I have seen first full sized shots of Sony A900, Canon 5Dmk2 and Nikon D3X.
To me there is almost no difference in quality among those shots.
The Canon has slight wider deepth of field and D3X and A900 are quite close in DOF range what will make it quite difficult to get good shots in close range on parties and in crowd.
The quality of A900 and D3X are equal and for sure, Nikon confirming or not, the sensor is the same.
On D200, Nikon used a completely differentv managment of the sensor then all other own made cameras and all those from other manufacturers. Despite of that it was a Sony 10.2 mpix sensor made for the D200 and it is no doubt that the sensor of the D3x matches the one of the A900 in externalsize, pixel count and pixelsize.
For me, the A900 made until today the best ever picture you could find on bayer pattern sensor based body. I doubt that the D3X will do better.
Paying 4 grant more just for a mor performant AF system and some useless gadgets like live view is somewhat hard and I think that Nikon will get the reward for this kind of ball-playing. Finaly it is the same camera as the D3, the body was ready made since begining and all that had to be done was install the 24 mpix sensor. Was there then any reason for that fancy price on a camera with an oudated body anyway. Buy a Canon and 4 lenses or a Sony with 2 toplenses for the price of a D3x body cause there is not, if ever there is, for 4 Grant more picture in a D3x, believe me.

They must have posted it a few days earlier, so “shocked”? No!

But that’s not important. The important thing is that Nikon has their own standards for quality, and would not settle for the Sony A900′s image quality. So you will probably see Canon 1Ds mk2 quality images from the D3X. (plus 3 megapixels of course, but at that over 20, who’s counting? That’s what % of the linear resolution?) AND also, you will NEVER see the full D3X image pipeline and final quality in a Sony camera.

Personally, I’m not interested at all in either the D3 or the D3X, but where there is a D700, I’m hoping there is a D700X. THAT would be the ultimate adventure / landscape camera…

=Matt=

There will not be video for the D3x, and I am very thankful for that. Seriously, video has no place in dSLRs. I hate this new fad, it’s so stupid. I want my camera manufacturers concentrating ALL of their efforts on their dSLRs’ abilities to take great still images. I would hate to think that valuable development time was wasted on getting mediocre video-capture into a dSLR.

any word on video capabilities on this monster?

Keep up the great work..

Happy Hoildays

me thinks it’s planned to get lots of attention before monday. a “legit” rumour.