Hello all.

I was privileged to be invited to Nikon to see the new D4 and D800 for myself. I posted over on my Facebook Page and on dpreview if any of you had questions (and a lot of you did, thank you!) for me to put to Nikon.

I am pleased to say I was genuinely impressed with the cameras and almost all the questions I and others had were answered favorably by Rob and Mark of Nikon.

First impressions: D4

Ok, I will first talk about the D4. I will cover the D800 in a post tomorrow…

In the hand. A very familiar feel compared to my D3. The body is rated lighter but felt very much the same, however the new control layout all seemed to make sense (thankfully). I won’t post spec comparison after spec comparison as those are covered very well in the usual haunts. Remember these are all simply my initial impressions…

The new AF selection joysticks felt solid and well placed, a special improvement over the D3′s portrait positioning which was a tad far away, even with my long thumbs. Adjusting the focusing selection mode, previously on the rear of the camera as a switch is now a combination of a small button by the AF-M switch (near the base of the lens) and the thumb-wheels. This seems to make sense (it seemed counter intuitive simply due to my muscle memory on the D3), I think it is a good move but the usefulness of this will only come to light after actual use. It does let you keep your eye to the viewfinder, you have an in-finder representation of the mode you are selecting. They have also redesigned the AF-M switch itself to be less susceptible to accidental knocking. A good thing!

Other subtle changes to the body, such as an alteration of the shutter release angle as well as many other lumps and bumps all felt right and I must say it did feel better in the hand.

Focusing. This has been touted as an upgrade to the existing 3500FX system, rated in much lower light than before, “moonlight” as Nikon’s Rob put it. Again, this is only based on initial quick impressions but the lock on in low light (I tested the system during one of the talks when the lights were off and the room illuminated only by the screen) was confident and sturdy. Better than the D3? I am very experienced with the D3′s AF system and the D4 did feel to be more confident in low light, perhaps even significantly so. Either way focusing was great.

Image quality. Unfortunately I was unable to take any images back with me as these are pre-production cameras, all reviewing was on the rear LCD. Noise was very well handled indeed! I won’t comment on how it compares to the D3 as I am not in a position to do so reliably. However, I took some shots in ISO 8000 and the resulting images were very smooth. Yes a touch of noise of course, but I would see no problem in selling these images and that is without any post processing clean up. They were pin sharp and the colours vivid and accurate with no smearing. Low light shooters will love this camera. I also have high hopes for the dynamic range and highlight/shadow recovery potential of the files.

Rob made a very in depth presentation on the two cameras and took many questions from other professionals invited to the event. I will bullet point some key facts I learned below. I will try and restrict it to information that you may not know from the common sources on the camera. Everything below was said explicitly by Nikon and I am simply relaying what I heard…

• The uncompressed video out via the HDMI is 10 bit, not 8 bit as has been suggested (I specifically confirmed the answer to this question and the answer was “yes, 10 bit”)
• If the card slots are empty and you are recording via the HDMI, the recording time is not limited to the 29:59 of card recording. The sensor may shut the camera down if it gets too hot, but they had shot for over an hour without this happening.
• 10 mins of video is equal to about 1 gigabyte on the memory card.
• The battery is of less capacity than the D3′s, but you should get at least as many shots out of a charge as you do on the D3 thanks to power optimizations.
• The focus point spread is the same as on the D3.
• The metering sensor that is now used (by user preference) to focus and expose for faces will expose for a face anywhere in the frame, but can only focus on the face if it resides under a focus point.
• The selected focus point will automatically mirror it’s position between portrait and landscape shooting. For example if you have the top centre point selected as you hold the camera in landscape mode, when you rotate the camera to portrait mode, it will automatically change the point to what is the matching point (in this instance the top centre) for that orientation. Very cool! This is a preference the user can disable if they wish.
• Using the new GP module you can sync camera time-clocks to sub second accuracy.
• You can use all the focus points with an f2.8 lens and the TC20III convertor and 11 of them, with one cross-heir on an f4+TC20III. Good for Telecovertor users!
• Buffer is big; RAW is approximately 98 images and large fine jpeg was tested by Rob to 220 images at full speed.
• XQD speed was for the 98 above, compact flash was 78 buffered raw files before lockout. This is huge and great! Note that if the card slots are set to mirror storage mode, you are limited to the speed of the slowest (i.e. the CF) card.
• Nikon mentioned the two card types were to keep photographers happy (i.e. let them use their existing cards), but I and most others agreed two XQD slots would have been better.

These are my first thoughts on what I learned. It is time for some dinner now (always thinking with my stomach!) I will be adding more to this post and answering some specific questions you had more directly tomorrow after I go through my notes from the day. Also stay tuned for what I thought of the D800!

Thank you all as always,

Richard.