Go now to Rob Galbraith’s site to see the best collection of pre-release Nikon D3 sample photos anywhere on the Interwebs.

He has full resolution images ranging from ISO 200 to ISO 25600, from three different photographers. These are real-world images, some with post-processing done, some with no processing done (some have been sharpened, noise-reduced with Noise Ninja, or otherwise adjusted.)

Interestingly, one of the cameras shows a number of defects:

Photos from this preproduction D3 body show quite a few dead pixels and/or minor sensor defects, which may be visible in this photo as brightly-coloured dots or short lines.

Unfortunately, that camera is the only one from which samples above 3200 ISO are available, and there’s only one image each for 12800 and 25600 ISO.

Also note that these are probably not sRGB profile images, so unless your web browser supports color profiles, the colors won’t look right in your browser, and you should open the images in something like Photoshop. Thanks, Rob and the photographers involved, for giving us mere mortals a slightly better glimpse at this fabled new Nikon D3. Everyone seems to love it so much, I’m hoping it’ll turn out to also cure cancer and bring peace to the Middle East. I hope my expectations aren’t too high.

Happy pixel peeping!