Button Layout and the feel of D3s

As we all know, the D3s comes with an inbuilt vertical grip, the layout of the buttons are pretty much the same as the D700, however, i find the multiselector on the D3s is a little far away for my thumb to reach as compared to my D700. Apart from that, I’m also getting alot of misfiring from the vertical grip shutter button, I had to lock the vertical shutter button whenever I’m not using it.

White Balance

Dpreview gave the D3s as a cons in this aspect, I’m not sure what dpreview was comparing the D3s with. But personally, I find it more accurate than my D700.  Under tricky light, its auto white balance performs better than my d700.

Autofocus

Under low light conditions, autofocus on this SLR is pretty impressive, its a tad faster than the D700, but its still a little slower compared to Canon system. I’m pretty disappointed in this aspect coming from a RM14,400 top of the line DSLR. However, focusing fast doesn’t mean its accurate, the thing I like about Canon is that it focuses really fast BUT its inaccurate! I was an avid canon user a few years back, started from a 350D, to 30D and then 50D. In my opinion, the 50D focuses really fast, but it just wont nail the shot! Unlike Nikon systems, they are a little slower, but it nails the shot almost 90% of the time, while Canon systems misses it alot. So, the D3s focuses fast and accurate while the canon system I used previously focuses very fast, but very inaccurate!

Again, I’m comparing autofocus under low light conditions, I’m sure D3s performs extremely well in bright lit events like sports events, or arenas. I’m giving my opinion base on my usage for my wedding assignments.

ISO performance

Here comes the exciting part, the ISO performance. The Nikon D3s has yet again reach new heights in terms of usable ISO. The previous D3 has already set a new industry standard for the maximum usable ISO performance at 6400. This time around, the D3s brought the record to 1 stop higher to an impressive 12800. Does it live up to its name? I’ll let the test shots explain itself. I’m not going to do a 400% zoom to try to look for little little grains, but rather I’d prefer to see its overall as we all would normal view a photo. So, here goes

Starting with ISO3200

ISO6400, still looking impressively clean

ISO12800!

ISO H1, 25600. hmm…it sure looks usable

ISO H2, 51200. Still acceptable I guess.

ISO H3, 102400. Ok, this is a little too far out. But, its impressive enough that I can still can see the image itself.

My personal conclusion

Although autofocus is a little slower than the canon system in low light, but I can accept it as long as its ACCURATE! Needless to say, ISO performance is indeed impressive as claimed by alot of other reviewers out there. As for video recording, maybe its not as impressive as the 5D markII as it doesn’t supports Full HD, but I’ve tried it, 720p looks impressive enough for videos! Would I get it, hell yeah! It’d definitely help me alot in knocking up another notch for my ISO so my flash wont have to work so hard through out my low light event coverage. Not to forget, it focuses fast and accurate too.

What I was really interested was pushing the limit of the new VRII which Nikon claim to be able to support up to 4 amazing stops and i was even more intrigue by nikon’s recommendation to set VR to “Active” for in-car shooting. So i did a few trials.

Shot taken with 1/60sec in-car with VR setting to “Active”. When you’re shooting in car, the shutter speed i can manage the shot varies alot depending on the road condition, but on a straight malaysian slightly bumpy roads, i still manage to get this shot at 1/60 sec shutter speed.

Take note that all the shots below do not have any photoshops, these are directly from camera, only photoshop done was to resizing, everything else is original shot.

1/60 sec at 70mm

Shot below is also 1/60 seconds at 120mm shot from inside a moving car on a malaysian slightly bumpy road. Most of the shots were able to nail it perfectly at a 1/60 shutter speed with VR set to Active.

An attempt at 1/30sec, the shake starts to appear. We can see some shakes in the image below yet again on a typical malaysian slightly bumpy road.

and an attempt 1/60sec at 200mm, slight shakes kicks in.

As a conclusion, i can almost nail 3 shots out of 5 without handshake. But if you’re able to jack your ISO, getting a 1/100sec shutter speed, you almost can nail every shot without shakes.

Ok, enough with the in-car trying to shoot with a low shutter speed, lets take a look at static objects.

1/20 seconds at 200mm handheld.

yet another 1/20sec shot at 200mm handheld, very very mild shake.

a scenery shot from a high vantage point, 1/15sec at 80mm, for this shot, i had my hand leaning on wall for more stability.

a bad attempt to an even lower shutter speed, 1/13sec at 200mm handheld.

Bring it back up,  1/20sec at 200mm .

Thats all folks for the sample shots i’d like to share. As a conclusion, the lowest shutter speed i could get down to handheld was 1/20 seconds. Cliff Mautner manages the shots down to 1/13 sec at 200mm, but i couldnt, i guess i have really shaky hands. But nikon claims the VRII is able to compensate up to 4 stops, if i were using 200mm, i should have 1/200sec, 4 stops below is 1/13 second, and i only managed around 3.6 stops! i have shaky hands! but then again, the lens is darn heavy to hold on.

Lastly, this is an awesome lens, its built like a tank, it is also weather and dust proof, having better IQ corner to corner compared to VR1,  better vignette control and most importantly the VRII.

I personally love this lens and would definitely go for an upgrade.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoy my small little review.

ISO6400!!

You may view the really large size here.

ISO3200~~~

Large size here.

However, i was a little curious about the noise performance of in camera jpeg and post processed raw file jpeg.
So here is what i managed to fool around with.

This is direct from Camera at ISO6400

Large size here.

While this is RAW file conversion

Large size here.

and here are iso 12800 and 25600 jpeg direct from camera

ISO12800

Large here.

ISO25600

Large here.

my next post, AF~~~ stay tuned.

Those of you who knows me will know how much a big fan I am of canon, I’ve owned a few canon lens and body. I started from the very old 350D, up to a 30D, and 50D with a few nice L lenses and wide angles. Not a huge investment compared to those with 300mm f2.8L or big white sticks, but I suppose I do have put in quite a large amount to my gears.

My D700 came yesterday, I took the camera out from its box, my first thought was, will I ever be able to manage so many buttons? Nikon cameras has buttons all over the place, where as a Canon 50D looks like it has 2X less than it. Of course, Nikon doesnt have the big dial like canon, damn i’m gonna miss that big dial. After a few shots and manual readings, I find these buttons are great! They are like shortcuts for autofocus modes, I can flip between these modes in a flash without looking into the mini LCD, press the AF button and guess which dial should I dial to swap modes(sometimes i just forgets which dial i need to use to change modes on a 50D after you select the function change)

So far, the d700 has been performing extremely well on every shot I take. All I can say is its really putting my canon to shame. Every feature, every function nikon puts in their camera has a photographer’s thought in it. For example, the eyepiece shutter. Yes, Nikon has an EYEPIECE SHUTTER!! As for the canon, you have to MANUALLY remove the eyepiece, and try very hard  to cover the viewfinder with a piece of crappy rubber which comes along in the strap. What is that ancient manual crap? and maybe most of the canon users do not know what the hell is that rubber stucked in the strap if they do not read the manual.

So far, I’m still going through the manual for my D700, its like a dictionary, I suppose the size of manual comes in proportion to the number of buttons you have on camera, the manual is 2X thicker than the 50D. Will post more of my thoughts of Nikon camera from a Canon user point of view in my next blog. Stay tune.

The really thick nikon manual

My D700