Last week, Belabor MMA 131 took place at the Valley View Casino Center and I was there as the house photographer. Now, in the past when the Strikeforce MMA fights took place at the venue, I was allowed a cage side shooting position. This time, that did not happen. I had the run of the building, but not close enough to the cage to shoot through the fence so I went up high and shot over the fence.
If I was shooting cage side, I would have used the Nikon D4 and 24-70mm f/2.8 lens but since I was at a much greater distance I went with he D750 and the 70-200mm f/2.8. The reason for this was simple, I was going to have to crop the images a lot and wanted as many pixels as possible. The Nikon D4 is a 16.2 Megapixel camera which creates file that is 4928 x 3280 while the D750 is a 24.3 Megapixel creating a file that is 6016 x 4016. So the D750 just gives me more image to work with when I know I have to crop a lot the image. Why, if everything was equal, I would prefer to just shoot closer of have a longer lens but since neither of those options was available at the time I had top come up with a different plan.
In the past, I would have just continued to shoot using the full frame and then crop later, but due to the distance I was shooting from, every frame was going to have to be cropped. So I set the D750 to use of its crop modes. The D750 can be set to only use part of the sensor, either as a 1.2 crop or a 1.5 crop. All that happened is that the camera only uses the middle part of the sensor. Lets look at the numbers for a minute. When using the 1.5x crop the camera acts as a DX sized sensor and creates a file 3936 x 2624. in the 1.2 crop mode, the camera records a file that is 5008 x 3336 which is actually bigger than the file from the D4.
As you can see here, the area of the image that will be cropped is not needed at all. It’s not difficult to crop the images later but why record a ton of data that is just going to take up place on the card and the hard drives just to be cropped later. As an added bonus, since the files are smaller, the clear out of the buffer faster. It does nothing to the images quality.
The more I shoot the D750, the more I like it.
I’m still trying to decide whether to purchase a D7200 or the D750. I’m an amateur and will be shooting a lot of my son’s football games using the same lens, the 70-200 f/2.8. I’ve been told that DX cameras are actually better suited to sports photography when using a telephoto because of the 1.5 crop ( quasi magnification) factor. When you use the crop function on the D750, does it behave exactly like a D7200 and give you that extra little zoom? It seems like a best of both worlds kinda os feature. I should add that I like the D750 also because I’ll be shooting wildlife and portraits as well- although just as an enthusiast. Thanks!
get the d750. it will do everything the 7100 will do and more. i have both and hardly ever use the 7100 anymore. it just functions as a backup camera
Paul, I have exactly the same question, for exactly the same reasons. My first impression of the 7100 7200’s after handling them at the camera store, is that they are not even in the same ballpark. The 7100/7200’s to me seemed really flimsy. The buttons felt very cheap, and the body felt a little too light for the price. The 750 has a really solid feel. And, if you can fork over the extra 900 to 1200 bucks for the body, you have a full frame if you want it, plus two nice crop modes. My problems with my old cheap DSLR was low light, it is just a miserable tool in low light, e.g. high school soccer/football stadium light.
may i know where is the crop mode presents in the camera d750