Full-frame (FX) Lenses (all retired)
Sigma 24mm f/1.4 Art Lens
Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art Lens
Nikon 24mm f/1.4 FX
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 FX
Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8D FX
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 FX
Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8
Nikon 85mm f/1.4G FX
Nikon 85mm f/1.8 FX

What Am I Currently Carrying? (As of July 2024)

• Camera: Nikon Z8 Mirrorless Camera
• Lenses: Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.2 S
  Nikkor Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S (for birding)
  For lighter travel: Nikkor Z 26mm f/2.8, Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S

Reviews

• Nikon Z8 Mirrorless Camera (July 2024)
• After more than 5 years with my Nikon D850 DSLR, it took the remarkable Nikon Z8 mirrorless to get me to move on, in June 2023.
  Rather than review everything I love about all Nikon digital cameras (for that and other Nikon notes, see my detailed D850 review), let me just compare this Z8 to Nikon DSLRs in general:
  • Full-size and full-quality raw images at twenty frames per second.
    This is huge. I can bracket three or five exposures of a walking subject in mid-step. I can shoot a flying bird and capture just the right wing spread. I love 20fps. (And even faster fps in jpeg.)
  • Much more powerful autofocus options.
    I’m actually, for the first time, studying and learning a variety of different autofocus methods and techniques. The Z8 has incredible subject recognition and focus tracking. This camera is a bird-shooter’s dream.
  • No physical shutter — only an electronic shutter.
    So I can shoot completely silently if needed, though I turn on the quiet snit-snit-snit sound option that lets me know I’m actually shooting. From just a foot away, it’s inaudible. And because it’s an electronic shutter:
  • Shutter speeds up to 1/32,000 sec. That’s not a typo. 1/32,000 sec.
    Which means I can shoot wide open at f/1.2 in full sun without resorting to a neutral density filter.
  • A great selection of superb lenses, better in every way than the best of the F-mount lenses.
    With, for example, my Nikon Z 50mm f/1.2 S-line lens, images are completely sharp all the way out to the corners – even wide open. (I gave up my Sigma Art f/1.4 for that lens.)
  • Much more usable articulable rear LCD screen.
    I can lay rest camera on the ground, vertically or horizontally, and look straight down onto the scene I’m shooting.
  • F-mount lens adapter.
    Which means I can keep using some of my favorite legacy lenses, like the beautiful 85mm f/1.4G.
  • Finally, I was especially pleased to see that Nikon kept the Z8 sensor size at 46 megapixels, more than enough for every use I’ve ever had including huge prints.

  Things I don’t like? A short list:

  • Battery life is awful. I could shoot the D850 for three days or more and not use up a battery. With the Z8, I’ve started on my second battery after a couple hours. To be fair, this is apparently true of all mirrorless cameras, but annoying nonetheless.
  • I slightly miss the optical viewfinder of the DSLRs. There’s nothing like looking through glass directly at world as your camera will capture it.
    That said, I did adapt to the electronic viewfinder quickly and I don’t mind it at all. It’s fast and bright. No blackout. No lag.
  • I used to swear I’d only switch to mirrorless for a much lighter kit, but the Z8 isn’t light enough to make a real difference.
  • Nikon has mysteriously removed a couple of my favorite minor features of the DSLRs. For one example, I can no longer set any of the function buttons to immediately switch to spot-metering.

  Conclusion: This camera feels familiar in my hand, and thus quite easy to adapt to and use, and yet it performs like a completely new general of Nikon camera — which it is. I love the Z8.

• Nikon D850 45 megapixel FX DSLR (April 2018)
• I don’t need to announce that the Nikon D850 is the finest camera I’ve ever picked up. I said exactly the same thing about each of the last few Nikon dSLRs I owned: the D300, the D700, the D800 and the D810. They’ve all been amazing, building on previous models both in image quality under a huge variety of circumstances and in the transparency of using the camera.

  These days many cameras are capable of producing extraordinary images. Even the images from my aging, inexpensive Fuji X-T10 are wonderful. It’s been a long time since I’ve needed to upgrade a camera for image-quality reasons. And indeed, this D850 does produce absolutely superb quality, equal to or better than its predecessors.*

  The most important factor I look for when considering an upgrade is transparency, that is, how well the camera disappears in my hand. I need to concentrate on making the image — nailing the exact point of focus, choosing a depth of field, adjusting the exposure and ISO, working the shutter speed, and of course framing — and I often need to work all of those factors in a matter of seconds. When I spot a challenging scene that might disappear at any moment,** I can’t afford to waste time fiddling with focus modes, searching for buttons, or shooting and reshooting to check the LCD for proper exposure. I need to be able to quickly work the settings by instinct, with complete trust that the camera will deliver what I envision. A camera that violates that trust becomes a drag to use.***

  This new Nikon D850 makes me very happy. I’ve gotten to know how to control Nikon dSLRs over the last few iterations because Nikon has maintained a lot of consistency through each upgrade. The D850 has moved a couple buttons (I’m still sometimes reaching in the wrong place for the ISO adjustment), but it all still comes very naturally. I can work everything on this camera without taking my eye off the viewfinder.

  The improvements over my D810 and earlier Nikons are significant, and one that I appreciate every time I shoot is the bump from 5 to 7 frames per second. That doesn’t sound like a big change, but it feels completely different, especially since I do a lot of exposure bracketing. Nikon also seems to have improved its exposure metering — I used to routinely set the EV to -1/3 stop, but I’ve been leaving EV at 0 with this D850 because matrix metering is spot-on almost every time.

