NIKON D3 REVIEW IN THE FIELD:
Tomorrow I travel to San Francisco to try out the new D3 I purchased today, and from there I start a three-week journey on the Ruta Maya in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico…during Hurricane Season.
The decision to shoot primarily digital on this adventure was made due to the low-light situations we will be photographing of shamans during elaborate rituals inside dimly-lit altar spaces, candle-lit caves, and outdoors at night. The D3 is purported to create great, low-noise, images even at 3200 ASA. So I have put the Contax, Pentax 67, and Nikon F5 on the shelf for this trip and have packed only the following:
Nikon D3
Kodak 14N (as a backup body)
Noblex 150 for panoramics
18mm 3.5mm
24mm
35mm
55mm
85mm
80-400mm
Day one: I brought the box home from Profoto Connection in Irvine. I got the camera with some extras all new in the box for $4,500, tax included. It was pre-owned but hardly used. The first impression is an allure that is hard to resist. Designed by Porsche, it feels like driving the fast-handling 944 that I drove in the nineties. The Nikons always “feel” better to me than the Canons. The sound of the shutter, and the speed, is orgasmic to the ear. It’s solid in the hand like my F5; you don’t feel like you’re handling a typical digital SLR. It feels old school, and reliable.
I bought two cards and got ‘em formatted easily before I reviewed the Quick Guide. I found the controls to pretty much mirror the setup on the F5, which is nice. The viewfinder is super clear and bright, great to compose in, and the image viewer is just the right size — plenty big and very bright. I bought some plastic coating material to lay over it for protection, though it’s already coated with scratch-resistant hard plastic. Another thing I quickly noticed is the ease with which you can adjust the ISO (up to 6400!), image quality, and white balance. The controls seem perfectly placed and sized so far.
The D3 is super-easy to get up and running. I put on an 18mm AIS lens and found that the metering works fine with the older lenses, which was a relief. However, note that the DX lenses don’t fill the D3’s full frame. I thank God that I collected all non-DX Nikkors over the past decade. The first image popped up on the viewer, and I was off to the races. I started the second battery charging in the LED-rich charger — no problem there. I then easily got the image quality settings set up for the largest RAW files possible. The camera comes with both a pamphlet guide as well as a 3/4-inch thick booklet with all the details. Next I will load the software on a little MAC G4.
The first batch of shots from a couple dawn walks in San Francisco were taken at 200 and 2000 ASA with an 80-400 Nikkor and a 55 Micro.
Day Two-Four:
The camera is proving itself to be an essential piece of gear that can potentially replace many other of my cameras. Here’s the summary: The camera is not light. After three hours of shooting my hand and fingers are somewhat sore. In fact, the guy who sold me the camera did so because it was too heavy for him. The Kodak 14N is featherweight compared to the Nikon. Keep this in mind before you buy. I hiked 7 kilometers with it around my neck yesterday and paid for it. (In fact, for this reason alone I will be keeping my little Contax G2.)
Next, let me mention the conspicuousness of the D3. Some photographers like to be noticed and recognized as “professional” photogs. This camera will gratify you mightily, however, with being conspicuous you will often find that people get nervous about your presence. Two days ago I attended the Maya New Year rituals in San Francisco de Alto, Guatemala. It was difficult to shoot from the hip with the D3 and remain “invisible,” since the camera is so wonderful looking and sounds like a high-tech machine. People were frankly freaked by its presence, and in fact, a woman who spoke english approached me to inform me that photography was not allowed at the ritual. I told her I had spoken to the Shaman and that he permitted it after the first offering. Others were shooting with consumer digital cameras without getting heat. ”It’s because of your camera. Who are you working for?” You get the idea. It was impossible to shoot close without eliciting concern and fear. The camera is an attention-getter, and that is not what a street shooter and culture shooter wants — consider this also before you buy the D3.
Now for some technical stuff. You can set the camera to shoot in three modes: Standard, Neutral, and Vivid. You can also easily set custom tweaks for Contrast, Saturation, and Color. The menus are really well laid out and bright in the viewer. There is a lot that you can tweak and it takes some time to memorize how to find everything. I started with VIVID, since I like the Velvia look of film. The camera produces a RAW file and a large Jpeg for each image, up to 14 bit. The Vivid setting is killer, and imitate transparency film very nicely. With underexposure and a polarizer you can get the Velvia 50 look pretty closely. With standard and neutral settings, and by using the so-called D-Lighting function, you can lower contrast for harsh-light situations. My only recommendation here is to rehearse all of this switching before you start your trip, as it’s a bit of a learning curve to find everything in the menu system.
