Part 3 – Harsh Lighting

Full Frame or micro 4/3rds

Real world usage of Full Frame and m4/3 – Part One, Images for Very Large Print

Part 3 – Harsh Lighting

Happened to be in front of the statue with the Sun directly behind the Theodore Thomas Head.

http://chicago-outdoor-sculptures.blogspot.com.br/2007/09/spirit-of-music.html

Manually exposed for the front of shaded region using light meter. Both the camera’s got the shade correctly exposed. But the background is fully washed out. With D810 I can bring reasonable blue sky. 

If exposed for the background I  got the image like this..

Though the images looks the same I can recover most of the information from the Nikon sensor to get a very usable image.

Final Image, with the shadows recovered.

When I select print quality crop..

 

Conclusion

I know Full Frame sensor will be better for dynamic range, but didn’t realize I could recover shadows from D810 even when literally shooting at the sun and get an image good enough for 24″ x 30″ prints.

m4/3 is not that bad either, I can use it for computer viewing not really for large print, unless I use flash to fill the shadows.

For this shot though I wish I had the Df sensor, D810 has real clear advantage for this kind of images.

My Preference : D810, no questions.. 

On to Part 4 – Inside Museums…