  A whole batch of specs are improved. Focus down to -4EV is actually mind-boggling; this camera seems to be able to focus in the dark, and it’s surprising how often that’s important to me; In those same environments, I’ve also made good use of the new rear-button illumination. There’s also a bigger shot buffer, a swiveling rear LCD which I’ve already made good use of, touch screen control of the menus and image reviewing, better viewfinder magnification, and plenty more. While each change is relatively subtle, the sum total makes for a noticeably smoother experience.

  The D850 introduces some new features which I’m not likely to use, including autofocus fine tuning (my lenses seem to be perfectly tuned with this body), and automatic focus stacking (handy for macro shooting, which I seldom do). A QXD card slot replaces the compact flash slot from previous models, which means an additional expense for new cards, but faster data reading and writing.

  I do have a couple of minor complaints. I don’t know why Nikon decided that it needed two directional-style controls on the back of the D850. The upper control (which Nikon calls the Subselector) used to be a simple AE-On button, but is now a joystick, which means it’s easy to accidentally rock instead of click. This makes it more finicky to use as an exposure lock (though I’ve finally gotten used to it). And those four directional presses surrounding the Subselector provide the exact same functions as the four rocker buttons around the OTHER four-way control (called the Multi Selector); Nikon should really allow us to assign some of those buttons to other functions. I’d love to temporarily switch between matrix and Highlight Weighted metering with a quick press, for example. But no.

  Also, come on Nikon, let us assign the whole panoply of functions to that new f2 button at the lower left. As it stands, it’s a new button that does just one not-very-useful thing (open a MY MENU selection).

  Other nitpicks: the center button on the Multi Selector is mushier than prior bodies; there’s no definitive click, so I can’t tell whether I’ve successfully clicked it or not (I’ve assigned it to center the focus spot). Also, I don’t really need an SD-card slot in addition to the QXD card slot. The fastest SD-Card is a drag on the buffer compared to the speedy new QXD cards. I’d rather have two QXD slots. And don’t count on using the camera’s Wifi connectivity; it’s notoriously tricky and I could not get it to work (it’s also a big drain on the battery). Finally one consequence of the higher frames-per-second rate is a louder shutter. I had hopes that the two Quiet Release modes would offer some relief, but I don’t find them quiet at all.

  But all those complaints barely put a dent in the pleasure of using this camera. While the rest of the world seems to be moving to smaller and lighter mirrorless cameras, I can’t give up the massive advantages of a true SLR, which includes the clarity of the optical viewfinder, the overall responsiveness, the speed of focusing, and the total ease of use that I get with the Nikon D850.

  The Nikon D850 is a true joy to use.

  [UPDATE: Four years after purchasing the D850, I’m still extremely happy with the camera.]

  ——-
  *The D850 has a 45-megapixel sensor, but in real-world use that’s barely a noticeable increase in final print size over the 36-megapixel D810. Still, I’ll take every pixel I can get. The sensor also looks to me to handle high ISO as well as the D810 — which is excellent.

  **This image of a dog in Soho presented exactly the kind of challenge that makes me appreciate excellent camera design: Nikon’s matrix metering would typically find a balance that leaves that white fur overexposed, so I needed to keep that fur from blowing out against the dark background. In the short time I had to shoot before the dog could walk away, I bumped the aperture up to f/3.5, backed across the street to frame the image wider (I was shooting with the Nikon 85mm f/1.4), moved the focus point down to the dog, and hit the AF-on button to lock the focus. I then spot-metered the white fur by holding a function button on the front of my D810 and pressed and held the AE-on button to lock the spot metering. Then I shot the image. I performed all of these actions in just a few seconds, without being consciously aware of which buttons I was working, and without taking my eye from the viewfinder. It’s all become automatic — that is, transparent. (I might have done just as well to set the exposure mode to Highlight-Weighted exposure mode, which would have automatically kept the dog from being overexposed. I’ve recently started to rely more on Highlight-Weighted mode in these situations, since it’s faster and takes no reframing, though it’s slightly less predictable than spot metering.) Note that as soon as I had gotten those frames, a car parked right between me and the dog. If I’d been shooting with a less thoughtfully-deigned camera, I would have lost the shot. And I come across those fleeting opportunities all the time.

  ***Case in point: I took a three-year-old mirrorless camera on a trip overseas and the images I brought back were excellent, but using the camera was a constant exercise in frustration; I missed many great images because of the awkwardness of quickly nailing the focus, framing, and exposure. Coming back home and using the D850 was such a relief. I swore I wouldn’t travel again without the Nikon.

• Sigma 24mm f/1.4 “Art” (April 2016) (retired)I really liked my Nikon 24mm f/1.4G lens — I love that focal length and I carry a 24 with me much of the time. The lens performed well and wasn’t especially large or heavy. (See my review below.) But I recently sold the lens on eBay and picked up Sigma’s new 24mm f/1.4 Art lens.Is the Sigma lens superior to Nikon’s? Slightly. Both are a roughly similar size and weight, and both take excellent pictures. The Sigma appears to be a bit sharper at wide apertures, but the Nikon is no slouch. The Nikon’s bokeh is a bit smoother. They both take a 77mm filter.

  So why in the world did I switch? Because the Sigma is so much less expensive (at $850 street price vs. Nikon’s $2,000) that I could sell the used Nikon on eBay and buy the Sigma new and still have $400 left over. And what I ended up with is a lens that’s brand new with a new warranty and probably slightly better performance in areas I care about.

  And that’s all there is to it.

• Sigma 50mm f/1.4 “Art” (January 2015)
  [NOTE: Now replaced with the superior Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.2 S]
  Sigma’s new series of “Art” lenses are heavy, expensive (some of them, any way) — and very very good. My Sigma 50mm f/1.4 may possibly produce the finest quality images of any lens I own, with only minor drawbacks (did I mention that it’s heavy and expensive?)