Let’s cut to the chase. How does the camera do in low-light situations, at high ASA settings. My first challenge was a shaman ritual that took place in a dark house in the very late afternoon. The room was lit by some window light, a flourescent light, and about 40 candles. In other words, an absolute nightmare and something I would not even try to capture with a film camera. To shoot at f8 I had to use ASA 3200. Surprisingly, the initial results were poor, as the camera could not handle the difference in light intensity from the windows and candles. A lot of flare, noise, too much contrast…about as bad as 3200 film would do. The aggravating part was that the images looked pretty good in the viewer, but they sucked when I looked at them on the G4 monitor. Now that being said, I also worked this scene with an on-camera Nikon flash unit, and tried mixing light sources at 1600 ASA. This worked wonderfully. I bounced a little flash while exposing for the candle light. The results were really natural, the mood retained in wonderful images of mixed light sources. This is definitely where this camera shines. At 1600 using a full-framed 24mm, with the Vivid setting, there was NO NOISE and wonderful tonal range. This was imagery that would be impossible to capture with both my Kodak 14N and all my film cameras. I was hooked on the D3 from this point forward. NOTE~I should also add here that upon inspection of all of photography from the 3200 ASA session, there were many pics that really were quite acceptable — in fact, in subtle light absent of extreme flaring light sources, the D3 rocks at 3200 ASA. In fact, to add texture and get that distressed look, I am shooting at higher ASAs even in ample light settings. This flexibility is a joy and makes the camera a real extension of any shooters photographic toolset.
Hassle factor: The hassle of a digital camera for the travel photographer is the downloading/storage task. This could have been smooth using my G4 (which burns DVDs) and the Nikon camera software, which allows you to transfer images from the camera. The problems here are manifold, and will likely vary from user to user. My problems with the D3 system were these:
1. the software would take minutes to find the camera. It would eventually find the D3, and then often it would not find the images on each of the 4-gig cards. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Finally, I used my USB card reader to copy directly from the card to the DVD burner. Thankfully, I had the little cheapo reader or I would have been screwed. The inconsistency of the problem was the real concern here.
2. another peave with the D3 so far is that when the cards are full and you want to Delete some images to make room for more, the image count does not update unless you turn off the camera and actually release each card from their sockets. Then the image count will reduce and you can shoot more. This totally sucks and I hope others aren’t experiencing the same issue.
3. In general, I must say that the whole set of tasks related to data transfer with this camera is not exactly reliable or robust, at least with my Mac G4 on this field test. I’m sure I will work out the kinks but it’s a little nerve wracking compared to using film. Also, since I am forced to cut DVDs due to the Nikon software not functioning in a timely manner, I am burning 4 or five DVDs per day, and will be forced to find blanks in a Third World country, which I’m not relishing one bit. I guess as with any digital system, you better have two of everything, or expect to be hosed.
Day Five-Six: Exposure is critical with the D3, and perhaps all digital SLRs. You can’t just set the camera on Auto and shoot away. I’m using the Histogram View as much as possible to check actual exposure, since the Viewer can be deceiving. Also, I set the Viewer to be less bright than normal since it was tricking me into underexposing many shots. Bracketing is always an option but not realistic when you’re shooting culture — often you get one or two shots in an hour due to sensitivity of people to being photographed, and that’s it. (This was definitely the case at the Mayan New Year celebration during the first incantation and burning offering. I got only two shots from the hip, and luckily nailed one of them because I used the histogram to test the exposure before entering the ritual area.) What has surprised me with the D3, however, is how accurate in exposure you need to be in order to obtain a really editable image. You have to find your own best histogram shape. My preference is to fill it towards the high end, but without filling the highest 15% of the gram. The viewer helps, and can be accurate, but I am finding if I depend on it solely it misleads because images look different in it depending on the amount of ambient light around you when you’re shooting.
To achieve perfect exposure I am using Manuel Mode for the most part, and doing a lot of trial and error. However, I am experimenting with Auto and combining that with both the Exposure-Lock button (which is located too far to the left on the camera back for my thumb) and the Exposure-Compensation function. Your approach will depend on whether the light is changing in the scene (Auto) or is static (Manual).
Yesterday was a real test of the durability of the camera. We hiked into the crater of a volcano for 7 kilometers in pouring rain. I hiked with an umbrella and a zip lock bag over the camera, but it was impossible not to get the body wet. One hates to bring a $4500 camera into such settings, but the camera performed reliably, though it is heavy to hike with as I mentioned above. I must say that is it a real pleasure to 1) shoot with a full-frame digital camera that feels as fast and durable as the F5, and 2) to be able to ratchet up the ASA to 1000 or 1600 or more, and shoot with confidence shots that you would not even attempt with a lesser camera — like jungle trees in a thick fog from a muddy trail in a driving rain where setting up a tripod would be absolutely impossible.
After just a few days with the D3, I am convinced this is the finest camera Nikon has ever produced. It’s going to make zealots out of us who come to own it.
Day Seven…
Battery life of the D3 is amazing. I have two batteries and I am shooting all day. I charge up the batteries at night but frankly, I could do this trip with ONE battery, which is pretty incredible given my experience with the Kodak 14N and consumer digital cameras.
Day Eight…
Wow, this morning I realized that the D3 is not a camera. It’s a miracle. I was inside the dimly-lit La Merced Church in Antigua, Guatemala where I shoot on every trip I make here. To put it bluntly, in two hours I created more publishable images with the D3 that on six previous visits with other cameras. I shot at 2000-5000 ASA and captured super-sharp and no-noise images using an 80-400mm lens. The color was perfect and the camera even allowed me to slap on a polarizer (!!) in the super-dim light and shoot amazing portraits of statuary at 300mm through a glass case. No noise. Perfect color. Very sharp. I was truly blown away.
This camera levels the playing field. With it you are only limited by your imagination.
