Nikon D700 Review

Nikon’s D700 has collected more good press for itself than anything I can remember, and for good reason. It packs the muscle of the esteemed D3 in the more compact size of the D300, all at nice price. It really is hard to find faults with the D700, and in a review, Charlie Sorrel at Wired’s Gadget Lab doesn’t find many:

Drop just one stop, to ISO 12,800, and things are a lot better. The pictures are still noisy but Nikon has tweaked its noise reduction algorithms to mimic film grain, or so it seems. The EXPEED processor has no mercy with color noise, but is a little easier on the luminance noise. What does that mean? It means that the nasty stuff is cleared out, leaving a grainy but pleasing result.

Drop the ISO to 6400, the highest setting with an actual number (Nikon uses names like H0.3 for the more sensitive settings) and you’d never know you were shooting at more than 800. This, combined with a fast lens (a 50mm ƒ1.8, for example) means you can shoot in ambient light, handheld, at night. And coupled with the heavy body, which steadies things, you can handhold to some pretty slow shutter speeds, too. If you were to add a shake-reducing lens into the mix, you’d likely have no trouble with shooting 2001’s monolith in a black hole. At midnight.

-Charlie Sorrel/Wired Gadget Lab

There’s more including some commentary on the D700’s “janky” live view…

When you’re ready to pull the trigger on a Nikon D700, by all means do it by clicking through our affiliate links. You can get the Nikon D700 at Amazon for $2696 or from B and H for $2699.95.

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