The new AF-S super teles are a very welcome addition.
Nikon D3 – the body
The body offers excellent grip, with most functions available on dedicated buttons and dials. The menu hasn't changed much. The large 3 inch display, on the other hand, is a real revelation, offering unparalleled image review possibilities. There are other goodies, too – LiveView includes autofocus, both new lenses have proved to be excellent, and last but not least, the battery lasts longer than a hangover on a working day. At Nikon's NPS event, I made about 2200 shots on one charge, and the battery indicator still showed one bar. Realistically speaking, this means 2500 to 3000 shots on a single charge.
Personally, I don't like the way rubber is used on the body and both dials. Rubber has the ugly tendency to peel away or break down, making the grip and settings less precise.
Nikon D3 - image quality compared with D200, D2Xs and D300
As mentioned before, we're not allowed to post image samples or even evaluate the images on the computer. Use a generous pinch of salt when reading this, a grain might not be enough. I wouldn't do this for any other camera – it is, quite frankly, ridiculous. But then again, Nikon D3 is one of the biggest digital photography news this year, and people are yearning to see what it can do. After all, so many people are lusting for this camera, some are probably even trying to justify their preorders and so on. With the D3's large, high-resolution screen, evaluating image quality is not all that futile.
So, what are my impressions? First of all, colour accuracy has been greatly improved. When I used the D200 to capture a water spring in the wood, the whole image took on a green tint due to the sunlight reflecting off green leaves. With Nikon D3, the colours are much more neutral. This is also true for the Nikon D300, which also has the new Scene Recognition System. Apparently, this is more than just a bit of marketing fluff and actually works.
The D300 battery grip makes it possible to use AA batteries and the D3 battery, too.
But when it comes to high ISO performance, the Nikon D3 is a real champ. Even at ISO 1600, the advantage compared to D2Xs and D300 is marked. The D2Xs has incredibly strong noise reduction, which obliterates fine detail. The D300 is less heavy handed in this regard, but still, detail is lacking. Compare that to the D3, however, and it's a whole different thing – ISO 1600 on D3 is comparable to ISO 400 on D2Xs. Everything said so far is obviously true. With the new sensor and the new algorithms, the D3 achieved or even surpassed (we'll have to see about that in a direct comparison) the image quality of Canon EOS 1D Mk III. In addition, the camera goes up to ISO 25,600, with image quality that's perfectly acceptable for photojournalism. As I mentioned before, I've been in scanning for the past 31 years. In other words, I've been in prepress long enough to know what kind of image quality is required for printed material. To put it another way, the D3 has more detail at ISO 25600 than the other two cameras, D2Xs and D300, at ISO 1600. There's a bit more grain, but that's only noticeable at 100% crops.
Another thing I noticed: The preproduction Nikon D300 was underexposing by about 0.5 stops compared to the D200 and the D3. Either the metering is off or the sensor is less sensitive. Nevertheless, this is a preproduction camera, so I'm not worried. When it comes to noise, well, on first impression, there's more of it than with the D200, but at the same time, the detail is better preserved and the colours are better. Again, this is a preproduction camera. It's too soon to pass any credible judgement on image quality. Besides, noise isn’t all there is to image quality. So, to conclude this part – the D300 is a marked improvement on the D200. The D3 is a bloody miracle, though. It’s at least as good or better than the Canon EOS 1D Mark III. Comparing the two cameras will be a lot of fun, let me tell you.
The rear display is very sharp and offers excellent visibility.
Nikon LiveView
This seems to be the start of a new Nikon era - they're including new features. Is this a useful feature or just a gadget? Well, judge for yourself. It does come in handy when taking pictures from above the head, as long as you can see the display, of course. In a dark mine, it came in very handy as a sort of night vision device, too – the sensor is more sensitive than the eye, so it brought out details that would have been invisible otherwise.
On the other hand, I don't really like the way Live View is activated. In Canon cameras, you only need to set the Set button behaviour once. After that, all you need to do is press the Set button and voila, Live View is activated. Nikon, on the other hand, requires you to switch to Lv mode using the drive mode dial. In underwater photography, this might well prove impossible. The whole procedure is a bit more awkward than Canon’s procedure, making it more difficult to quickly switch between LiveView and normal shooting. Still, I don't think this is something that would actually cause anyone not to buy the D3 or the D300 - it's more of a rough edge than an actual design fault.
However, there's one clear advantage – Nikon D3 can autofocus even with the mirror up, unlike Canons and the D300. While this is very much slower than normal focusing, it can still come in handy, especially for slow or still subjects. (Your humble translator would have gladly given his hypothetical firstborn for this feature a few weeks ago - there I was at the most astonishingly gorgeous piano performance, and I couldn't take a picture for the life of me because the SSCHHHHHCLUNK of my Canon was way too loud.)