  I didn’t think I needed a good 50mm lens — I prefer going to the extremes, wide or tele, and I seldom shoot between 24mm and 85mm. But a current project requires a lot of shooting between those points, and my Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens just wasn’t matching the quality of my other lenses, especially since I planned to blow up big prints from my Nikon D810. So when Adorama had the Sigma 50mm Art lens on sale, I decided to give it a try. (In addition, I was not impressed by the reviews of the new $1700 Nikon 58mm f/1.4.)

  Sigma’s Art line is getting incredibly good reviews, and my experience matches those reviews. I love shooting wide open, and so I was looking carefully at the image quality when shooting at f/1.4. And I was actually shocked at the quality. Wide open, this lens is really sharp, almost completely without distortion, and almost completely free of chromatic aberration. I’m getting image quality at f/1.4 that I struggle to get at f/2.8 with other high-end lenses. In the field, I found it autofocuses fast and accurately on my D810, and it felt and worked like the expensive lens that it is.

  And that price, $950, is one of the chief drawbacks when compared to other lenses in this focal length. The other more significant negative is its weight: almost two pounds (including rear cap, hood, and lens cap), almost triple the weight of my Nikon 50mm f/1.4G. In fact, this lens weighs considerably more than any other prime lens I own, and almost as much as my heavy Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 zoom. Finally, the bokeh is completely fine, even nice, but it’s no match for classic bokeh lenses like my Nikon 85mm f/1.4G.

  In short, once I swallowed the high price and resigned myself to the weight, I became a total convert to the Sigma 50mm Art. Now I’m looking forward to whether Sigma releases an 85mm Art lens. I’ll be looking very closely at that release. (Update: Nope: the Sigma 85mm Art lens is way too big and heavy. I’m sticking with my Nikon.)

• Nikon 24mm f/1.4G ED FX wide-angle prime lens (September 2012)
  Oh my goodness what a sweet lens. It’s everything I wished for — sharp all over, very fast, great contrast and color. On the other hand, the bokeh isn’t nearly as smooth as the gorgeous 85mm f/1.4D and G lenses (though that may be asking for too much). And it’s very expensive ($2000 street). Nonetheless, you do indeed get what you pay for.Don’t let anyone tell you that wide angle lenses can’t be used for portraits. A wide angle just has to be used more carefully. I typically use my 85mm f/1.4G for portraits, of course, but that focal length can be very limiting; it’s great used nice and tight, but can be a hassle, or even unusable, for wider environmental portraits. Sometimes you need to give your subject a lot of breathing room.

  And this 24mm is just the ticket. Great in low light of course, but also sweet in any light.

  This is the lens that got me to love wide angle all over again.

  [NOTE: in 2015 I replaced the Nikon 24mm f/1.4 with the Sigma 24mm f/1.4 Art. See my review above.]

• Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED FX mid-range zoom (February 2009)
  There’s not a lot to report about this terrific lens — it’s sharp, fast, great contrast and color characteristics (a bit warm, which I like). On the down side, it’s heavy at 2 pounds, 3 ounces (without caps but with hood), long (about 7 1/2 inches with the hood), and expensive (about $1430 street in 2009).

  But for that price in dollars and pounds, you do get an extremely sharp lens, probably the sharpest I’ve ever owned, even wide open, with moderate but easily flattened distortion at its widest end. This is the lens that sits on my D700 most of the time (very much like my 17-55mm f/2.8 sat on the D300). It’s the lens I take when I don’t mind the weight. If I have to pack just one lens, this is it.

• Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8D IF-ED ultra-wide zoom for full-frame cameras (February 2009)
  With the addition of this ultrawide zoom, I’ve now got a wide range of focal lengths covered for the FX D700 (17-35mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm). And the 17-35mm is almost a straight replacement for my 12-24mm f/4 DX lens on the D300 (the 12-24mm has a 99 to 61 degree field of view; the 17-35mm is 104 to 62 degrees), with a stop faster aperture. I have long been a major fan of wide angle shooting, and this lens takes me out to a nice ultra-wide field of view.

  The lens is expensive (it just went up to $1700) and a bit heavy at a pound, 12 ounces, but fairly compact and very solidly built. Though it’s fairly soft in the corners wide open, where it also gets noticeable chromatic aberration, stop it down a bit and the thing is very sharp, almost equal to my 24-70mm and 70-200mm (which makes that trio a beautiful set). It focuses to a very close 12″ from the film plane. I can’t work without a solid ultrawide zoom in my arsenal, and this lens more than meets my needs.

  [Update: As solid a performer as it is, the 17-35mm image quality doesn’t compare with the 14-24mm, though they don’t really serve the same purpose.]

• Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 ultra-wide zoom for full-frame cameras (October 2009)
  Nikon’s full-frame 14-24mm f/2.8 lens, introduced in August 2007 with the full-frame D3, seems to defy physics. Ultra-wide angle lenses are extremely hard to design without bringing along a slew of issues (and that counts double for ultra-wide zooms). As an ultra-wide fan, I’ve grown accustomed to fringing and chromatic aberration, flare, barrel distortion, vignetting, and soft corners, as if these things are the price that must be paid to go very wide. As it turns out, I was wrong.

  I’ve been carrying the 14-24mm around for about a month now, and I’m seriously hooked. 14mm is so wide I feel like I’m most of the way to fisheye — I’ve accidentally gotten my feet in a couple shots! And the quality of the images is simply superb. There’s shockingly little distortion at either end of the zoom range; minor fringing and CA; and flare only when the sun is right in the frame. Autofocus, as with all recent Nikon lenses, is quick and silent. And the thing is extremely sharp, throughout the zoom range, and surprisingly sharp wide open at f/2.8, even in the corners. This thing is sharper in the corners than my 17-35mm f/2.8, my 20mm f/2.8…I think it’s sharper in the corners than any lens I’ve used. Why do I care so much? I often include details way out in the corners.

