Photograph noise and sharpness Eugenio Recuenco

Nikon D700, our new favorite camera

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Posted by Patrick on Jul 22, 2008 in Cameras

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{ Nikon's D700 }

Honesty, what’s not to like?

For all practical purposes the D700 is a D3, but smaller (good!), cheaper (good!), and incapable of recording audio (who cares?). Yes there are some other differences, but real pros excluded, most could live without a few FPS, the integrated vertical grip, and battery differences. What the vast majority will be excited about clearly will be the ability to shoot with the D3’s internals and it’s substantial benefits (ridiculous full frame image quality with amazing ISO performance and noise management).

Not suprisingly, I’ve yet to see real negative feedback in the early hands-on type reviews circulating, indeed a summary of all reviews could be achieved with the mathmatical formula of “D3-$2000″. And as if anybody needed a reminder, the D3 is nearing perfection (if reviews are to be believed).

Thus in need of further proof, or just needing someone to despise for actually having their hands on a D700, the Luminous Landscape folks have a review up on our new favorite camera, the Nikon D700. And yes you’ll be seeing passages like this:

At any sensitivity up to ISO 1600 there’s little of concern in terms of low noise. Uncanny. At ISO 3200 a slight bit of luminance noise appears, but it can be easily removed in post. ISO 6200 is still eminently usable, and even ISO 12,000 equivalent is acceptable for reportage. Truly amazing is that ISO 25,000 equivalent, though noisy, is no worse than Tri-X used to be at ISO 1,200.

Dynamic range and colour purity is first rate. The D700’s large 8 micron pixels ensure a very high signal to noise ratio and these clean pixels really allow for more ressing up when needed than one would think. I have made 24X36″ prints from the D3 that are hanging in my gallery alongside images taken with a 21 Megapixel 1Ds MKIII, and one has to struggle to determine that those from the D3 were done with nearly half the resolution of those from the Canon. Results from the D700 will be similar, but remember – to get the best from this or any camera takes optimum shooting technique.

quite frequently. You can get the review here.

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