Quote Originally Posted by John King View Post
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However, taking an image at 12,800 and delicate PP will get one a lot further than exposing at 200 and trying to lift it 6 stops in post. I've done this experiment a few times. In the first case, one gets an image, in the second, one gets horrible rubbish.

Neither film nor digital likes severe underexposure ...

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There's enough info available (on the net) to contradict this comment.
Have played with it myself(downloaded the sample files off DPR). Loaded into Nikon's software (and then later, DxO's Photolab software) and it pretty much confirms DPRs findings.

Maybe you should have stuck with Nikon and gone with a D750.
6Ev shadow recovery is easy with minimal PP work to correct the magenta colour cast. 5Ev recovery with none required at all.
That Sony 24Mp sensor is pretty much about the best sensor yet made for any camera.

Another reason I made my comment to Peter re the D610 as an option for a cheap lightweight fullframe sensor.

Full frame smaller camera would be the Sony A7(which also uses that same 24Mp sensor, but stupidly Sony limited it to 11bit RAW capture(Nikons can do 14bit/12bit) so it's recovery/dynamic range wasn't quite as good in Photolab(for me).
Could be Adobe's software does it differently tho(that's what DPR use).

point to note too tho!! The 6Ev recovery referred too above is not a trait of a FF sensor! That is, not all FF sensors can do that, but they do recover a lot more/better/cleaner than smaller sensors for the same tech period.
D800 can't recover 5 Ev(let alone 6Ev!!), but 2-3Ev isn't hard to do.
This is all raw capture tho.
(in camera jpg is a dirty word, and I still strongly urge folks to dismiss it as a settings option! )