  I was prepared to find the lens heavy, but because it’s shorter than my 24-70mm f/2.8, it actually feels more comfortable to carry. (With lens caps and hoods but without end caps, the 24-70 and 14-24mm weigh virtually the same at just under 2 pounds, 4 ounces; the 17-35mm weighs half a pound less at 1 pound, 12 ounces. On my D700, the 24-70 or 14-24 bring the total weight to almost 4 3/4 pounds. Ouch.)

  Some people avoid this lens because it can’t take a filter. No filters at all, rear or front, ever. And while that is a serious drawback, I don’t use filters often enough to make that a deal-killer. It’s also very expensive at around $1800, so this is a purchase you make once to shoot for many years to come. Other drawbacks: the lens hood is not removable, and the glass really bows outward at the front, making it feel very vulnerable to accidental scratches.

  The biggest flaw for my use, though, is that it’s so wide that it’s less versatile. The 17-35mm works pretty well as a walkaround lens (typically accompanied by the 85mm f/1.8), since the 35mm end is a good all-purpose focal length. But this 14-24mm range is really wide all the way through its range — 24mm is still really wide. If I carry this thing with, say, the 85mm, there’s a big hole in the middle. Do I carry a third lens, say the 50mm f/1.4, and do a lot of lens swapping? All I can say is, everyone should have such problems.

• Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor ED 70-200mm f/2.8G IF telephoto zoom lens (full-frame) (July 2006)Set aside for a moment the question of the Vibration Reduction feature of the Nikkor 70-200 VR. Even with the VR turned off, this is, by far, the sharpest, clearest lens I’ve ever used, bar none. VR has its detractors, but I’m very happy with the feature — I could never have shot my “amnh” series without it. For that project, I was mostly shooting at the 70 to 110mm end at ISO 200 on the D70 in that dark museum. This image for example, was taken at 1/20 sec with the lens at 110mm. That’s more than two stops slower than you’d normally want to shoot at that focal length. But it’s sharp as a tack. Blown up to 13 x 19″, you can see every hair on that man’s arms.More: The “bokeh,” the look of the out-of-focus rendering, is beautiful. The autofocus is fast, accurate and silent (though the VR makes a quiet clicking sound).

  Drawbacks: expensive, heavy at 3 lbs, and it can’t focus closer than about five feet. (See also Thom Hogan’s review.)

  NOTE that the lens has been replaced by a new VRII model, which I have not tested.

  Update (2011): Roughly five years after I first bought the 70-200mm VR and I still find it to be one of the sharpest lenses I’ve ever used. I’ve been shooting it wide open lately, at f/2.8, and the images are just tack sharp — and the bokeh is beautiful. The 70-200 remains one of my all-time favorite lenses.

• Nikon 85mm f/1.4G prime lens (October 2011) (Still using this on my Nikon Z8 thanks to Nikon’s FTZ II adapter)
  Over the past year, I’ve been shooting more of my images with an 85mm prime (the Nikkor f/1.4D) than any other single lens. It’s a terrific focal length, I can shoot with a very shallow depth of field, it’s terrific for low light, it can’t be beat for portraits, and it’s even amazing for landscapes. When Nikon introduced a newer version of its classic portrait lens, I hesitated to upgrade — could the new “G” lens possibly be an improvement over the old “D” lens? But the reviews convinced me that it was an important move up — I spend so much time with an 85mm on my D700 that small improvements would be well worth the price.

  I’ve only been using the lens for a few days, but it’s already clear that it equals its classic predecessor in the beauty of the bokeh (the background blur in shallow depth of field). My sample is possibly sharper in the middle of the frame at the wide apertures I typically use, f/2.2 and 2.8. But the biggest benefit to me is the quicker focus, which also seems to hold focus better — that is, less hunting. This is apparently thanks to the “silent wave” focus motor. Though it’s a fatter and longer lens, it only weighs something like an additional 3 ounces and feels just fine on my D700 (with the battery grip).

• Nikon 85mm f/1.8 prime lens (September 2009)
  This fast 85mm prime lens is an incredible bargain and has become one of my all-time favorite lenses. Roughly a third the price of the 85mm f/1.4 but just one stop slower, the images it produces are, to my eye, just as sharp and the bokeh just as smooth and gorgeous. I love using this lens in all sorts of situations for shallow depth of field, even in full daylight. In fact, during a two-week trip through Italy, I was very happy with my ultra-wide 17-35mm f/2.8 and this 85mm — it served as a great portrait lens, great low-light lens, and great moderate telephoto. And at less than 15 ounces and shorter than 3″, it’s easy to carry. Of course, like all very fast glass, it loses some sharpness wide open, but I regularly shoot at f/2.2 and get very sharp details.


• Nikkor 12-24mm f/4G DX ultra-wide zoom (May 2005)
  Ultra wide lenses are rarer and more expensive for digital SLRs — because the field of view is reduced by a factor of about 1.6 on the D-70, for example, a 20mm lens catches the same field of view as a 30mm lens on a 35mm camera. The Nikkor 12-24mm, designed specifically for the Nikon digital SLRs, gives an equivalent of an 18-36mm zoom, a fantastic wide angle range down at the 12mm end, and a good medium-wide at the 24. Though the 12mm end has quite a bit of barrel distortion, the 24 is relatively flat, even decent for portraits, if you subject isn’t freaked out by having the lens shoved right up in her face. Because the 24 end is so flat, and overall very sharp, the 12-24 has become my favorite walking around lens, really wonderful for street photography. It’s expensive — just shy of $1000 most places — but the quality is superb. Because it’s a DX-series lens, it’ll only work on a 35mm body only out at the medium to long end of the range. I do see quite a bit of chromatic aberration at the 12mm end, and a bit of vignetting, but nothing I can’t handle in Photoshop.

