Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
D700, 23 Sep 2008
I started digital with the D100 which at the time I thought was pretty good, the D200 then came out and I purchased that. The improvement over the D100 was pretty marked. When the D300 arrived I decided that the improvements over the D200 didn't warrant an upgrade. I decided to save my pennies and go the whole hog and buy a D3. Imagine my surprise when they announced the D700! I ordered one right away and it turned up early in August. What can I say about this piece of kit. It does all the blurb tells you it will do, the full frame being a great bonus. I went digital from an F70 so all of my lenses were full frame compatible thank goodness. Everything about the D700 is great although the live view will take a bit of getting used to. Like the D100 and D200 I find in my old age that the notch on the on off switch is too small, wearing gloves in cold weather makes it awkward to feel. I recommend anyone thinking of going for an upgrade from the D200, forget the D300 and go straight for the D700 the extra cost is worth every penny. Try not to buy kit lenses although as a stop gap they will do a pretty good job. The camera only being as good as its lens, fast Sigma lenses go well with the D700. Buy and enjoy you will not be disappointed.
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56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Five Star All-Rounder, 29 Dec 2008
I upgraded to this camera from a Canon Eos 40D because I really wanted the Full Frame capability that is only achievable with film cameras or FF sensors. I should mention as an aside that the 40D is a fantastic camera and really impressed me in every department.
The D700 is a big step up in price but having now owned it for six months, the price for Full Frame is worth it for me.
The D700 is in a class of three; the choices for the non-millionaires are the Sony A900, the Canon 5D Mk II or the Nikon D700 (although they are all still too expensive).
The good news is that there is not a turkey among them; the image quality is fantastic with all three (I only quote from the ludicrous number of reviews I have sadly read).
My choice was ultimately driven by the way in which I use my camera rather than the spec sheets, as the three cameras all point at a different type of photographer. This camera would better suit the intermediate or advanced photographer, as there are lot of menus to learn and much room to configure or hang yourself. On the other hand, the progamme mode does make the decisions for you, although even then you can change the settings.
I mainly use the camera for shooting (in order of importance for me):
my kids running around (speed), portraits (IQ), plays (low light) (speed), rugby, football matches (speed) and lastly landscapes (detail).
I wanted a camera that was fast, had great image quality, worked really well in low light and was FF. On all those counts the Nikon is probably the best package. The Sony and Canon can resolve more detail for landscapes or architecture and can be blown up larger, they probably have the edge in studio / stock photography work.
The Nikon produces skin tones beautifully and is the best performer in low light, although the Canon comes very close (again from my reading, I don't own one).
It is worth mentioning the low light ability of this camera and by that, I mean the ability to shoot at higher ISO than anything else around, yet produce excellent images. You can be shooting handheld, in virtual darkness and produce quality images. Living in the UK, this was really important to me (we specialise in cloud) and the camera is truly outstanding in this respect. Even when there is noise, it is grainy and film like; ultimately it is usable rather than unusable. Less pixels than the competition = larger pixels; this translates into an ability to pick up more light.
The Nikon is much better thought out than my 40D - it is more comfortable to hold, it is easier to change the settings on the fly (you tend to spin dials on the camera rather than having to delve into sub-sub menus), it is more ruggedly constructed and more configurable but on the other hand only has half the resolution of the Sony or 5D MkII. However, it blows up to 50cm by 70cm without pixelation (that's as far as I have got) and beyond that it's academic for me, as I don't have a house big enough to cope with larger prints. For some the ability to resolve the finest detail in landscapes may be more pertinent.
You do need to fiddle a little more with the in camera settings to get the sharpness, contrast etc that you want for your shot but the camera is so configurable that you can really control your output.
The autofocus is excellent on the Nikon (superior to the competition) and I have the grip which gives me 8fps when needed (it did mean buying another memory card as they don't last long on machine gun mode).
The quality of the images I have produced from plays, landscapes and action is really high - note the quality of the images is high, not necessarily the photographer (some of my landscapes in low light are on Flickr, type - Sun Setting Over Woodingdean into Google).
