NIKON D3 BABY:
The future is bright and has a yellow sun from the East and its name is Nikon. Last night I got a very privileged invite to look, play and shoot with the new Nikon D3. I was ready to sign.
This is by no means a review, there are enough of those, this is just a few samples and 1:1 crops of the potential for this camera and how Nikon is going to sweap across Europe leaving Canon feeling a little low.
The camera is a little heavier than the D2x, but my word what a re-design of an all ready ergonomic master piece. The view finder is as bright and large as a shop window and all the buttons and menus are just placed so well, the transition from cameras was simple.
I only got to play for around 10 minutes as the room was full of geeks like myself eager to understand more, but in fairness all i wanted to know was what could it shoot at 3200 - 25k ISO. And boy did i find out. The room was a dark hall with side lights and little else, full of people and little room to swing a cat or camera.

The lens was the new 14-24mm and it was a beast. Nano crystals, and Nikon's claim it out performs a prime lens was bold but interestingly confident.

The twin card slots is a new concept for Nikon shooters but so well executed. I shoved my 2 gig into slot 2 and passed the camera onto the next man so i got some extra stuff as a bonus.

Now lets get things straight this was no photo shot, more a paparazzi expolsion of shutter speeds and high ISO. The content was simple and the angles did not matter, the goal get some RAW files to convert and peruse at 100% on screen.
Below is the story so far.
First shot data is 6400 ISO, 1/250, f4
100 crop of the image after viewing actual pixels
100 crop of the image after viewing actual pixels
6400ISO, f4, 1/60th this has been croped about 25% already. and the subsequent image is 1:1 Crop.

Finally the 25600 ISO , f5.6, 1/100, which is the had to get A shot, but it worked.

The last one is a 1:1 crop of a 1600 ISO, 1/20th. f2.8 image not traditional a Nikon strength area but check out the detail and noiseless crop.

Hope you enjoy and get as excited as the room was about the beast.
Final caveat, none of the images have been manipulated in anyway. Straight from camera into Nikon ViewNX (only product that can process D3 RAW) output to a 16 bit TIFF and passed to Aperture for 640x480 processing. Role on end of November - 30th to be exact. I got my NPS number today so I jumped the queue somewhere in the world.
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