Archived reviews:

• Nikon D810 36 megapixel FX DSLR (September 2014)The word on the street is that Nikon’s D810 isn’t necessarily a wise upgrade from a D800 or D800E, since the changes over those bodies were subtle: The sensor is no longer covered by an optical low-pass filter, so images are technically slightly sharper; image processing is faster, so the camera now shoots 5 fps in full-frame rather than 4 fps; the shutter release is now much quieter thanks to redesigned guts; an electronic front-curtain shutter means that internal vibrations can be completely eliminated for long exposures; the rear LCD screen is much improved, making focusing via live view much easier; battery life has been extended by about 25%; and other more minor refinements. (There are also changes to video capabilities, but I don’t pay attention to video.)But I immediately upgraded. As minor as those changes sound, I was looking forward to almost every single one of them. I’m printing images as large as 60″, so I expect to see additional visible detail and sharpness in prints; because I use exposure bracketing on a lot of my shots, I really love shooting at 5fps; the quieter shutter really is a big deal when you’re shooting strangers on the street almost daily; and the rear LCD is so much better than the previous LCD that I can now judge sharpness more accurately in the field. (I never tax my battery life, so that’s one change that I don’t appreciate.)

  These are changes I feel every day, and after two years with the D800, it felt like a reasonable time to upgrade.

  Do I recommend that D800 or D800E owners move up to the 810? Not at all, not unless those few refinements sound as compelling as they did to me. Do I recommend that owners of previous FX bodies consider the D810? Absolutely. The camera is amazing.

• Nikon D800 36 megapixel FX DSLR (April 2012)I used to claim that each new camera was going to be the last camera I’d ever need. I’ve been proven wrong too many times. But boy, oh boy, Nikon’s D800 doesn’t leave much to desire.NOTE: I don’t use the video capability, and I won’t consider it at all in this review.

  For a few years now, Nikon has been releasing DSLRs that have just about nailed the perfect physical design. In form and controls, the D700 closely resembled the D300 before it, and the D800 closely resembles the D700. After three years of daily use with the D700, I picked up the D800, took note of a couple button changes, and was off and running. This is a body that feels good and is easy to use.

  In almost every way, shooting with the D800 is just like shooting with the D700. The biggest difference I feel day to day is the D800’s slower frames-per-second shutter rate. I’ve been spoiled by the D700’s 8fps (with vertical grip). When you bracket exposures like I do, 8fps is very, very handy: three bracketed exposures in less than half a second. At 4fps, the D800 slows the frame rate by half when shooting the full 36MP frame. (Things improve only slightly to 5 fps when shooting in a special DX 16 megapixel crop mode, and that moves up to 6 fps with the $450 MB-D12 vertical grip. But for full frame, it’s 4fps.) After five weeks with the D800, I’m used to the slower frame rate, but I’ll always crave the faster fps of the D700.

  Other than that, shooting with the D800 is very much like shooting with the D700 or D300. I’m appreciating some small differences. It’s nice having the BKT button handy on the left dial. And I like the Virtual Horizon — no more carrying around my little bubble level. And I do love having a 100% viewfinder again — the D700’s 95% finder left me unsure of exactly where the edges of the frame would fall.

  The big, big change is, of course, the 36 megapixel image size. That’s enormous, triple the resolution of my D700. Right out of the camera, a 240dpi image will print at 20×30″, bigger than most people will ever need. I often print big prints at 180dpi (almost impossible to distinguish from higher resolution), which will create a print 40″ wide. Wow. Let’s keep going: I can easily scale an image up using Genuine Fractals (now renamed Perfect Resize) to 150% of original size and keep great quality. That means I can hang great looking images at five feet wide, with enough resolution that you can move in close and examine every little detail. I wish I’d had this camera when I shot C&H Auto Repair or Ganmar Electronics.

  But until I print big, I don’t notice that difference. I printed an extremely detailed D800 image in the best possible quality at 17×22″, and I might be able to see more detail. Maybe. If I squint. Of course working with triple the resolution means I can crop the hell of an image and still have excellent quality — it’s like having a longer lens, in fact. But I seldom crop. So the enormous image size will pay off eventually, but for now it doesn’t make a difference in my day-to-day shooting.

  What else? The image quality appears to be a notch above the D700 — at the same printing size, the high-ISO noise is a slight improvement over the D700, for example. The D800 body is slightly lighter, and the shape is slightly more comfortable in my hand. On the other hand, the new EN-EL15 battery doesn’t last as long as earlier batteries, and the charger is a little bigger, both of which mean more hassle when traveling. But the LCD screen is a little bit bigger, and now I finally have a camera that takes two memory cards (one compact flash card and one SD card), which partly makes up for the fact that my 16GB cards hold only 200 of these huge image files. (The SD card slot is, in fact, quite a bonus, because I can finally use an Eye-fi card to tether to my iPad when I’m on location. UPDATE: connecting to the Eye-fi card has turned out to be too flaky to count on. I’ve given up on it.)

  And now I’m having a hard time coming up with other advantages. It’s really all about that resolution — that’s the bottom line. I love the D800, and I can’t wait to print really big, which promise to make my next gallery show a whole different experience. If I’d had this much resolution for the images in my 2010 show, in fact, I would have hung much bigger prints; I was limited by the 12-megapixel files from my D700. But except for that enormous resolution, I have no need for the D800 — I’d be perfectly happy to keep shooting with the D700.

  UPDATE:

  Two major side effects from my switch to the D800.

