Why to pay so much money for a Nikon D1
Written: Apr 07 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Full professional digital SLR
Cons: High price
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| mrstring's Full Review: Nikon D1X SET Digital Camera |
My opening essay @www.photodotcom.com was "My Road to Digital Photo Heaven/Hell". It shows how the Nikon Coolpix 950 brought back my love to
photography, the Nikon LS2000 film scanner a sense of quality in the digital arena and later the F100 the good feel of a modern SLR with AF and
excellent metering. Quality wise I am very happy with the F100/LS2000 combination. But even with the addition of the SF-200 slide feeder the
scanning process remains painfully time consuming. During a brief one week vacation I produced about 400 slides and at that moment I realized
that the scanning process is making some trouble. At the time I got the LS2000 and later the F100 the D1 was pretty new and I thought also much
to expensive. But there was also the fact that I found/find it too big. That is why I called it "The Brick". What I would like is some camera like the F100 with the digital benefits of the D1 (and of course the price of the 950). The Fuji "S1" gets in that direction but the body is probably not nearly up to a D1. So I decided to go forward and get "The Brick" and learn to accept its weight as I wanted to be able to go fully digital now. The Nikon Coolpix 950 and the F100 will still have their prime time.
My first experiences with the D1 are very positive. Of course I can use all my Nikon lenses (but be aware that a 50mm is now like a 75mm, the aperture does not change, this is great in the tele area but makes some trouble for people who like a 20mm wide angle).
See my diary about the D1 at:
http://www.photodotcom.com/D1_diary.html
and some sample shots at:
http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=348498&a=3830127
At some point I wanted to get the maximum quality from the D1 and then you have to face to use the NEF files. This is a Nikon proprietary image format which lets you get in 3.8MB file a 2000x1312 image with 12 bits color. Normally this file gets converted by a software called Nikon Scan which is not included with the camera. Fortunately there are programs like Bibble which are free available and do the job. Some claim they do the job even better than the Nikon software.
With about $5000 the D1 is very expensive but it is the cheapest camera at the market where you can use all features of a great SLR (the D1 is based on a F5 body) and being digital at the same time.
I am very excited about this camera but I am also prepared that I have to learn a lot.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
mrstring
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Member: Uwe Steinmueller
Location: CA
Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 1 member
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