Nikon D200 for Documentary Photography - Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

What I don't like

Image quality issues - these have been batted around and generally discussed to death - basically, as far as I'm concerned these comprise, limited Dynamic range (I used to think film had a low range), "banding" in high contrast areas and a hearty helping of purple fringing with certain lens and aperture combinations, noise at high ISO as well as "hot pixels", especially when using high ISO. Below is an example of the banding issues I've had with the camera - and my opinion of the of the importance of these issues. Having used this camera now to make a reasonable number of images I can live with all of the above "issues" without any worries. I'm not put off.

I believe that the banding characteristics of the camera have been alleviated with later production models and this should certainly not put anyone off purchasing a D200. My main advice from an image quality point of view if you're moving from film would be to make sure you appreciate the likely differences in dynamic range. Digital technology is improving all the time and I hope this is an area that will be developed further in the future. From what I've read elsewhere it seems the latest Fuji bodies have gone a long way to improving on dynamic range but this has required other compromises to be made that would still cause me to favour the D200 for the time being (primarily frame rate).

Battery life. I have to say that I find this surprisingly short lived. On the plus side the recharge time is fast and using a second battery I've never run out of power during use. It's a shame there's no easy way to mark a battery as charged or discharged, although with a little ingenuity this is easily rectified.

Of all the issues that have stirred up negative comment about the D200 the issue of banding is probably the most discussed. Given this here's my experience.

Banding Examples

This interior view of La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona includes high contrast areas where there is some visible banding (Note this image has been cropped slightly top and bottom to improve composition and then down-sampled and output for posting as a jpeg) the enlarged areas shown below are as viewed on screen from the original file at 100%.

These example crops (at 100% image magnification) are taken from the above image, from the locations shown in green. This image was taken at ISO 200 as a NEF file. The high contrast areas show some "short banding" when magnified on a monitor.

The impact of the banding is greater when the image is viewed on a monitor - the print holds up far better. At the size of print that I output my D200 images (16 inches on the long side) this banding is only just visible - if you look for it.

I've found banding in a small proportion of the pictures form my D200 and the number of images affected is pretty small. At this point in time I don't consider the "issue" to be significant - certainly not enough to send the camera away for correction but it's something I'm reviewing and considering.

So...nothing new to report here, my D200 sample does suffer from the usual banding characteristics that you'd expect for an early production model. I've included this example merely to show how insignificant I consider this issue to be in a real shooting situation. It somewhat takes the edge off what would be an otherwise excellent camera, but I hope this shows that the issue is minimal.

By the way, in the print the tonality of the stone pillars is really impressive, considering the low light inside the building the D200 has delivered great results at ISO 200.