Is this the crowning of a new king?

I have always been a little behind the rest of the pack as far as equipment is concerned. When the F3 came out, I had a vintage F (not even a F2) but I still thought I was cool since I had a top notch camera, even if it was a bit nostalgic. When I finally got my F3, the rest of the world had F5's and again I still felt "cool".

When the digital revolution began to infiltrate the 35mm professional market, I started to wonder how long it would be before my F3 was indeed a true dinosaur. I remember holding and examining a Fuji camera that accepted Nikon lenses. I don't remember any specifications about the camera except that it was about $10,000 and didn't make as good an image when compared to today's super megapixel cameras. So, I would continue to shoot film with a smile thinking that was as good as it was going to get and possibly this was another "Disc Camera".

I continued to follow the high end digital camera developments and soon saw the introduction of the D1 and then what seemed to be just a few months before the D1H, which was soon to be followed by the D1X. As if that wasn't enough, we now have the D100 to consider. With a price tag of $1,999.00, the D100 is probably going to look very attractive to a lot of Pros who couldn't justify the $5,000.00 for a D1X purchase.
The Conversion From Film To Digital
I was very eager and long overdue to finally shoot with a D1X. Looking over the range of lenses I had to test with, I chose the 17-35 f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S which must have weighed as much as its name is long. When I first picked up the camera with the lens mounted, I thought I was lifting a small boat anchor. That particular combination weighs about twice as much as my favorite set up, an F3 with a 55mm Macro.

The body is very similar to the F5 until you get to the back side where it has a nice large LCD. The rubberized body covering gave the camera the feel of the F5 as well. With a quick tour of the basic functions and menu settings I was ready to slide in a Microdrive card and start shooting.

Luckily I had an extra battery pack freshly charged as it seems the battery loses power when stored in the camera for several days. It would be foolish to not purchase an extra battery pack with the camera anyway and it would be good to also have extra Compact Flash or Microdrive Cards.

I set the effective ISO to 125 and headed off to start shooting. As I was in position ready to make my first exposure, sudden disappointment had set in... No, not with the camera but with the lens.

Just as a personal taste, I do not like auto focus for shooting art images. I had positioned myself on some rocks along the seashore and wanted to focus on a red leaf in the foreground and also let everything behind it to the left be in focus. I was shooting at f/11 or 16 and felt that I would have a large depth of field that would be in focus.

As I pushed the shutter button down half way to focus with the focusing point in the center square of the viewfinder, the leaf was too close in relation to the center of the focusing screen. So it would cause the red leaf to be out of focus. I then turned the camera to focus on the leaf and then when I turned back to shoot the lens, refocused to the center focus spot again. I then rotated the manual focus to adjust it where I wanted it to be but then when I would press the shutter button it would refocus again to the center spot.

I finally solved the delima by pressing a button on the back of the camera to change the focusing point to the right side. Then I was able to compose and shoot to get the range of focus that I was looking for. But then of course I will have to change the focusing point back to the center after that shot if I shoot the next frame and it requires a center focusing point.
POST PROCESSING: One of the things I really like about publishing this eZine is the ability to let the readers speak their mind. This article has had numerous feedbacks after only the first few days of publishing. Make it be known as the author states that he personally does not like auto focus lenses. And speaking to a group of photographers last week I also found that very many photographers do not like auto focus when shooting for art purposes or those that want extensive control over the field of focus.

And it is perfectly OK for a photographer to not favor a range of 17-35mm. I know some that never shoot with less than 600mm, so lets keep our personal preferences separate from the actual gripes that cause one to respond to a "quick take".
Moving on towards the coral rocks, my next subject was waiting. Again I was trying to maximize on the range of focus to not only see how sharp the camera was but also the boat anchor of a lens that was mounted on it. The intricate pattern in the coral caught my eye along with the vanishing point of the shoreline as it merged with the horizon.

The second image in the popup window of the rocks shows a piece of the image as it came from the camera without being re sized. This is a 100% section of the full 3008x1960 pixel image. Here you can see what detail and sharpness you get taking into consideration the loss due to JPEG compression of the image for the web display.

