New Nikon Bodies! How did I miss these?
By DavidFisher. Filed in Uncategorized |Tags: D200, D3, D300, Nikon
Somehow my low checking account balances have made me not want to look that much at new photography toys. I’m a Nikon guy for various reasons, but I had been wishing for some of the things that Canons offer including the ability to shoot at higher ISO speeds. My D200 is pretty good at ISO800 (usable photos), grainy at ISO1600, and looks like a cameraphone at ISO3200. I shoot some pretty dark things on occasion, so I enjoy the ability to shoot fast.
If you’re a non-photo geek and haven’t dropped a few thousand on photo gear (or the thought of doing so sickens you) then you probably shouldn’t read this. No really, stop now lest I tell you the price of a Leica M8.
Nikon has released (not shipping yet) two cameras to really get excited about. The D300, and the D3.
First the D300. The D300 is the new D200. The main differences are (or that I care about) as follows. It has LiveView on the 3″ LCD. This means that your girlfriend who is used to looking at a screen on a digital camera and not looking through a viewfinder can use it too! No really, it has it’s other uses as well. I mean it’s not a ground glass, but it could have it’s uses.
The D300 will now use a CMOS instead of a CCD sensor. Hopefully this will help make the higher ISOs more usable. The sensor is now 12.3MP (eh who cares, the 4MP of the D2H is just fine). More importantly, it can shoot up to 100 frames in high speed burst mode. Wow! And it also has a ultrasonic self cleaning sensor. Yeah!
It has some new auto mode things that are neat, but not as useful as you might think. The camera comes in at $1799 for the body. Does what a D200 does and a little more.
Let’s move on to the real badass of a camera- the D3. The D3 can shoot up to 11 frames per second at 12.3MP. Not only that, but it’s standard ISO goes up to 6400 for it’s ’standard’ range, and pushes reasonably to 25600. Yes, that means if you were shooting at ISO1600 before at 1/30 second, f/3.5 (dark club), that you can now shoot at 1/500th at the same aperture with ISO25600. That’s just sick. I’m sure it will be a little noisy, but that’s insane. Just insane.
Oh, and it’s a full frame sensor! I want to know how well it works with crop lenses like the 18-200.
Overall i’m impressed. I think the body comes in around $5000. Not cheap, but damn.