In this Nikon D3x article (also from the Nikon Pro magazine) Tim Andrew shares his first impressions with the Nikon D3x (he was one of the photographers to work on the D3x brochure):
"The D3x gave medium-format looking files with all the flexibility of the Nikkor Lens system"
The sample files he is referring to will be on Nikon's web site on Monday. We shall see. If this is the case, there may not be a medium format Nikon.
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56 Comments
hmmmm and?
well it’s a rumor, right – expect very good results, that’s all
The article ends with an invitation to “go ahead, download the sample files.”
Anyone had a go at seeing where these sample files might be?
“The sample files he is referring to will be on Nikon’s web site on Monday. “
Meanwhile, Ken Rockwell has modestly announced:
Wonder what assignment he’ll give the Nikon kids next…?
hahaha – this is hilarious… ok one thing we can all agree on – he can make you laugh.
trés joli!
LOL… I glad we have ken to set the standard.
Damn, I can’t wait to see the sample images. I’m giddy with excitement.
And silly Ken Rockwell, he’s so funny.
Results from the D3x, or any other 35mm DSLR, are never going to look like pictures from my Hasselblad. There will be more depth of field, and less microcontrast. When I need to shoot digital, I just use my Nikon D40 with some plastic zoom lens I got for $20 at Adorama. Otherwise I load sheet film into my 20×24″ Deardorff and have it scanned by the same guy who delivers my pizza. Of course, I never actually think about any of this stuff, because I’m too busy taking pictures!
hey !! if you don’t mind and you use your film camera, and not very often your D3…. would you like sending it to me as a gift ?
would be VERY much appreciated !!!
In return I can send you some lenses I don’t use often
(and I bet you didn’t try this Nikkor: AF 35-135mm with macro)
Who ever thought a Hasselblad and a 35 mm SLR worked for the same purpose? I guess digital photo, at least in a 35 mm, has already surpassed film, and I guess It won’t take to long for film to go extinct. Every brand, even Hasselblad is betting on digital.
I am looking forward to our dear D3x.
Oh, come on. The comment by Ken is written in “Ken Rockwell” style.
It’s meant as a joke. A good one.
yes, probably, but Ken also reads Nikon Rumors !!
I never wanted a weekend to go by more quickly!
-peter
be patient friend…
Maybe next monday is only an announcement and the camera is ready for sale sometime later.
(although I guess it will be soon…)
Well if nikon came out with a MF body, they will have to come out with a new line of lenses. The current lenses wont cover more then a 35mm sensor. If they ever did came our with a MF body the camera has got to be over 10k. I wonder how but the lenses would cost?
Actually the perspective correction lenses do cover the postulated MX sensor area, and I doubt that is a coincidence as I commented at the time. It also explains why Nikon would launch the three lenses when they did rather than more urgent priorities (like my 80-400 AFS!)
If Nikon does come out with an MX format the initial kit will cost $10K for body plus one lens. The reason being that if they cannot make that price point they are not going to compete with Mamiya and the baby ‘blad.
In fact it would have to come in even lower as they would have to be able to broaden the market to make it worthwhile. And on day one the other brands are going to look more attractive.
The question to ponder here is quite whether this is worth the candle. At best you get a two stop improvement in pixelage or a one stop improvement in low light performance – sure your ISO will improve but your lenses will not. And in any case, this would be more of a studio camera where low light is not a factor.
If MX was launched in 2009 it would be 2010 until the system was up to speed. Why not delay a year and release a 50MP F-mount camera in 2011? The bottleneck is not the sensor technology, its the processing and data readout. They could make a 50MP ISO 800 camera using the same technology that they are using in the D3x.
The only reason to do different would be to do one of those periodic ‘limited edition’ camera systems that Nikon does from time to time. 10,000 numbered examples at $15K each makes $150million, not chump change. In normal economic times Nikon can do that game every five years or so. In this climate it would be a ‘brave’ decision.
In this climate a better plan would be to upgrade the 80-400 and 85 f/1.4 to AFS and bring out a 70-200 that does not have the light falloff issues that the current one has.
I would be awesome if nikon would make updates to all their prime lenses. Fast primes that open up to 1.4 or 1.2 with ED or aspherical glass. Similar to canons L series lenses.
