Quite exceptional.

The Sony designed sensor in the Nikon D2x has a couple of things going against it. The design is some 9-10 years old and the sensor is APS-C. Half the size of a full frame one. Total pixels are just over 12 mp.

I keep reading about how this sensor cannot handle ISO400 or anything faster and how limited it is when it comes to large prints, so I thought I would do a bit of pixel peeping at extreme magnification ratios.

Here’s the original image. It was taken using the 85mm f/1.8 AF-D lens in overcast light at ISO400 and 1/1000 second and f/2.8, using autofocus.

Funny hats. Market Street at the Embarcadero, San Francisco.

I exported the RAW original as a TIFF from LR to PS CS5 where all I did was to enlarge the image using the Image->Image Size->Bicubic Smoother telling it to shoot for a 60″ wide print. This takes out the jaggies which are just becoming visible at this huge size. Then back in LR I tweaked the sharpness sliders a bit until it looked good. The whole thing took seconds to do. I then magnified the PS processed image to an equivalent width of 80″ (that’s over 6.5 feet!) and took a screen shot which appears below:

Center section of an 80″ print.

Viewed at 2 feet from my 21″ display the image is perfect. Large areas of smooth tone are just beginning to show noise if you stick your nose in it.

Here are the PS CS5 settings:

The original Nikon RAW file of 20.2MB swells to 827MB after the PS step, giving even my nuclear powered Hackintosh pause for thought, meaning a second or two to pop up the greatly enlarged display image.

The sweet spot for this sensor is reputed to be the native ISO of 100, whereas the above is at ISO 400, so there’s s good deal more performance yet to be squeezed out for the most critical results. Further, the native ISO of that old sensor is also known for outstanding color rendering, matching the best that is available today. I must give that a shot one day.

Not half bad for an obsolete sensor and body with a middle of the road lens. Sure, the latest sensors have better dynamic range and can go to unheard of ISOs, but for my purposes there’s not an awful lot wrong with the D2x, a bargain if ever there was one. Now excuse me while I get the glue out and reattach a bit of the rubber covering which is coming off the body ….