Monday, July 7, 2008

The New Nikon D700


Nikon is releasing their new D700...the best pre-review can be found @ D-Preview
An absolute main stay for quick new equipment information.
For those who want the in-depth, never forget
The Luminous Landscape A place I often visit just to keep myself humble.

One of the things that hit me right off the bat on this seemingly cool new D700 is the fact that the CCD is calibrated to give a true 35 mm image. Digital enthusiast will know that the "Magnification" ratio (or "Crop" factor to better describe) on DSLR's was always nearing (give or take) 1.6 which, gave any lens, but more relative to Wildlife and Sports shooters using a telephoto lens, more bang for the buck by nearly doubling the millimeter while maintaining and in-fact improving the DOP (depth of field).

As a wildlife photographer I always thought that this was FANTASTIC...we all know the cost of a quality 2.8 lens and to be able to get the extra angle of view with out the loss of aperture was ...well FANTASTIC. But wait, what about the street shooters and and photo journalists that need that wide angle shot, that is the nature of their art. For all the money saved by telephoto users, were wide angle shooters purchasing wider angle lenses to compensate YES. With the D700 this is not an issue, labeled as FX, the same as on the professional D3 model, this camera body hints to bring back the days of ole' where a 24 is a 24 and a 50 is a 50 ...how cool!

I wonder if after all this time adjusting to the digital CCD ratio, new camps will be set up as to which camera body will be purchased in regards to your shooting style. Where camera bodies can be less expensive to replace then glass, I would love to see DSLR bodies tailored to the craft. Some of the inherent problems such as glass clearance at the CCD and mirror motion will be factors to contend with but, seems to me that there is no going back with CCD magnification/crop ratios now that the uses for them are so in-grained...no puns intended!