Nikon D3

After playing all week with D300, I got a new toy today, it's bigger brother, the mighty D3. :)
As you can probably imagine, this is an amazing camera. Noise is great, practically not existing till beyond ISO1600, totally useful up to ISO6400. 11fps (!!!) is almost enough to record a movie (I thought DSLR didn't have the "movie" function?!).
In real life, it's great for what it was made - sport and professional photography. With D3 I got the new 17-35 lens and it performed very well as well.

First one is at a basketball game, 80-200 2.8 lens @ 150mm, f4, 1/400, at ISO3200.


The color reproduction and exposure were great. It picked up slight color differences in the roses from total white, to slight yellow. Auto WB, ISO200, 17-35 @28mm, 1/40, f8.


Bright sun and reflections didn't cause any problems. The scene was well exposed, sky the right color, plenty of details in shadow areas. ISO200, 13-35 @17mm, 1/500, f8.


Again, bright sun and dark surroundings didn't cause any problems to D3 matrix metering. Did a great job. ISO200, 50mm, 1/2000, f4


Here are some studio ISO tests. All done on a tripod with Nikkor 50mm 1.8 lens, one flash light through umbrella, all NR OFF, default import into Lightroom, no post process whatsoever, 1:1 view, printscreen and Photoshop jpg save. Good for comparison (since all done and saved the same way), but can't really be used as "as good as it gets" shots, since some basic post process results in a even better result.

ISO200


ISO800


ISO1600


ISO3200


ISO6400


ISO12800


Then I hit a problem, that I didn't see coming. The iso sensitivity was too high for my flash, so I couldn't shoot iso25600 with the same setting. At first I skipped it, but later I did it anyhow. I had to close down the lens to f22 and put the flash to the lowest possible setting (not to mention, I practically positioned it in another room to get the distance). Anyhow, here's the result. Not really great, but when you consider making ANY image or NO image, ISO25600 will be very useful. And don't forget, this is 1:1 view, if you look at it even at 50% it's much much better.

ISO25600


Can't wait for FX in D200/300 body :D