  First, I’ve begun carrying my tripod a lot more than I used to. It’s not that the D800 is more sensitive to camera shake. A print from the D700 will show the same effects of camera shake as a print from the D800 — at the same print size. But once you blow up that D800 print to a much bigger size, that additional detail might reveal smearing that would not have been visible in the smaller print. And now that I can shoot for very large prints, I want to preserve those details that would have been invisible in a 12-megapixel image. The other day I used my tripod to shoot a three-story building in Soho, and if you blow the image up really big and look really close, you can actually read the business’s hours posted in the first-floor window.

  Second, I’m throwing away a much higher percentage of images I bring home. It’s not because I’m getting worse. I’d like to think I’m getting a little better all the time. But when an image file is as much as 45 megabytes, I’ve lost the desire to store every single shot on the off chance that someday I’ll find a use for it. (My Aperture image library is already almost two terabytes.)

• Nikon D700 12 megapixel FX DSLR (January 2009)I’ve gone through two big leaps in my experience with digital cameras. The first was when I moved up from a point-and-shoot to a digital SLR (the Nikon D70). Using the camera suddenly became much more transparent, thanks to the through-the-lens viewfinder, the instantaneous on, the instantaneous shutter release, and the improved control. I was no longer frustrated: fidgeting, twiddling, making up for the camera’s limitations. Taking a photo became far more natural.And the second leap occurred when I acquired the Nikon D700. Its full-frame sensor and the sensor’s new low-light capability bring a change I didn’t expect.

  The D700 is so noise-free at higher ISO settings that I now routinely shoot at ISO 800, 1600, and even 3200. That means that, to my surprise, I no longer have to keep an eye on slow shutters speeds or wide apertures. Suddenly, even indoors and in the evening, I can move around freely in a wide ranger of shutter speeds and apertures, confident that the images will not be crippled by noise. Now I think about aperture and shutter speed only in creative terms. This low-noise capability, rather than adding complexity, simplifies things. The D700 is the most transparent camera I’ve ever used — and that includes the 35mm film SLRs that I’ve used since the late 1960s.

  How much better is the D700’s low-light capability? I’ve done a small batch of pseudo-scientific tests, shooting the same scene with both my D300 and D700 on tripods with identical settings and the same lens, at various ISOs from below base up to to the highest, and compared the results side by side. Across the entire range, the D700 appears to be almost a 2 stop improvement over the D300. That is, an image shot at ISO 800 on my D300 has very similar luminance noise, color noise, contrast, color accuracy, and saturation to an image shot on the D700 at ISO 2200 to 3200. Wow.

  One of my early projects involved typical shutter speeds of 1/20 to 1/30 sec at 70mm (with VR), and only one out of four or five images was turning out sharp. I took the D700 to that same environment (with the same lens) and shot at 1/80 sec; every image was sharp. I had to completely rethink my shooting technique; all sorts of possibilities opened up.In addition to that improvement, I’m enjoying working once again with normal, 35mm-film-size, full frame (what Nikon calls FX) lenses. It’s nice not to think in terms of equivalents. (And Nikon’s latest FX lenses are among the finest they’ve ever produced. The 24-70mm f/2.8 (review) Nikon introduced only a year ago is incredibly sharp, if large and heavy; it looks very much like a larger version of the 17-55mm DX. If you can picture a D300 with a 17-55mm, just blow everything up a little and you’ll see the D700 with the 24-70mm.)

  Physically, the camera is extremely similar to my old D300, so much so that I have to look close to see which camera I’m picking up. The D700 is a bit heavier, a bit taller (not much). Only a few features have been tweaked. I’ve read that it’s got a slightly improved autofocus. The viewfinder is brighter and larger — yay — but it only shows about 95% of the final image — boo.

  And there are other minor differences, but I honestly can’t remember what they are. They certainly played no part in my move up to this body. Like the D300, the D700 is comfortable, the buttons and dials are thoughtfully laid out, and the images are gorgeous. You can read my review of the D300 below for more.

  In normal light, in fact, the D700 is pretty much the same as shooting with the D300, which was the finest SLR I’ve ever used. But in low light, even outdoors in the shade, this is camera is a game-changer. It’s not only the finest, but the most transparent camera I’ve ever used.

• Not only does Thom Hogan give a very complete review of the D700, but his 820-page ebook, Complete Guide to the D700, is absolutely essential. It’s head and shoulders above any other material I’ve seen on any camera. If you spend $2500 on a D700, another $40 for Thom’s guide is a no-brainer (and I don’t get a penny for that endorsement). But wait, there’s more! Thom also bundles his 145-page Intro to Nikon Software, videos, charts, settings, and Photoshop actions for your HD, and his 128-page printed portable guide to the D700. Now how much would you pay?


• Nikon D300 12 megapixel DX DSLR (December 2007).The D300 has taken the place of my old D200 (review) as the finest SLR I’ve ever used. It’s very much like the D200 in nearly every way — size, shape, weight, buttons — but with a choice set of features bumped up to the next level. (One big benefit is that, unlike moving from the D70 to the D200, there’s almost no learning curve.)Is it worth the upgrade price? For me, yes, for several reasons.The images coming out of D300 seem to my eye to have better white balance, more natural contrast, and improved noise at higher ISOs, about a one-stop improvement. I’m also pleased with the new Active D-Lighting, which keeps the highlights from blowing out. And by some weird miracle, the D300 eliminates chromatic aberration from my lenses (the kind of flaw that drives me nuts in big prints); that’s actually a huge benefit that’s getting little or no press.But probably the most important change for my purposes is the camera’s improved auto-focus. The D300 rarely struggles to lock focus, even in dim settings with less-than-ideal subjects, a big improvement over the D200, which was frustrating at times. Don’t get me wrong — the D200 was good, and the D300 still occasionally struggles. But for the most part I can take it for granted that the D300 is going to lock onto whatever I’m shooting.

