dslr.ws

Ok, it’s not a real full-fledged hands-on preview, because they weren’t allowed to actually shoot any pictures with them, but E-Fotografija does have a preview based on playing with the just-announced Nikon D3 and Nikon D300 at the announcement in Japan.

Interestingly, they weren’t as impressed with the new LCD display screen on the cameras as I was expecting:

From the front, the body has changed quite a bit, while on the back, there are no real differences, apart from the new 3 inch screen with 970,000 pixels of resolution. It’s not as good, however, as the screen that Sony use on their G1 digicam, despite having the same resolution. Personally, the screen wasn’t all that convincing — Sony G1, for instance, has a much better screen.

Most of the review looks at the announced specs; with the limitation that they couldn’t take any photos with the cameras, that apparently limited what they were able to find out during the limited time they had with the camera. The only other point they have that they picked up from using it is one small complaint about the D300′s grip:

The D300 still lacks about a centimeter in height for that perfect grip, but the added battery grip should overcome that limitation, and besides, it raises the maximum shooting speed to 8 fps. But then again, I was spoiled by the Nikon D3′s excellent grip.

The little brother to the Nikon D3 that was also announced today is the Nikon D300. It’s really half D200 successor and half D3, adding a ton of features and improvements over the D200.

It uses a new 12 megapixel sensor that’s CMOS to allow for Live View, which also allows contrast-based auto focus. The regular phase detection auto focus system offers 51 AF points, 15 of which are cross-type. Focus tracking by color, high definition HDMI video output, UDMA CompactFlash support, 14-bit A/D conversion, auto-focus calibration, and that awesome-sounding 922,000 pixel 3″ LCD display which should give incredible resolution when reviewing images on the LCD (and for judging focus on Live View, I suppose.)

So all of those specifications and features are the same as what the Nikon D3 will have. That’s very impressive. The main difference, of course, is that the D300 doesn’t have a full 35mm size sensor. It also only has one CF slot, does 6 fps burst shooting instead of the D3′s 8 fps. The regular maximum ISO speed is 3200 instead of the D3′s 6400, with the D300 going to ISO 6400 with “boost” mode. I won’t even mention the D3′s embarrassingly high maximum ISO with boost mode, since nobody can compete with that.

So, the short version is that Nikon has announced two very promising cameras today. Are they as “revolutionary” as Nikon was claiming they would be when the rumors were going around? I’m not sure. Revolutionary is a big word, and while these are nice-sounding cameras, I’m not sure if they really break such new ground that you can justify calling them revolutionary. But I’m no expert, I just play one on the Internets. We’ll see what people have to say when they come out (November 2007). I’m definitely looking forward to the full reviews!

Well, all the rumors were right (at least those rumors that said that there’d be a Nikon D3 and it would have a full-frame sensor; the other rumors were less right.) Nikon has announced the Nikon D3 today, a full frame DSLR camera (which Nikon has dubbed the “FX” format) with a 36×23.9 mm CMOS sensor giving 12.1 megapixels, and a whole basket full of delicious new features.

The high ISO sensitivity is pretty amazing, going up to ISO 6400 with the regular settings, and offering a “boost” mode to bump it up another 2 stops to an incredible 25,600 ISO. I’m extremely curious to see some sample photos taken with 25,600 ISO. That sounds pretty amazing.

The sensor also offers Live View, and extends the Live View capabilities we’ve seen on other cameras by offering contrast-based autofocus, the same way that small point and shoot cameras focus. It’s optional, you can still have it swing the mirror down and auto focus in the usual way (with the standard DSLR phase detection mechanism), but offering contrast-based AF should let you focus a little quicker than other live view digital SLRs.

14-bit A/D conversion, that’s good. 9fps burst shooting, not a huge jump over their past “H” models (i.e., the Nikon D2H and D2Hs, both of which were 8fps).

The LCD display sounds pretty amazing, though. It’s 3″, and 922,000 pixels. That’s an insanely high resolution display; for comparison purposes the Nikon D2 cameras (D2H, D2X, etc) all had a 2.5 inch LCD screen with roughly 225,000 pixels. This display can show almost four times as much detail as the others, and I’m definitely going to have to make my way to a camera store to drool on it when it comes out.

They have a newly branded image processor chip, the EXPEED chip. I guess that gives them more branding power to match Canon’s DIGIC processor?

The AF sensor is up to 51 points, a huge increase over their older line. I’m not a huge fan of lots of AF points, I hardly ever use more than just the middle one, but I guess it can’t hurt to have more. 15 of those AF points are cross-type, which is nice to see.

Another interesting new feature are the dual compact flash slots (both with UDMA support). You can configure the two CF slots in a number of different ways:

• You can use them for automatic backup, with both cards getting the same images.
• You can use the second card for overflow, so when one card fills up the camera will continue writing to the second card.
• You can shoot RAW + JPEG, with the RAW images going to one card and the JPEGs to the other one. I wonder what happens when you run out of space on the RAW card, will it refuse to shoot any more, or will it use the JPEG card for more RAW images? Or only shoot JPEG? Or pop up a menu asking you to choose a new CF card configuration?

Then there’s an HDMI output for hi-def television viewing, D-Lighting, an indicator to tell you when your horizon is level, and other fun stuff.

It should be out in November at priced around $5,000. There was also a Nikon D300 announced today, I’ll write that up shortly.

So, along with the 40D, Canon also announced the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III digital SLR camera today. This has a ridiculous 21.1 megapixel resolution, generating images that are 5616 x 3744 pixels. That’s a crazy number of pixels.

The camera itself is very similar to the Canon 1D Mark III, with the biggest difference being the full frame sensor that you know and love from the rest of the 1Ds line. The burst shooting speed of the 1DsMkIII is only 5 fps, significantly slower than the 1DMkIII, but that’s to be expected given the gigantic files the camera has to process. It is a bump up from the 1DsMkII, which did 4 fps.

What else do we have that’s interesting in here? Two DIGIC III processors, Live View, 14-bit color RAW files, and UDMA Compact Flash support which gives it card speeds up to 45 megabytes a second. It also gets a 3″ LCD screen, much like the 40D’s.

Ok, never mind my request for a 40D for my birthday, I’ll settle for a 1Ds Mark III. Thanks in advance!