In terms of lenses, the spending does not stop with the camera. Full frame cameras need good glass, as they are devils for showing up the flaws in anything less. I bought the Nikor 50mm f/1.4D - the quality is in a different league and worth the bit extra - I paid about £200. For a zoom I chose the Nikor 80-200mm f/2.8 D, this set me back about £600 but you could probably shave a bit off that price. This zoom is again pro-quality but you could pay significantly more without improving image quality. I also tried a manual 20mm film lens second hand and was not disappointed with the results.
I only ramble on about lenses because a kit lens really does not cut it with this camera and you will be disappointed if you spend mega bucks on the D700 and then go low-calorie on the glass.
I am really happy with the D700, mainly because it suits the type of shooting that I generally do and is a great all-rounder.
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66 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
wow - crazy in low light, and then some, 27 Sep 2008
I have had a D200 since 2 years, which has been an absolutely splendid decision. About the only weakness of the D200 was its inability to go high in the ISOs without introducing a lot of noice, which already starts creeping in at ISO 400, is definitely there at ISO 800, and is intolerable at ISO 1600. The D3 which came last year fixed this problem but was very expensive at that time. I have owned a D700 since a month now and I have been absolutely blown away by its performance. The D700 inherits some major systems from the D3, especially the sensor and the autofocus. It is absolutely amazing to be able to go straight to ISO 6400 without any loss of quality: no noice, no loss of sharpness (at variance with the D300 which is less noisy than the D200 but does so at the expense of more softening and loss of detail of the image, like the Canons do).
But there are some other significant goodies. Auto-ISO means that when light gets low, ISO automatically will be increased untill the level you accept. My ISO is set at 200, but may go up to 6400 if necessary. Only when light becomes even lower does the shutterspeed decrease. Another major system is auto-dLighting, which will reduce the dynamic range of the picture by automatically enhancing the darkest parts of a scene which otherwise would be completely blackened out. Full frame is a mixed blessing: wide angle becomes wide again, restoring the intended use of my glorious 28-70F2.8. The new 14-24 F2.8 is an astonishing new lens (the absolutely best in its category, some canonians buy it with an adaptor ring to be able to use it, accepting the fully manual operation of this lens on a canon) which takes wide to new extremes, unattainable with a DX camera like the D200. The larger FF sensor with 12MP as compared to the D300's 12MP on a DX sensor means a lesser pixeldensity, which is the secret for the extremely high ISO sensitivity of this camera. It also implies less DOF (depth of field) with the same focal and diafragm settings, which is good for isolating a subject from its surroundings, but which also means one has to be more careful about focusing. Some inexperienced photographers may be surprised when upgrading from a bridge or especially a compact camera: one needs a better photographic technique with a full-frame camera, so there certainly is a learning curve. On the other hand, my teles are shorter on a FF than on a DX sensor: 200 mm is once again a 200 mm and no longer equivalent 300 mm as on a DX camera, so one loses at the long end. Long tele with perfect light (safari etc...) is probably the only situation in which I would still use my D200, some people also use it for macrophotography because of the gain in DOF.
I could use DX lenses on my D700, but that would be a waste since only the central part of the sensor (about 5MP) would be used. To take full advantage of the FF sensor, one therefore needs FF lenses which tend to be more voluminous than equivalent DX lenses. The D700, like the D200, can however fully use any F-mount lens Nikon ever made, including its mindblowing manual focus masterpieces, or second-hand AF-(D) lenses which can be bought at extremely nice prices these days.
I don't use live view, but it's OK if you like it.
This is a professional camera: it is heavy, weather-sealed and sturdy. The D3 which costs almost double has a double CF-card slot (the D700 a single CF-card slot), a 300.000 rated shutter (instead of the D700's 150.000), a 100% viewer (instead of the +/- 95% viewer of the D700), and better batteries. For me these differences weren't worth the huge price difference. Note that the D700 resembles the D3 much more closely than the D200 resembled the D2x for instance.
I didn't think one second about the D300; I guess only auto-Dlighting would have been an advantage compared to the D200, but that certainly wouldn't be sufficient to upgrade.
Here therefore is a very happy D700 owner.
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