  [Aside: I may have discovered a cure for my Nikon dSLRs’ difficulty focusing my super-fast lenses. Both my D200 and D300 have been hit and miss correctly finding focus with both of my f/1.4 lenses (the 50mm and the 28mm), but that’s been at my former default settings of Single Point AF and Single Server AF. For other reasons, I’ve started to use the D300’s Dynamic Area Autofocus and Continuous Server AF as my walk-around default. An unexpected benefit is that the camera now does an excellent job locking onto focus with these two fast lenses.]

  There are smaller refinements I appreciate, too. The little screw-on caps are now replaced by plugs that stay attached. I really love the snappy 6 frames per second — just a tad snappier than the D200, and much snappier than my D80. The 3″ LCD on the rear has very high pixel density; it’s beautiful, but I took it for granted almost immediately. I do like the info screen that can be popped up on the rear LCD, especially since the top LCD is impossible to see on a high tripod. Fifty-one focus points? I’m all over that — using a tripod, I can set the focus on a portrait subject’s face even way out of the center of the frame. Better battery life? Yes, much better.

  Less interesting to me is the new Live View mode, which lets you see the scene through the lens on the rear LCD. I can’t imagine finding it useful. I’ve also had little problem with dust on the sensor (a blower bulb fixes all my dust), so the sensor shake doesn’t impress me. And I’m not expecting any major wow factor now that I’m shooting 12 megapixels rather than 10. While that sounds like a 20% jump, we’re really talking about printing 1.3 inches wider at 300 dpi. (Of course I often print at 180 dpi, so right out of the camera I’ve got an image almost 18 x 24 inches with no resampling.)

  Disappointments? Nothing serious. I use the settings banks, but I still wish I could lock them, I wish there was a single settings bank rather than two, and I wish there was a button to switch banks rather than a series of menu choices. I check highlights on most of my shots, but I can no longer flip back and forth between an unobstructed image and a highlights display (update: this turns out to be a nonissue since I discovered I can display flashing highlights on the histogram screen, just a button press away). I also love those function buttons (three now, including the AE-L / AF-L button), but unfortunately, Nikon doesn’t let me assign some of my favorite functions, including D-Lighting and settings banks.

  And the lack of 100 ISO is a little disconcerting. The D300 can be set to some sort of artificial 100 ISO, called L 1.0, but Nikon says little about it. Thom Hogan believes that I’ll see more highlights blowing out at ISOs below 200, and indeed, side by side, the L 1.0 image looks a little more contrasty. But meanwhile, in my first quick tests, I can clearly see reduced luminance noise in the shadows compared with ISO 200, so I’m not going to hesitate to use it in low-contrast situations.

  The move from the D70 to the D200 was a huge leap, from the D100 to the D200 was a huge leap, but from the D200 to the D300? It’s basically an upgrade. A worthwhile upgrade for my needs, but an upgrade nonetheless.

• Nikon D80 10 megapixel DX DSLR (September 2006)As of the beginning of August 2006, I’ve been testing and using the Nikon D80 (thanks to some work I did for a certain camera manufacturer), and even though I prefer the D200, I’m finding that the D80 will make a perfect second camera: most of the time, it’ll be available for the rest of my family when we go out shooting together, but it’ll also make a good second body when I need to shoot with two lenses and I don’t have time to swap (think Mermaid Parade). Finally, it’s reassuring to have a second Nikon dSLR on hand if I ever need to ship the D200 in for tuneup or repair (though that alone is, of course, a poor reason to spend $1000).I just dropped a lot of money on the D200, and I’m finding the D80 alarmingly similar in many respects: same 10.2 megapixel sensor, same 11 autofocus points, both take ISO down to 100, both include a function button that can be configured by the user. In fact, the D80 has some features I wouldn’t expect in anything but a fairly high-end camera, such as mirror-up shooting mode (what Nikon calls “Exposure Delay Mode”), for absolutely rock-solid shooting on a tripod. In fact, the D80 has two nice advantages: it’s much smaller and lighter (20 ounces vs. 29 for the D200), and I like the tiny, wireless ml-l3 remote shutter release (about $20) as opposed to the D200’s wired remote.

  But for my use, the D200 has important advantages: the D200 is weather sealed; it shoots at 5 frames per second and — more important — its buffer will take 22 RAW shots before slowing down vs. the D80’s 6; the D200 will auto-bracket as many as 9 exposures vs. the D80’s 3; the D200 allows multiple saved banks of settings; plus lots of minor advantages that I appreciate (one example: I can set the center-press of the rocker switch to set the focus point to the center). In general, the D200 is much more configurable in small but handy ways.Coming from the other direction, the D80 — like the D200 — solves many of the frustrations I felt with the D70. I like the additional auto-focus points; I really like larger 2.5″ LCD screen and the ability to zoom in really tight to check focus; I like the higher magnification of the viewfinder; I like having 10 megapixels rather than 6, mainly because I can crop more freely. One frustration picked up from the D70 — the way I carry a camera, I accidentally bump the exposure-settings dial and find myself in Manual or a scene mode. Luckily, there’s no such dial on the D200.

  One of the big changes in the D80 is the addition of a whole set of in-camera editing options: you can shoot black and white (while keeping a color version of the image), there’s red-eye correction and in-camera cropping, and lots more, as well as a built-in slideshow with smooth fade out and fade in if you want to connect your D80 to a TV. But honestly, I have no use for those features (nor do I need any of the Scene Modes, which pre-set the camera for various shooting conditions).
  Images from the D80’s kit lens, the Nikon 18mm-135mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX (no VR), look very sharp to my eye at most focal lengths, but there is considerable barrel distortion at the wide 18mm end, and noticeable pincushioning at the telephoto end. I’m also seeing considerable chromatic aberration in high-contrast situations. The lens keeps the handy ability to manually focus even while in autofocus mode. 18-135mm is a handy range, and lens will eventually retail alone for a reasonable $400, but I recommend saving your pennies for the well-regarded 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 DX VR (review). Though not perfect, it’s far better than the 18-135.