In the third image of the popup you will see that the metering system was not fooled by the strong light bouncing off the sand. You will notice good exposure on the foliage, the grey stones, the white stones, the ocean and the sky. In close examination, I found that the highlights were not blown out at all. This seems to be the best digital camera for capturing detail highlights that I have seen to date.

I am not a photographer who likes to shoot and then try to examine the image in a 2 inch LCD to decide if the image is a keeper. I like to shoot with the confidence that I will like a majority of the shots I take during a session. I like to keep my train of thought going and the shutter firing. To stop and cross examine every image would negate the need for me to shoot. If I didn't trust myself and my camera enough to shoot what I want, then I might as well do something else for a profession.
Using Manual Focus AI Lenses
So far I was pretty pleased with the handling of the D1X, other than the auto focus lens. The camera will shoot in continuous mode at 3 fps up to 9 frames. But it sounds and feels like it is shooting at 6 fps, which gave the camera less of a jolt every time the shutter was fired. And I thought my F3 was smooth...

One of my biggest concerns about switching to a D1X for me would be the integration of my current corral of lenses. Since I already have a 28mm, 50mm, 55mm macro, 100mm, 43-86 zoom and a 70-210 zoom, I really don't want to also invest in a new set of lenses. So now was my chance to see how the manual focus AI lenses would work on this new electronic wizard of a camera.

After I had taken the 17-35 AF lens off and put on my 55mm macro, I then realized that this camera was in fact not a boat anchor. The D1X with my 55 macro weighs less than my F3, MD4 and the 55 macro. Now the camera felt great, I mean really great. It wasn't until I shot a few frames with the lighter lens that I realized a D1X would fit in my arsenal of camera equipment quite nicely. Although the 17-35, as well as the other new AF lenses from Nikon look very impressive, the weight of my good old MF lens was a welcomed feeling.

But then a little bit off a downturn of course was to be experienced when I mounted my vintage lens on this hot new camera. Since the electronics of the lens was absent in an old AI lens, I would not get any aperture reading in the viewfinder. I found myself just stopping down the lens till the shutter speed was in the 1/90 the to 1/125 range. At ISO 125 this was allowing me to shoot at f/5.6 to f/8 which is my favorite range when shooting macro.

After I saw the final images I found the ones shot with the 55mm macro to have smoother contrast, better exposure and even appeared to be sharper. But that could be just because it is my favorite lens that I shoot with 80% of the time. It did appear as if the exposure using the AI lenses was about 1/2 to 3/4 of a stop less exposure than the images shot with the AF lenses. Another photographer who has just made the switch from film to digital exclusively said that he found his D1X to shoot about 1/2 to a full stop faster than what he was used to with film.

While I did see a slightly overexposed look to the images shot with the AF lenses, I found the exposure with the manual lenses to be exactly what I expected. I could always lighten them a little in Photoshop if they needed it.

In the second image of this popup window you will see another 100% crop from the full captured image. You will have to agree that this image is sharp, even after the JPEG compression did its number on it. You can even see detail in the grains of sand that are lodged in the veins of the leaf.
When Will Film Do Better?
While still in macro mode, I cranked the ISO to 400 to see how much more depth I could get and if grain would begin to show. Yes, I know I said "grain".

I heard a photographer claim that there was no grain in digital images and I was not in a position to tell him differently since he was speaking to a group of photographers eager to learn more about the craft. But unfortunately digital photography does have grain when going to ultra high ISO settings. But in the digital world we call this "noise". You can see an excellent example of noise in the review of the Minolta Dimâge 5 in the previous issue.

In this popup you will see that I was able to stop down the lens even more and depth of field extended all the way to about 1/4" from the ground. You can actually see some detail in some root structures to the left that are almost at ground level. And yes there is grain on the leaves, but those are grains of sand and not digital noise. Actually no noise at all is evident when shooting at ISO 400.