If you like the images produced by Canon lenses, shoot Canon, noob.
ok, seriously, who is the n00b here? there are many other reasons for people to shoot Nikon other than the Lenses, and personally as a 7 year professional shooting Nikon i would absolutly LOVE Nikon to come out with some seriously fast primes, 1.4 or even 1.2 (though i honestly dont think Nikon’s mount is physically capable of handling 1.2 with AutoFocus). i personally LOVE the image quality out of Canon’s 85 f/1.2L lens, it is one of the best lenses i feel i have ever used. but i refuse to switch to Canon because i personally cant stand thier AutoFocus system, it drives me absolutly Bonkers… i also dont like Canon’s grip, button placement, and LCD placement. so as result to all this, i stay with Nikon and hope for good, solid, fast prime lenses and a general lens line-up that is as diverse and dynamic as Canon’s!
Actually, the lenses have traditionally been the reason for buying Nikon. And if you look at lens quality and the sheer number of lenses, Nikon wins.
But Canon does have an advantage in a few areas. They have some fast primes and the f/4 zooms which are both much more interesting now that digital cameras with really high ISO are coming out. ISO 6400 and an f/1.4 allows indoor photography without flash. And if the light is there, f/4 works as well as f/2.8 for many applications.
Thats not to say that Canon is better overall, just in a couple of areas. And that makes a bigger difference than an MX line would.
The pushback from Nikon would probably be that they prefer to make variable focal length designs to f/4 constant aperture. Which certainly makes sense. And they seem to have plans for fast primes, or at the very least add AFS to their range of AF auto focus primes.
Yes, I’d like to see updated primes too. The recent AF-S 50mm is promising (though apparently beaten by the Sigma). Mostly however, Nikon seems to have decided that pros get f/2.8 zooms and amateurs get f/3.5-5.6 zooms and no-one gets primes below 300mm except for macro.
Which leaves the field open for Zeiss, Voigtlander, and of course the older Nikkor Fprimes. (Which suits me, since I prefer MF).
I make about 400k from my photography. I don’t think I’m a “noob”.
I make $800k, noob.
LOL……..
I still get some “surprise” watching some kind of comments…
Especially stupid when trying to be offensive and they use “Anonymous” nicknames…
l guess I will have to start moderating all comments.
I wouldn’t mind having the political comments moderated out, but clearly a lot of this thread is just tongue-in-cheek banter.
Personally, I make less than $1,000/year from photography, but I don’t consider myself a noob because my heart is pure.
I’m a high school student and I make about $2500 a year off of photography; and I’m perfectly okay with that. I’m okay with making zero dollars off of photography. I mean, I don’t do it for the money. I do it because I enjoy it. I don’t think anyone should do it for money alone; if there’s no joy left in photography for you, it’s probably time to move on.
And at least when I post offensive stuff I don’t wimp out and be anonymous. I stand by what I say, even if sometimes I don’t necessarily think before I say. I think that is part of being seventeen though; not thinking, haha.
you’re younger than I thought
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Haha. I mean, personally I view it as good. It means I have plenty of time to make mistakes before it starts to cost me in the real world. But, it also means nobody takes me too seriously. So that sort of sucks. Oh well. I can’t wait to see the sample images from this beast of a dSLR!
Nah, just force every user to register and login before being able to post.
Enabling anonymous posting only encourages trolling.
What do you guys think – should we require everyone to register first? We will have less quantity, but more quality in the comments, which is OK with me.
Nah, I don’t think you should do that. I’ve been on a lot of photo boards that do require registration, and believe me, the quality of the comments is no better; usually it’s worse.
In general I think the best overall comment quality (BOCQ?) is found on boards like this one, that are tightly concentrated on a particular topic area (e.g. Nikon rumors) and stick to that topic area. Occasionally people get out-of-sorts or over-excited and post something that’s over the edge, but the narrow focus usually keeps us in line, since we’re all motivated to post here by a common interest in Nikon gossip.
We also have a rush of people who post comments now, because of the new announcement. Once the dust settles, we will be back to normal.
If you require registration alone, that won’t change the quality much. But, you could try a “karma” system where comments get rated by senior posters; readers can set a threshold value, and comments with less than their threshold simply don’t get displayed. The scale slashdot.org uses to do this is from -1 (Troll) to +5 (comments get marked “insightful,” “informative,” “funny,” etc…).