• Nikon D200 10 megapixel dslrI used the 6 megapixel Nikon D70 hard and well for almost exactly two years, and I was always very pleased with the images I’ve gotten. (In fact, 6 megapixels was plenty of resolution even for the 13″ x 19″ prints I sell.) But I gradually became more and more frustrated with the limitations of the camera’s features, even starting to envy my friends’ D2-series Nikons. But there was no way I could afford those high-end dSLRs, nor did I want to carry around a camera that heavy.Then came the 10.2 megapixel D200, a camera that reviewers agree combines the best features of the lower-end D70 and the top-of-the-line D2-series: from the D70, the camera inherits a small, light body just about 30% heavier then the d70 (though tougher and more weather-proof), the built-in flash (which can remotely control a sb-600 or sb-800, external flash through “commander” mode), and the high-capacity en-el3-type battery design (though the D200 eats up much more power than the D70).

  From the D2-series Nikons, the D200 picks up many pro-level features I’ve been craving (better 11-sensor auto-focus system, much bigger and brighter LCD, 5 frames per second shooting speed, ISO 100, and lots more). Among my favorite new features are the mirror prerelease (great for tripod shooting) and the user-assignable FUNC button (I set it to switch into spot metering). It’s wonderful to have immediate, button access to ISO, exposure modes, and continuous shooting speed. No more digging through menus.

  The D200 includes 2 banks of 4 user-customizable settings, but I find the implementation to be flawed. I’ve set up a bank, for example, that I’ve named “Tripod;” with a quick couple menu selections I’ve got my preferred settings for auto-focus, ISO, mirror prerelease, etc. But the D200 doesn’t let me lock that bank. As a result, if I’m shooting in my “Tripod” bank and I alter any of those settings — say I bump the ISO up to 200 — the setting is altered in the bank. Next time I go out shooting and select “Tripod,” I’ll find the ISO at 200, not my preferred 100. The practical result is that I feel much more reluctant to touch any setting when I’m using one of the banks. Update: a couple months later and I’ve decided I was a bit too harsh on the settings banks. I don’t alter them as much as I thought I would, so they’re actually quite handy as designed — though I’d still prefer a way to lock them.

  Other drawbacks: it’s a shame the D200 did away with the tiny, wireless, $20 ml-l3 remote shutter release. Instead I’ve had to buy one of the corded, ten-pin models; it’s bulkier to carry and takes more fiddling to plug in — and I’m limited by the length of the cord (though the wireless model only worked from a line-of-sight area in front of the camera). Also, while the d200 offers a more detailed and accurate estimate of remaining lief in the new en-el3e battery, the D200 sucks up power at about twice the rate of the older camera.

  And some aspects of the new camera took getting used to after two years with my d70: the shutter release has less of a distinct pop when it’s halfway down (for prefocusing, for example). It can be tricky to press the center button on the directional pad — I tend to accidentally hit one direction instead. (I’ve finally learned to spread the pad of my thumb across the whole button for that press.) And all these new settings, especially all the various focus modes, is a much bigger learning curve. I find I spend a little more time checking all the settings before I go out shooting.

  That said, I find that every annoying feature of the D70 has been addressed in the D200. I no longer accidentally change the exposure mode by bumping the D70’s dial; I can center the focus point with a single click; I’m using ISO 100 and seeing zero luminance noise in the shadows; I can change the direction of the exposure compensation dial; I can shoot up to nine automatically bracketed shots in a row; the LCD is not only larger, but I can now zoom in extremely tight on an image to check focus; etc. etc.

• D70 6-megapixel digital SLRAs I’ve been telling my friends, it’s like coming home again. this is a real SLR, just like the ones I grew up with.

  unlike other non-SLR digital cameras, the d70 responds to everything in an instant. it turns on immediately (though I leave it on all day since it barely eats up battery power), it focuses fast, it zooms like every SLR with a quick twist of the zoom ring on the lens, and the shutter responds with a barely perceptible delay.

  finally I can spot a shot I want, whip the camera to my eye, zoom and frame, and snap off a picture — all in a fraction of the time it took with my coolpix 4500. in the first week of use, this camera caught dozens of shots I would have missed with the 4500. and the six megapixel “raw” format photos are simply awesome, completely blowing the coolpix out of the water. I thought I’d miss framing with the lcd screen — as with all SLR’s, the d70’s is only for reviewing shots and viewing the menus, but I don’t miss it one bit.

  the bundled 18 to 70mm lens (f3.5-4.5) adds $300 to the camera’s price, and it’s a bargain. the lens is sharp and smooth, and it focuses quickly and quietly.

  the d70 kit — the body bundled with the zoom lens — has gotten much cheaper over time, and you’ll probably end up finding the d70s, a slightly upgraded d70 that only adds minor improvements.

  other details: the en-el3 battery lasts and lasts — I’ve heard it’s good for a thousand shots. my coolpix lcd screen was scratched within a week, but the d70 comes with a clear cover (nikon part bm-4). the bundled 18-70mm lens comes with a hood that will both reduce lens flare and protect the lens — use it. also, there seem to be a free 4-year extended warranty for the lens — don’t neglect to open the little envelope or you’ll miss the ten-day deadline.

  You’ll eventually want the ml-l3 remote shutter release (about $20), and a spare lcd cover bm-4 (about $10). they remain hard to find in stock.