Review: Nikon D3 and 14-24mm f/2.8

So, I have been using the D3 and 14-24 since December and have been really impressed.

There are already 9k other sites out there doing D3 reviews so I am going to keep it short. I just wanted to touch on a couple things I really find helpful after using the camera for a few months.

First off, I primarily use the camera in a studio environment and on location with either a Profoto Acute pack or my SB800's. I tend to stay in the 200-800 ISO range for 90% of my shooting so I am not going to regurgitate the D3's high ISO capabilities. Besides, we have all heard them repeatedly praised so many times we are sick of it.

Now on to the review! I have outlined my thoughts into a few key categories to make for easier reading.

"Cool features I thought I wouldn't really use or care about but did"
Live View for fine focusing - This has come in SO handy MANY a time. Being able to zoom in on the screen and fine tune the focus to the exact point you desire is something I could have used earlier. This is something I didn't really comprehend until I used it for the first time.

Auto ISO - Auto ISO isn't something I was very fond of before. My D200 was so noisy above 800 ISO that I was afraid to get anywhere near it. I would almost rather not take the picture. Now I am fairly comfortable shooting up to 3200 ISO and use it frequently when I am taking snaps at family events and situations where faster flash recycle times helps. (3200 ISO might be a little extreme for the latter scenario...)

HD 3" screen - This is awesome. I have become accustomed to its higher resolution and am disappointed when using other cameras.

Focus Fine Tune - Had to use this with my 50/1.4 so it did come in handy. Now if the lens was working well to begin with...


Features that are still lame
Horizon level - Still don't use this. I think I prefer using my eyes. Or maybe I need to shoot more landscape stuff and use it more before I bash on it. Hmm.


Issues I have had
Issues with focusing 50mm f/1.4 - Mine backfocuses about 3" consistently at 5'+ from the camera. Anything up close is fine. Really frustrating to find out in the middle of testing lighting for a shoot. I guess it could have been worse and I could have found out AFTER the shoot while downloading the images.

Sensor Dust - I just had it cleaned last Friday. Let's see if I can keep it cleaner this time. Maybe I am a sloppy lens changer.


Why I bought it
14-24/2.8 - When the D3 was first announced, I said, "WOW. This is what I have been waiting for. I think I might buy one someday." Then I saw the 14-24 that was announced at the same time and my thoughts quickly changed to: "My dream has just come true. What do I need to do to pick up a D3 and the 14-24?" After a week of reading and pondering, I finally called Pictureline here in SLC and got on the list for the D3.

Perspective of lenses/"Full" 35mm frame - Being able to shoot with an 85mm lens and move closer to my subject (almost minimum focus distance) is awesome. The depth of field and perspective is very pleasing to me and something I strive for with my more recent style of portraits.

ISO capabilities - I will do a wedding during blue moons and like to shoot higher ISO's for faster strobe recycle times (when using my speedlights). The ability to shoot at 800 ISO almost noise free is a big plus. I get higher quality images which makes me happy.

Battery Life - Admit it. The D200 had horrid battery life. I hated carrying all those spare batteries and constantly charging and swapping them out. The D2/3 ENEL4 is one less thing to worry about during a shoot.

9 FPS - One of my passions is road racing. Fast action sports photography? 9 FPS might come in handy.

Lower Pixel density - Less demanding on lenses. More pixels than my D200. Manageable file sizes.


Now a little about the legendary lens:

14-24 f/2.8
Wow. Awesome. Sharp. Crisp. Fast. Quality.

All words to describe this lens. What a great lens! But I always say, take the good with the bad so... here is the bad:

I have only encountered 2 issues with this lens.

- About 1px of green/red chromatic abberation at 14mm in any high contrast situation at any aperture. Easily fixable but I have to take the effort to fix it every time. Capture NX automatically removes MOST of this but I have found ACR/ Photoshop CS3 to be better. With ACR I am able to completely remove ALL of the CA in the lens correction tab in the RAW dialog.

- Small amount of barrel distortion. Easily fixable but again, something I usually have to correct for if noticeable.

If you need a wide or ultra wide angle lens, this thing is incredible. If you MUST use filters, you are out of luck because Nikon has done a superb job in creating a ZOOM lens that outperforms everything else on the market. Technology is great, isn't it?

Maybe Nikon will release a FF D3x ~24MP to satisfy our need/desire for resolution this year. I am hoping for something more studio oriented with a base 50 ISO (maybe a boost 25 ISO just for kicks) up to 1600 ISO as the native range. This would compliment their line perfectly (and create an excuse for another camera...)

Oh well. They are just tools. ;-)

Aperture 2: Nikon D3 NEF Support

...is great BUT has one MAJOR issue for me. It is clipping the color detail too early. This means I am getting monochrome shadow areas on my colored subjects and it looks really bad.


Let me expound upon this and give some examples:

Aperture's raw conversion for the Nikon D3 is clipping the color from shadows.... generally. (About 99% of the time.) It is possible that the couple of images I haven't seen the problem occur in have color detail just above the clipping threshold.

This really makes for some ugly images. I know, I said that already, but now you can see it for yourself.

In the samples below, watch the shadow on the brown wall behind the subject as well as the shadow areas on the neck in the close up. Note that the red strap in the file with the color clipped has almost no red left. (It should still be red!)

I have a couple of sample images side by side here:

Here is the same image, one processed with AP2 and the other through ACR:

- FYI, I don't have any of these issues with D200 NEF's.


This next image I took, I was playing with to see how far I could pull the file and still retain shadow detail (It is grossly underexposed. The pocketwizard batteries had just died). The image is in color and looks alright when opened with ACR but when I open it in Aperture, there is basically no color at all left in the image. This leads me to believe that Aperture's D3 raw conversion is throwing away color information at a specific level. The preview image somehow didn't clip the color information while the actual raw file did.
(The first image is with Quick Preview on and the second is the actual NEF.)

Here is a more recent example. This is a quick shot I took of a friend. Check out his skin tones in the right side of the image.
(The first image is through ACR and the second AP2.)

Now, I have posted about this in the Aperture Discussions forum as well as in the DPReview.com forum and not had much luck as far as intelligent conversation goes. I guess there either aren't many others experiencing this phenomenon, they are too lazy to speak up about it, or they can't see the difference and/or don't care.

Personally, I expect more out of Aperture 2.0. Let's get an update to fix this. I would love to be using Aperture to process all of my files but with bugs that affect my images, I will have to stick with ACR for the time being.