera that is able to make high-quality photographs, provided the overall contrast of the scene is not too great and it is well and evenly lit. The others are digital Single Lens Reflex cameras.

There is no question in my mind that when looking at photographs taken with the D700, they are the most pleasing to the eye. Take, for example, the photo above from the series shot for The Friendly Horse article on this blog.

The superior image quality of the D700 is due to a number of factors, including the dynamic range the camera is capable of containing and the way the processor translates the signal into color and tonal gradations.

So here are the photographs of a flower taken with the Nikon D700 and the D60. You may be able to see differences in the images. To see the differences properly however, one has to see either large size printed photographs or 100% crops on screen – hence the crops at the end of this article.

Nikon D700
Nikon D700
Nikon D60
Nikon D60

It is not a big surprise that the D700 outperforms the other cameras. It is the latest incarnation of a line of cameras that have been building on the qualities of the ones that came before. What we have now with the D700 is a camera that is in a class of its own at high ISO, being virtually noise-free at ISO 1600.

The greater dynamic range of the D700 means it should cope with high-contrast scenes better than the D60 does. That has been my experience.

A Controlled Scene
However, I thought it would be instructive to see how the two cameras dealt with a controlled scene.

By ‘controlled’ I mean where the overall contrast across the scene from the lightest to the darkest point is not too great and where the micro contrast – the contrast between adjacent parts of the scene – is also not too great.

Of course, the Nikon D700 has a full-frame sensor, whereas D60 has a smaller APC size sensor. This means that the angle of view of the D60 is smaller.

However, the Nikon 35mm AF-S f1.8 lens on a Nikon D60 ‘sees’ more or less the same view as a Nikon 50mm f1.8 on the Nikon D700.

The Test
So I set both cameras on a tripod at aperture priority at f8. I set the D700 at ISO 200 and the D60 at ISO 100 as these are the lowest base ISO settings for the two cameras.

In order to control the light, I chose a scene lit by window light diffused through a large translucent shade.

I photographed a flower because – in my opinion – natural objects are better subjects than man-made images for showing the capability of a camera to capture images faithfully.

I produced the best image I could from each RAW file. That involved moving the exposure slider a little more in Camera Raw for the D60 because it underexposed the image slightly, but apart from that the settings for both images were the same.

The Results
The D60 set a shutter speed of 5/10 of a second while the D700 set a shutter speed of 4/10 of a second. As the ISO of the D700 was twice that of the D60, one could say that the shutter speed of the D700 ‘should’ have been half that of the D60, or vice versa.

However, the view of the scene varied slightly between the two camera-lens combinations. This is because the multiplier factor of the D60 is 1.5, and that means the equivalent focal length of the 35mm lens is 52.5mm – slightly different from the angle of view of the 50mm lens on the D700.

Therefore there is more of the white background in the scene ‘seen’ by one camera compared to the other, which could affect how it sees the scene in terms of how much exposure it needs.

I could have set the exposure compensation in the camera, but I decided to set both cameras to the same settings (apart from base ISO) and make any changes post capture, in Photoshop.

So here are the crops of the central area of the image.

Nikon D700 Crop
Nikon D700 Crop
Nikon D60 Crop
Nikon D60 Crop

What do you think? What difference can you see in the scene as rendered by the two cameras?

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