Heartyfisher, if the D300s is real then I'm not going to retire my D70 after all. She's gonna have to keep clicking past 150,000 shutter cycles! I'll probably replace the shutter before I get a D400 though.

@FPNova : What do you think of the D300s ? would you get that one instead?

my d200 is getting long in the tooth and i decided a while ago to skip generations on bodies and invest in good glass instead.....

@ nikoDoby : D70 I got one of them too... I dont think I will retire that wonderful old camera yet. Just love the 1/8000 flash sync...

Unless there is something tragically wrong with the specs, then yes I will FINALLY retire my D70!

adamz – I doubt my pictures are spicy at all, I just like interesting colors and shapes, and I hope there are no hard fillings about my post.
I would actually love to see and touch that monster lens, I understood there is only a couple made, and I am sure you would also.

mb - just wondering if Your pictures are as spicy as Your words, share them with us on the photo-a-day topic

@ mb : Interchangeable sensor camera has already been announced ... http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2008/11/red-revolutionizes-digital-image-capture-with-modular-platform.ars

Dont think the sensor will ever be square again ... Its because most pictures are taken in landscape format. and its cheaper to make a sensor to fit that format rather than a square one where you will need to crop most times and therefore waste the sensor area. I think if they are going to make a different shape sensor I would vote for a circular one over a square one.

And I forgot that almost all medium format bodies have that option.

Shutter is actually one of the key components that does not need to be changed.
And it has already been done by Leica for example, so it is not that difficult.

mb, that sounds good, the interchangeable back idea, but there's more to it than that. I'm sure everytime they change the sensor, the processor, firmware, hardware, shutter, and other components have changed too. It would be nice if they could pull it off, but it sounds very difficult.

Hey, I would be first in line if I could stick a D3's sensor into my D40.

It seams that D400 is just around the corner now so I am sure anything new is out of scope, but I will add a few things I would like to see if no sooner than on D500 or whatever.
I would really like exchangeable backs on a digital camera so we users could upgrade when new sensor is available. I realize that selling a new camera every year or so is far more lucrative for manufacturers but us users are finding hard to keep up.
Wireless is cool but sometimes not so easy to setup. Imagine camera makers standardize on Bluetooth as mobile phone makers did, we could easily copy our photos to a cell phone or computers, and imagine Bluetooth equipped and controlled flashes or even microphones or headphones for video, I think I would like this.
I see no reason not to make photo sensor square, I would have no problems cropping the image to whatever rectangular format if needed in postproduction as we all probably do anyways or this feature could be easily built in firmware. It will make camera much more useful on a tripod and will allow making more ergonomic camera body.

Oh yeah I see adamz has very good and expensive taste for tele lenses, nothing cheaper then 5000$, goody. Here is one for him MF Nikkor Super telephoto Zoom lens 1200-1700mm f/5.6~8.0s P ED IF, biggest Nikon ever made and imagine what it can do with TC attached, you would never have to live your home to take wildlife pictures out of Africa. For the rest of us I think we could do pretty well with 70–300VR.

im a get it to impress chicks

matstar - I would love to have the 300/2.8 vr or 200-400/4 (still I'm little bit undecided, but most likely 300/2.8 as it's a little bit faster and works with all TC's) as anything bigger than this two lenses is simply to hard to carry around - not to mention taking it on a plane

I have noticed there are lots of 35mm lenses for sale on ebay, so I may score a bargain tele to compensate on the long end. Adamz- what's your favorite long lens?

lens reach is the main problem for me to switch to FX - and DX crop doesn't work for me with neither d3 or d700 (6mpx is too low) and d3x is simply too slow in 14bit nef, and too expensive for a 12bit nef

I'm seriously considering the D700 - 12 MP is heaps for me as I do lots of portraits. I can't see myself staying in the DX arena forever, so why should I put-off switching to FX today? One major FX negative is that the telephoto lenses are more expensive. Any others negatives to FX?

I'm playing a waiting game between the D400 and D700x/D800. I do of course want resolution and high ISO performance increases, but here are some other things I'd like in either over my D200.

-Save Auto ISO preferences by lens, including on AIS. If I'm using AutoISO, I change the settings myself almost every time I swap lenses. I'd say something like this (based on focal length, perhaps) is likely.

-Ability to mount/meter pre-ai lenses. It can have a flip-up coupling pin like my FE. Stop down metering would be fine by me. I doubt Nikon will do this, but it'd be nice.

-Bigger viewfinder. I'm not sure in the D400 if you could increase magnification much over the .9+ it's currently at while maintaining brightness, but bringing the D700X up to near .9x magnification would be brilliant. 100% coverage would be nice on a D700 successor, too.

-Save Aperture info in EXIF on AIS lenses. Don't know why my D200 doesn't do this, it saves focal length of AIS, but not the used aperture. Maybe I'm missing something.

-GPS/Wifi: Battery drainers, so I'm not sure if they're worth it, but if nikon can maintain battery life, it'd be great. I love having precise location data on images

I have to head out, but this is a pretty good start to my wishlist, I think.

It seams all of us would like D400 to have noise and ISO performance as good as D3; unfortunately I do not think this is possible. As the matter of fact I will be happy if it is not worse than D300 knowing that it will almost certainly have more MP than D300, and if Nikon manages to make smaller resolution possible with a bit better noise and ISO performance it would be more then great.
I would be trilled if body quality remains the same as D300.
What I would really love is better focusing screen, not that one on D300 is very bad, but I am really missing manual focusing aided screens of the past.
And I would really like professionally built tilt screen, but I am sure I do not have a nose for a touch screen.
And if Nikon manages to sell for the current price of D300 …

Will definitely get it, as I was already checking the D300 (as an upgrade from D40X), but when I heard about D400, I decided to wait a couple of months. But only if it remains DX...

I'll make the jump from CCD (on my D200) to CMOS when the ISO performance of the D400 equals or betters the D700; otherwise, I'll wait for the D700 to come down in price, as it's high ISO use is amazing, and the price point between the current D300 ($1696) and D700 ($2300) is too nominal NOT to justify the FX jump. . .

Hi guys,

As I was the OP, let me put down what I hoped to discuss in this thread.

We don't know what the D400 is going to be.. so this thread tries to define what the D400 will be indirectly via the collective gear that we already have and what WE as a whole would think as a reason to upgrade or purchase the Mythical D400. I was hoping that we would also get a nice discussion of what current gear (not necessarily D300) you guys have and how you currently use your gear (with some personal evaluations) therefore identifying some features in the D400 that you would like to see that your current gear does not provide or will make your photography experience easier.

As with all forums threads it will meander a bit but I think its going fairly well... don't you think?

I don't think that the aim was to compare it to the D300 as nobody knows for sure what the D400 will offer us.

It is more of a hypothetical thread ... perhaps reasons that would be sufficient to make one upgrade from a D300 or D90. I think that the reasons for upgrading from D40(x) or D80 are more obvious.

matstar - this thread is actually a wish list of what we expect from nikon d400 - what we would like to see in this new camera

as for being opinionated - that's what forum is for, isn't it? to share point of view, and for me the fact that someone is not agreeing with someone else opinion doesn't mean that he/she doesn't respect it

Is this thread meant for comparing the D400 against the D300? - because my contribution was based on all DSLR features that I would like to see in the next Nikon Prosumer model. You guys are getting too clever for yourselves and very opinionated - try to stay more versatile and open minded plz!