Yes, I would suggest making people register first. Normally I am against that sort of thing. On the other hand I would not want to see the comments degenerate into YouTube-quality trollbaiting, either.
I like the karma system (slashdot style), too.
I have to look into this Karma system and how difficult will be to implement. Hopefully WordPress has a plug-in.
It’s funny the biggest thread here is basically the result of an anonymous troll, with the ensuing avalanche of noise coming from non-anonymous users. People with egos to protect are always going to be the loudest.
Anonymity and non-registration will keep NR culture fluid and growing. The culture here is turning out to be very positive: tongue-in-cheek and unimpressed by know-it-alls and general posturing. I think that enforcing registration and identity will quell the organic development we have going here, so I hope we don’t go there.
Rating individual messages, like the thumbs up/down system on YouTube, seems like a really good idea.
– Your neighborhood troll, Ken Rockwell impersonator, professional photographer, art school professor, anonymity rights advocate, and source of several NR leaks
Sometimes a comment derivates in a wider conversation
I saw “senior posters” even Moderators, doing disasters… so I don’t promote moderation by other people than the owner of the site. (“extra” people with “moderator” status use to loose their perspective and real position..)
For me, only the Admin has proven a very good ethic and sense.
I trust on him, and his moderation if he decides to do it (although that would require a lot of working time for him, and I do not think is very necessary so far)
– I agree with Ranger 9 about keeping our comments on the topic will keep better quality too.
I’m not sure if that “karma” system would be useful here. that system is also possible to fake, and (in my opinion) very subjective, depending on the people who decides to vote. Maybe in another blog or site is good, bu t don’t know how good or useful would be in this specific Blog.
– I don’t mind the way NR is right now. I like it.
Sometimes there are some posts with little offensive or rude words, but it’s up to everyone’s the importance you give to it…
I don’t think registration will really help at this stage.
“This stage” is what is typical here in regards of comments, and apart from some very few comments almost all comments are within reasonable borders IMHO.
Registration doesn’t really help, see the “ThomasMiller” troll on dpreview, he has a never-ending stream of new accounts, registration doesn’t help with these trolls, only manual deletion of any newly detected account.
So I think careful moderation – the way it currently is – is enough for the moment. This might change the more comments are made, but I’d favour to have the site admin to moderate, as he in the last consequence has the responsibility of this site and so has to decide what’s over the top and what not.
I don’t think a rating system is of any real use – but why not give it a try?
OK this is what I will do – I will start (selectively and without a warning) deleting comments that are not appropriate to the discussed topic.
My preferred option is more moderating and removing of offensive comments – I’d accept a site policy of “if you deliberately insult another user your comment will be removed, even if they started it”
Of course that loads all the work onto the NR Admin guy(s), but I never claimed not to be lazy . . .
I make $86 billion. grow up dorks.
In how many years…10? Chill bro’
omfg
kids we know
Sorry I didn’t want that to come off arrogant. That anonymous guy was being a jerk. I get sick about hearing thf nikon/canon debate. You absolutely right, photography should be fun and I have a lot of fun with it.
Back on topic, if you don’t mind….
If there will not be a medium format Nikon, the “BIG” ads were fake necessarily.
“It’s gonna be BIG! Something SO BIG we can’t even tell you what it is” cannot refer to the D3X.
I’d care much more for the lenses to come, instead of waiting for an extraordinarily expensive Nikon MX, which might or might not come.
I wouldn’t say fake – I was just putting the D3x comment from Tim Andrew in context: they may not release a MX camera. No solid info so far.
How about this for a theory?
The original plan was for a possible MX launch but they have a backup plan.
So Ken Rockwell will be right and the BIG announcement will be a Nikon branded 13×19 HP printer that is Dream Color tuned to the D3x.
If nikon can make a MF camera at respectable price like at 12-14 k it will change the landscape of digital medium format cameras. More prople would be able afford it. Here in NY it costs. 1800 dollars to rent a Hasselblad digital camera.
$1800 to rent it for how much time ?
MX won’t come IMO. Nikon should get ready for pro video in the next pro action camera (D4). Canon will sure have it in 1D3 successor.
I don’t like to register.. unless I could register once in a lifetime and my browser kept me logged in..
If I had the money the D3 would be a better choice.. rigght now I settle wih the d300
http://www.nikon.com/about/news/2008/1201_d3x_01.htm