I want a D3!

By Martin Joergensen | August 3, 2008 2:17 AM | Permalink

_DSC1991.jpgWell, I don't want one so much that I'd go out and pay the dizzying 5,000 US$ it costs - not to mention the current Danish price of some 34,000 DKK, which translates into approximately 7,100 US dollars! Yikes.
My budgets don't stretch that long, and my income from photography don't soar so high - unfortunately. Not to mention the fact that two of the three lenses I use most are DX lenses, and I'd just have to add a 14-24 and 24-70 to the list. Ouch, ouch and triple ouch! But I sure do like the D3! I have been shooting with one these past couple of days, and man, that's my kind of camera! This is the sweetest professional photo tool I have handled in a long time. When you grab it, you immediately feel right at home - and confident that this camera will withstand most of what you can challenge it with. It fuses very well with my hands, and I have no trouble finding the buttons or the right settings.

The AF is a bit sluggish in the same way that I felt with the D300. I don't know what it is, but the camera does not seem as responsive as my D200. Kristian who owns it also praises his D2x higher in this respect, and even after a firmware update he still feels it underperforms in lowlight conditions.

But earlier today I put the camera through its paces with a 300mm f2.8 with and without a 1.7 tele converter at a local car race, and I have just run trough my way too many pictures, and must say that most seem tack sharp and don't look like the camera had problems keeping up. I also shot with my own D200 and the 70-200, which also performed nicely, but the D3 is just a tack more responsive - which it absolutely should be considering the price and the target audience. And shooting 8-9 images a second gives a lot of identical pictures by the way - even when you shoot cars going up towards 200 kilometers per hour. I wound up setting the camera to the slower continuous mode.

_DSC1888-full.jpgI started out at 200 ISO, but shot at 2500 ISO most of the day, and I have just browsed my images and even printed a couple in A3. They look like they were taken at 400 ISO. There is noise of course, but it's "nice noise" - it even looks kinda good to an old film man like myself.
I will be back tomorrow with a 85mm f1.8 on the camera and shoot some people. That will probably prove a very sweet combo. I will also bring my D200 with a wideangle and a flash and get some chrome and newly waxed race cars.


Kristian probably expects his camera back, but I'm sure going to have a hard tim parting with it. There goes that NAS again...

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