Nikon D750 in 2024

The Nikon D750 is a full frame dSLR with a. 24MP sensor.

‘SLR’ is an abbreviation for single lens reflex. Light enters the camera through the lens. It is reflected by mirrors and a prism up and into the viewfinder. When the photographer presses the shutter, the mirror has to get out of the way. In its rest position the mirror is in the path of the light that needs to reach the sensor. So the mirror housing springs up and then down again. That’s the ‘reflex’ in single lens reflex.

Mirror-less cameras don’t have a prism and mirror arrangement. In the viewfinder the photographer sees a digital representation of the scene,

But I hankered to use a dSLR because it has an optical viewfinder. And I wanted to compare a full frame sensor to the crop sensor of the D5600.

Why the D750 in particular?

I like highly detailed images. The ‘image quality’ page on DP Review consistently shows the D750 is capable of highly detailed images. And the images don’t fall apart at high ISO.

The same is true of the Canon EOS R6 mirror-less camera that I am very pleased with also.

SLRs are a dying breed. Nikon is not making any of them any more. It’s a pity because now that I have tested the D750 I can say from my own experience that it is a very good camera. The image quality if great.

I shot this from across the street, outside the camera shop when I was trying out the camera. Shot at f/4.5 and 1/320th second and ISO 800.

Exposing Black and White Photographs ‘Correctly’

I put ‘correctly’ in quotes because everyone has their taste. So what does ‘correctly’ mean here?

What it means here is the way to get the maximum information out of the scene. Put simply, if the shot is underexposed then some of the dark areas may not show detail. Or if overexposed then the highlights might be blown and not show detail.

The Zone System is a method of getting an optimal exposure of black and white photographs. It was created by Ansel Adams. a landscape photographer, and Fred Archer, a portrait photographer.

The method divides the tonal range of a scene into eleven zones from pure black to pure white. Notice that the range starts with Zone zero.

Zone 0: Pure black (no detail)
Zone 1: Near black (minimal detail)
Zone 2: Very dark shadow
Zone 3: Dark shadow with visible texture
Zone 4: Slightly darker shadow with good detail
Zone 5: Middle gray (18% gray), average light meter reading
Zone 6: Light gray (skin tone, sunlit grass)
Zone 7: Bright highlights (texture still visible)
Zone 8: Very bright highlights (minimal detail)
Zone 9: Near white (no detail)
Zone 10: Pure white (no detail)

To use it you measure light in your chosen part of the scene with your light meter. That may be a hand-held meter or the meter built into your camera. Whichever it is, all light meters are built to ‘assume’ that all scenes are Zone 5, middle grey. That is of course not true. A black cat in the snow for example.

And before we go any further you should know that while it is true the meters in cameras are based on middle grey, modern cameras are also computers. They look at the scene and measure it against a bank of similar scenes in their built-in database. If a camera stores 90,000 scenes then the chances are it has a black cat in the snow in there. So even assuming the light meter works on 18% grey Zone 5 and is wrong, it will correct itself if it recognises the scene.

And even if a camera does not have a built-in database of scenes, it will have metering that can cover most of the scene and then average out the brightness.

At the other end of evaluative metering, cameras now have AI or machine learning so they learn more scenes the more photographs the photographer takes.

In 2024 with built-in scene recognition and intelligent exposure adjustments we are a long way from Kansas.

So for the rest of this article I am talking about the zone system used with a hand-held light meter,

The Method

Put your camera on manual exposure. Point the light meter at the part of the scene you want to measure. The part you want to measure is the part in the scene that is important to you. Everything else in the scene will be measured by reference to that.

The meter will always give you an exposure (shutter speed and aperture) for Zone 5. Decide what Zone your chosen area should actually be in. Yes, that means you have to put your brain’s evaluative input into the calculation. Adjust the exposure. If you think the part of the scene you measured is Zone 3, then reduce exposure by two stops. In other words you are saying the following.

My starting point was to meter the brightness of the part of the scene I think is important. Now I want to expose darker than the meter is telling me because in my opinion the bit of the scene I want to measure is not mid grey, It is two stops darker than mid grey. So I reduce exposure by two stops.

That’s it. That’s the Zone system.

Meanwhile, with digital photography it is just a ‘flick of switch’ as it were to make a black and white version of a full colour image. Click on the image to see a large version.

By the way this is a crop of about one seventh of the full frame of a photo I took of this couple, from across the street with a 50mm lens on a Nikon D750.

Nikon DSLRs With Year Introduced

Nikon D1 – 1999
Nikon D1H – 2001
Nikon D1X – 2001
Nikon D100 – 2002
Nikon D2H – 2003
Nikon D70 – 2004
Nikon D2X – 2004
Nikon D2Hs – 2005
Nikon D50 – 2005
Nikon D200 – 2005
Nikon D70s – 2005
Nikon D80 – 2006
Nikon D40 – 2006
Nikon D2Xs – 2006
Nikon D40x – 2007
Nikon D300 – 2007
Nikon D3 – 2007
Nikon D60 – 2008
Nikon D700 – 2008
Nikon D90 – 2008
Nikon D3X – 2008
Nikon D5000 – 2009
Nikon D300s – 2009
Nikon D3s – 2009
Nikon D3100 – 2010
Nikon D7000 – 2010
Nikon D5100 – 2011
Nikon D4 – 2012
Nikon D800 – 2012
Nikon D800E – 2012
Nikon D600 – 2012
Nikon D5200 – 2012
Nikon D7100 – 2013
Nikon Df – 2013
Nikon D610 – 2013
Nikon D5300 – 2013
Nikon D3300 – 2014
Nikon D810 – 2014
Nikon D750 – 2014
Nikon D5500 – 2015
Nikon D7200 – 2015
Nikon D5 – 2016
Nikon D500 – 2016
Nikon D3400 – 2016
Nikon D5600 – 2016
Nikon D850 – 2017
Nikon D7500 – 2017
Nikon D3500 – 2018