darrenleow Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Background: I used to shoot a couple of paid gigs, photojournalism for the college paper, and sports photography. But I'm now a much more casual user, though I'm quite spoiled by the D3's professional-grade quality and responsiveness. I also love that 9/11 fps is there when I need it, but mostly shoot around 5fps. Hardly shoot any video so it would be a good-to-have but not necessary at all. Really enjoy the D3's size and solid feeling, but the shutter is really loud and conspicuous.
I have a Nikon D3 that I've been using for the last 2+ years or so (bought 2nd hand), roughly 200k+ clicks on it. During a rainy shoot it just died -- the playback and menu buttons wouldn't work, and moving the drive mode to Live View would cause the shutter release to become unresponsive. Oddly it came back to life after sitting around a couple of months in my dry cabinet, but has gone back to its broken state. I can still use the camera as-is, just have no access to playback or menus, thus rendering the camera operable but a major risk to shoot anything important with.
Nikon has quoted me about US$1000+ to repair the camera and replace the shutter unit. I know that the D3 is an ancient camera, though still perfectly fine for my needs.I've checked and found that a 2nd hand D3 isn't about 1.5x to 2x more expensive than the repair cost. Plus there are many newer cameras on the market, though I don't know if the new tech is worth stepping down in terms of the build quality (D4 is definitely out of my budget)
I hardly print my photos, and mostly 8x10 at the maximum, I have been pretty happy with the high ISO and DR of the D3, but maybe I simply don't know what I'm missing out from the new technology available 7 years on. I'm really hesitant is to go for the 36MP of the D800 trio, I suspect it's going to really weigh down my post-processing workflow on my old MBP.
If you were in my shoes, what would you do?
1. Fork out the US$1000 to repair the D3 -- Is this an economically sound course of action? Will I be much better off stepping up
Either keep the D3 or try to sell it off for cheap and:
2. Source for a 2nd hand D3 (approx US$1500 to US$2000) -- I'm slightly wary of buying 2nd hand cameras out of warranty at this point, especially for such an old camera
3. Buy a D800/D800e (approx US$2000) -- Same as above, but less risk here. 36 MP, got to adapt my workflow
4. Buy a D610 (approx US$2000) -- Will the step down in terms of AF performance and build quality leave me disappointed?
5. Buy a D810 (approx US$3000) -- Users are raving that it's the best all-around FX camera, but would 36 MP be overkill for me?
Of course I'm waiting for the new D750 announcement to see what it brings to the table, but I'm also assessing the options available currently.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
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