As the second image in this popup shows finally the evidence of grain at ISO 800. But the high speed enabled me to shoot at f/32 which picked up details of the leaves and flowers in the background. But the image did appear to be about a full stop underexposed as I had to lighten it a little in the image shown here.
Is the Quality Better Than Scans?
In a word... I would say "that depends"

First off, don't think that you are going to get spot free images. Every image I shot with the D1X was not pixel perfect, being free of spots and other artifacts. As you can see in this popup, some trace of specks is evident in the left side of the background. In the second image of this popup you can clearly see the black "digital specks" that will need to be cleaned up just like in a traditional film scan.

Maybe there was some debris on the rear lens element or on the CCD, who knows. It is not a big enough of a problem to show major concerns about. If the specks appeared in the very same place on every image and you have thouroughly cleaned the camera then there may be cause to look further into the spot mystery.

But then if you were scanning a transparency with a Nikon Coolscan with built in Digital Ice, you would not get any specs or dust. Maybe someday Digital Ice will also be built into Nikon digital cameras. You will notice in the third image of the popup window an extreme enlargement of one of those specs shows just how tight the pixel quality of the D1X's images are. This means that the D1X will produce enlargements at higher magnifications than with any other comparable digital file sizes.

You know my feelings on JPEG compression, so there was no question as to what format I would make my images. With the Microdrive 1Gb card I could shoot over a hundred images in NEF format (Nikon's RAW format), which is a 7.6 Mb file at 12 bit color. After conversion using Nikon View software this will produce a 33.6 Mb 16 bit color Tiff.

I created an action in Photoshop that would open the folder of NEF files and save them as Tiff files in one click of the mouse. I sat back with a cold cola while a 800 Mhz G4 Mac took about 15 minutes to process 30 images.

The Nikon View software has some image editing and correcting capabilities but I chose to keep the images un-edited and saved as Photoshop files that could be tweaked however I deemed necessary once opened back up in Photoshop. But for this article my intent was to try and not alter the images so you could see how they looked before the computer had a chance to enhance them. Only in a couple of the shots with the manual focus lens they were lightened a bit to achieve proper exposure.
Final Thoughts & Comparisons
Well, before I was able to finish my test run of the D1X it began to rain. Since the deadline to get the article ready for this issue was now upon me, I had to go ahead and wrap up where I was at without trying a few more scenarios. But all in all the camera handles great, especially when you get that tank of a lens off of it. If I were shooting sports or some action scenes then the auto focus would be well loved and needed. As for me and my preference and because I primarily shoot images that take a few minutes to compose and shoot, I desire the manual focus.

I think if I had a D1X I would still shoot film on certain occaisions. And many times I would love the digital camera to make some quick product shots for a web site

See for yourself how the images from the D1X stand up against a F3 shooting Fuji Sensia ISO 400 film. The top image is from the D1X and the bottom image in the popups is from the F3.

In this first comparison, you will notice that the colors are all slightly different from each other. While the sky and green leaves in the F3 shot is closer to the actual color, the water and red leaf are more accurate in the D1X. The depth of field is different due to the images being taken with different lenses of different focal lengths. You will also note that the contrast is a little smoother in the F3 image as the highlights aren't blown out as bad. But then in the D1X image you will notice the shadow areas have more detail.

In the comparison images of the coral rocks, you will see a greater difference. Actually this is not a fair comparison due to the fact that the top image shot with the D1X was facing to the North and the F3 image was facing South so the lighting is very different. But it does give you a glimpse into the overall sharpness of the two cameras. The detail of the rocks seems to be equal among both images while the saturation of the sky is exagerated a bit in both images.

The close up of the plant shows good points to both images. While the D1X image at the top shows smoother and less contrast, the F3 image seems to jump off the page a bit more making the D1X image seem a bit flat. Definition seems to be better on the F3 image, but then the D1X image once again has far better shadow detail.

Even though this was not a full blown acid test of the D1X, I am sure there is enough information here to help you decide if this may be a camera for you to look more seriously into purchasing or whether it is one you can wait a while longer before going pro digital.

Personally I would love to have one, but financially it is not in the current budget. With the introduction of the D100 at $1,999.00, I will say that my interest has been sparked a little more... But then that leaves me to suspect just how long it will be before the D2 comes out?
Often during the production of this magazine we run into circumstances or results that we feel may not be the same for everyone. We welcome you to use the "quick takes" form to give us your side of the story.

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