I recently reported that I have been shooting with an entry level digital SLR for the past five years– a circa 2004 Canon EOS Digital Rebel. The Rebel has a cropped sensor which means it is much smaller than a standard 35mm film frame.
Well I finally moved up to a full-frame digital SLR, the Nikon D700. The body alone is $2,699.95 at B&H Photo in New York. If you buy the kit with a Nikkor 24-120mm VR f/3.5-5.6G zoom lens the price is $3,369.95. You have to add 2- 4GB Extreme CompactFlash cards for $59.95 each. The total damage was $3,221.85. Shipping was free.
This is a large chunk of change to drop on a camera, especially since my old camera was still serviceable. And I would not call myself a camera junkie. I used the Canon with just one zoom lens for about 5 years and before that a Nikon FM2 with only two lenses for at least a dozen years. (Disclosure: I am a lighting equipment junkie with about ten thousand pounds of lighting equipment!)
However I am trying to improve the quality and I believe a full-frame camera is a necessary step in that direction. For one thing, the larger sensor allows larger pixel sites which vastly improves the quality at low light levels. The D700 can shoot at 1600 or 3200 or even 6400 with very little noise.
First Shots Straight from the Camera
Anyhow, I was in Cleveland recently and shot a little bit around town with the camera. Below is a shot of the stunningly beautiful Peter B. Lewis Building on the Case Western Reserve University campus. The focal length was 24mm on the 24-120 kit lens. The camera was on Auto-Everything–Auto ISO, Auto White Balance, Programmed Exposure (matrix metering), Auto Focus–and shot RAW+JPEG. The result is “As Shot” with no adjustments whatsoever. Pretty impressive results that any tyro can produce–no wonder pro photographers are being put out of business left and right.
One thing that surprised me was that the camera decided to set the ISO=1600 and exposed at f/18 @ 1/1250. This was in bright sunlight–sunny 16–and most human photographers would probably have used f/16 @ 1/125 or f/11 @ 1/250 with ISO=100. Interesting choice of exposure setting by the program. Forget everything you know. It is a new world order. ISO 1600 is the new ISO 100.
