rwalls3 wrote:
For me...I love fast primes. I seriously was thinking about the D3 or D300, but then checked out Nikon's lenses (of which I know nothing) and could not find any equivalent to 35/1.4 on FF.
I'm looking at the equivalents, too. My searching for another Mk III put on hold until I figure out what to do (D3 vs. Mk III).
No 35/1.4 but they do have a Nikkor AF 35mm f/2 D which has decent review on Photozone. It's a stop slower, but the D3 is a stop faster native 6400 vs. native 3200 on the Mk III. The 85/1.8 is equivalent to my 85/1.8 but their 135mm doesn't seem so hot.
stanj wrote:
It is, as long as you're in good light. Been using it for 2 days now, and it's awesome when it's bright but indoors even with a 1.4 lens, not so much.
That's not very hopeful for Canon - Nikon have put a spanking new, fully pro AF system in the D300 - worth the cost difference on it's own, IMHO
Regards,
DaveMart
ivanshusky wrote:
I am really hoping the Nikon D3 will force Canon to announce EOS 3D with FF, 16mpix and 8 fps, about $4000.
Haha, I am dreaming
Wouldn't count on this, as the best they apparently can do is 8 fps @ 10 MP @ 1.3x. Canon really needs to get price competitive with the D III, it's going to be too easy to up-sell PJ's & other folks to FF, 12 MP, 11 fps, etc.
Pixel Perfect wrote:
Canon's sole advantage now is an affordable FF and hopefully the 5D II will carry that on, but still a pro level reasonably affordable FF with the features of the D3 is what a lot of people would die for. Ok $4999 is not cheap, but it makes the 1Ds II look poor value and given how close the 5D IQ was to the 1Ds II, the D3 should be up their too with it's 14 bit capture and new engine. I'm am sure Nikon will put FF into a D300 class body eventually.
Canon has to drop the price of the 1D III immediately by at least $600 to be competitive with the D3 IMO. Oh and the AF issues will now be fixed in record time ...Show more →
The D3 is a 1DIII competitor, not 1DsIII.
The biggest damage has been done to Nikon in the sports and Journalistic market, which they are targeting with this camera.
As soon as they have turned out enough to have some spare capacity, expect a 24MP D3x - and my bet is it wil go for around the same as cAnon rice the 1DsIII, or a few dollars more, jsut as the D3 is a little dearer than the 1DIII - when have Nikon ever been cheap?
Regards,
DaveMart
"While it's widely known that Nikon uses sensors designed by Sony in most of its digital SLRs, the D3's sensor is an original Nikon design. The only other digital SLR models to also feature a sensor created by Nikon are the D2H and D2Hs, and as with those models, Nikon isn't revealing their manufacturing partner. The D3's sensor has a pixel pitch of 8.45µm and utilizes 12-channel readout to enable its 9 fps burst rate at full resolution."
Buy the Nikon..... if it has everything you need..
that'll let someone else get the Canon you would've bought.
(do you really feel that Nikon has caught up to Canon...
let alone for 1/2 the price?)
Someone posted that the 14bit RAW files drop the FPS down SIGNIFICANTLY on the D300...just not in the marketing material. I am interested to see if this is in fact the case...
EDIT: I was 1 min late with my response apparently.
Valerie S wrote:
I'm looking at the equivalents, too. My searching for another Mk III put on hold until I figure out what to do (D3 vs. Mk III).
No 35/1.4 but they do have a Nikkor AF 35mm f/2 D which has decent review on Photozone. It's a stop slower, but the D3 is a stop faster native 6400 vs. native 3200 on the Mk III. The 85/1.8 is equivalent to my 85/1.8 but their 135mm doesn't seem so hot.
drdrew wrote:
did i read correctly that the D3 only goes to iso 200? why no iso 100? or better yet 50?
This is an interesting question and potentially a significant issue. Unless their 200 is as clean as Canon's 100 then there are a lot of people of peple who may be disappointed. The world is not entirely made up of people shooting ISO 6400 and quite a number of us even know what a tripod is and when to use it.
Quack wrote:
the D3 can go down to 100iso using "Lo-1" setting.
The question is why isn't it native? Using a special setting usually indicates that they are doing something that adversely impacts image quality or at best, has no impact.
the Nikon 35mm 1.4 is manual focus and the design is some thirty-five years old. Not noted for sharpness wide open, with nasty bokeh at f1.4 to boot. Cleans up a lot by f2 and is pretty sweet from f2.8.
Nikon has offered this superspeed lens for two decades now, so must believe the design is good. This is an excellent lens for low-light and general photography, although the results are not stunning when it is used wide open. Partly this stems from the tendency to internal flare that needs stopping down to f/2-f/2.8 in order to disappear. Its imaging capacity quickly increases when the aperture is set to f/2.8 and peak performance is reached between f/4 and f/5.6. In this quite narrow range it produces tremendously sharp images. To illustrate its imaging potential: In the peak range it is possible to discern objects that actually measure <1 mm within a recorded area of 5 by 8 m. You'll need at least 40X magnification to observe these tiny details on the film, but they certainly are there . This shows the unbelievable level of detail that can be resolved on film by this lens! At f/8, however, performance starts to decline and by f/16 it's just another ordinary lens. Flare isn't usually a problem with it and ghosting is well controlled, too.
The peak sharpness of the 35 mm f/1.4 lens declines towards the corners, partly because of curvature of field. Seemingly its optical design is optimised for central sharpness, which should suit PJ-style users. However, if you put this lens to use for nature photography, you do well to acquaint yourself with its sharpness distribution across the image area. For digital camera users, there is less noticeable decline of sharpness away from the dead centre of the frame.
The 35/1.4 features CRC and thus is a capable performer even up close down to its near limit at 0.3 m. There will be quite visible barrel distortion, though, when it is focused this close.
On DSLR cameras, you will observe some chromatic aberration towards the corners of the frame with nearly all models. Only the combination with D2X behaves nicely in this respect and although there is some CA, it is generally negligible (or caused by field curvature). On the other hand, D2X images are very sharp even at f/1.4 and excellent in the peak range f/2.8 - f/8. Critically sharp and contrasty images still can be had at f/16 with the D2X. Similar behaviour is seen on the D200.
Check out the Image Quality Settings in the D300 and D200 comparison chart
http://www.digitalreview.ca/content/Nikon-D300-Digital-SLR-Camera.shtml 14-bit NEF (RAW):uncompressed or compressed RAW. Images are recorded at a bit-depth of 14 bits, producing files roughly 1.3 times larger than 12-bit files but increasing the color data recorded resulting in smoother tones. Maximum frame advance rate decreases to 2.5 fps.
