So that super-duper, top secret reason why I’m here in Japan—the Nikon D3 and D300, two digital SLRs that should help the Japanese company reclaim some lost ground in its Tolkienian battle against Canon. The D3, which is aimed at professional photographers, is Nikon’s first to make use of the FX format, a fancy term for what amounts to a full 35mm sensing area. (Photographers know what that means, I’ve been told.) The new top of the line camera’s 12.1-megapixel CMOS sensor may sorta have you scratching your head—only 12? Well, just like the megahertz myth, there’s a hell of a lot more involved in taking pictures than just how many pixels make up an image.
Not unlike Q showing off MI6’s newest toys to James Bond, Nikon showed me and a select group of other journos the cameras yesterday, which means that I had to sit on this information for a whole day before writing about it. Professional picture-taking guys (”photographers”) will appreciate the D3’s ability to have up to 51 separate points of focus. Nikon is also the first company to introduce a camera with an ISO speed of up to 6,400.
Another thing to note is the D3’s Live Mode, which lets you use the LCD to see what you’re taking a picture of, sorta like a point and shoot. Another first.
Less words, more pictures. Got it.
Oh there will be more in the hours ahead. Count on it.
And no, I didn’t forget the D300. That gets it own post. It’s only fair.
The FX is no big news – Canon already did that over a year ago with the 5D. The ISO 6400 sounds great. Wonder how well it works with only 12MP though.
I’m kind of with Rod on this one… at least with what’s been described so far, I’m not all that impressed as there really isn’t anything revolutionary going on here.
I’m a little skeptical of the ISO 6400 though… hopefully with the newer technology, noise will be reduced to an acceptable level — I wonder if that’s part of why they kept it down to 12MP. As far as I’ve been able to tell, the more MP a camera has, the more noise it is generally succeptable to at high ISO settings.
Did some quick follow up reading, and there are some neat things goin’ on this camera that I look forward to hearing more about. Apparently you can boost the ISO to 25,600…that’s kind of insane. Gotta love the HDMI out, and I’m really curious to read up on the details to their Scene Recognition System and EXPEED system.
First of all, it goes to ISO 25,600. Not just 6,400. I’ve seen photos shot by Nikon at 6400 (last October actually) and they are phenomenal compared to anything else out there.
Second, Live View is not a first. The Canon 1D and 1Ds Mark IIIs both do Live view (at 30 fps, vs. Nikon’s 15 fps).
The reason it’s 12.4 megapixels is this is the sports camera to compete with the 1D Mark III, not to compete with the new 21 megapixel 1Ds Mark III. Nikon will have something in that space in the future. This also accounts for the high ISO performance. The photo sites (pixels) are much larger, which just like larger grains in film is more efficient with light. So a full frame camera (and no the 5D was not the first, the Canon 1D was the first much longer ago) that can do 9 frames per second at full autofocus speeds is revolutionary by any standards.
Anyone who thinks there is nothing new here is not paying attention. This camera is going to save Nikon’s professional chops.
To Rod and Eric I would like to say that Nikon have chosen to limit the resolution to 12MP because the vast majority of wedding, sports and event photography does not require any greater resolution than that. What these guys are looking for is either High ISO for low light photography or very high shutter speeds, or both. Noise is the critical factor in all of these cases and that is really the only advantage the full frame Canon’s have had over Nikon. Nikon have now adressed this by providing very large pixels which need much lower amplification and this in turn reduces the noise to signal ratio. For most of us, it is the answer we have been waiting for. On the downside, it makes digital photography even more foolproof than before and therefore harder for professionals to make a living in situations where they are competing with hobbyists… Is that a bad thing?
Neil
The topic is quite curious, i must say