Picked up this badboy friday...
Ok, after shooting a day with the D700, I thought I'd lay out a couple subjective opinions coming from a 20 year canon user. First of all, this is NOT SCIENTIFIC, and definitely NOT COMPREHENSIVE. It's just my initial opinions and impressions and should not be mistaken as a qualified review.
Stuff I love about the D700 (and some are Nikon general comments):
-It's such an awesome package they put together in terms of features.
-Pro level AF.
-Man, Nikon viewfinders ROCK! ALWAYS loved all the info they can put on the screen! Like crop lines and such that can be added or removed at any time!
wicked! Canon has NO SUCH DYNAMIC viewfinder displays. LAME.
-Dedicated switch for MF/Servo/oneshot focusing. I switch between Servo and one shot a lot and a dedicated switch is nice!
-Reassignable buttons! You can reassign some of the buttons on the body to do whatever you want to do. That is nice and customizable. Canon mark III has this to some degree, but it's much more limited.
-LCD screen has much higher resolution.
-To delete a photo, you press the same button twice. Love this! Much faster than "press delete, spin wheel, press ok".
-Impressed with the speed and responsiveness of the D700. Viewfinder blackout is also very short.
-Good set of custom functions
-Virtual horizon is cool for an idiot like me who is notorious for slanted horizons
-Higher ISO settings. Even though I found ISO12800 and 25600 to be pretty crappy and useless, it's still there for you in a pinch. I use 6400 a lot on the mark III so I could see myself using 12800.
-Select between 14-bit RAW and 12-bit RAW. This is cool in that it saves a bit of space, and I'd probably use 12-bit for less important images.
Stuff I didn't like about it:
-Ergonomics. Ok, people are going to blast me for this, as they say nikon always has had better ergonomics. But I disagree. The main wheel is right UNDER the shutter release, whereas canon puts it above. Well, my middle finger sits as high up on the grip as possible, which is millimetres away from the wheel. This is interfering with my index finger trying to spin the wheel! I can't get the meaty fleshy part of my index finger on the wheel to spin it well. I tried holding the camera lower on the grip, but it was not comfy. I tried spinning the wheel with my middle finger but it's weird trying to hold the camera with just your ring finger and pinky. I just couldn't use the damn wheel! WTF?
-The rear wheel is not at all like Canon's. Where canon has laid the rear wheel out flat so it looks like a disc, nikon's looks much like the main wheel in that it's a slit where the edge of the wheel sticks out. It's placed well in a comfortable spot, but I'm not used to how slow using that wheel is! For example, I go from F/18 to F/2.8 often on a sunny day, when I suddenly go indoors. On canon, this literally takes LESS THAN a QUARTER OF A SECOND to change. SUPER fast! On the Nikons, it takes me SEVEN spins of the wheel to get there. Talk about SLOW! Probably not much of an issue to most but this bugged the crap out of me. The main wheel isn't so great either, it takes more spins to get to where you want over canon's wheels. (BTW, by default the shutter speed is set on the rear wheel and aperture on the front wheel. I switched everything to work as much like a canon as possible)
-Live view. I thought live view would KICK A$$ on the D700 as it has a MUCH higher resolution LCD screen than the mark III or 40D. All I can say is a big WTF?? Live view BLOWS compared to Canon's implementation! It's frame rate is painfully choppy, and zooming in so freaking blurry and nasty! And if indoors, the amount of noise you see on the screen is horrendous! Canon's liveview works at like 60+ FPS even in low light, MUCH less noise, and when you zoom in 10X, the image is SOOOO FREAKING clear and sharp when in focus! I am 100% confident in manually focusing with canon live view. I couldn't trust nikon's live view for manual focus. The image just never gets tack sharp, even when in focus. Man what a letdown.
-Controls on top left of the camera. Ok I think this implementation totally blows. See image here: http://a.img-dpreview.com …ond700/images/topleft.jpg
First of all, changing ISO is an awkward two handed affair. You press the ISO button and spin the wheel to change it. By default, you gotta HOLD down to ISO button to change it, but I quickly set it so you don't have to do that (a la canon). Second of all, the button doesn't protrude, so you have like no tactile feedback on when your finger is on the button! Third, I tried this with a heavy 2.8 telephoto on the camera... I had to take my face away from the camera to change ISO, because the left hand, which supports the weight of the heavy lens, now has to press that button high up on the body. I think it's terrible. I switch ISO a LOT when shooting, and with canon, your hands do not even move to change it. And on the 40D/mark III, your right index finger does the whole job. Same deal for WB, though this doesn't bother me as much. Fourth, to change from single shot, to high speed/low speed burst, timer etc are all on that dial, but it has a lock button, so it's a PITA to spin it. And when you DO spin it, it doesn't have good tactile feedback with definite CLICKS when you land on each setting. There ARE clicks, but they are SUPER WEAK! Not a big deal though as I don't switch between burst modes too often, and not like canon's method is fool proof either. One cool thing is that Mirror lockup is right on this dial so it's not a custom function to access it. But ever since live view, I could care less. Now I just switch on live view whenever I want a mirror lockup shot.
-Chimping... although the LCD rocks and full images look fantastic on the screen, the reality is it looks like crap when really zoomed in. I'm suspecting the limitation is that it's viewing just a low res thumbnail much like canon's system, so even with high res screen it still looks like garbage zoomed in a lot.
-No ISO 50. 100 is as low as it goes.
-Menu interface is really clunky compared to the 40D/mark III tabbed layout. Using the two wheels on the canons, it's brutally fast to rip through the menu
system. Nikons menu system requires a lot of button pushes to get through, and some settings have all kinds of sub menus and stuff which to me is a lot slower to get through.
-My menu. Ok, it's a great feature, but on all my latest canon cameras, right at the top of My Menu is FORMAT. I tried adding that to the D700 menu and it specifically says it will not allow FORMAT to be added to your custom menu. WTF??? I use this all the time, so it's great to have quick access to it. whatever...
I haven't put AF really through it's paces yet, so not too much to comment there. But using the 50 1.4, I figured it would have plenty of light to AF well. Strangely enough, it had trouble focusing on stuff I thought it shouldn't. Then I'd pick up the 1Ds mark III with the 85 1.8 and boom, no problem focusing on the same thing. I don't know if the lens sucks or if it's the body, but it definitely couldn't lock onto stuff that I'm used to locking onto. It could very well be user error... maybe it prefers a different kind of contrast to what I've been giving it? I dunno... I think I need to play around more before giving a solid opinion on it. But first impression is that the AF is no better than canon's.
Anyhow, i was certainly and definitely impressed, but it didn't blow me away and I don't think I'll be making the jump. It's an awesome camera but not anything that isn't easily answered by what I already have, or by what canon will release in the near future. So right now I'm leaning towards NOT WORTH MAKING THE JUMP... despite all my 1D and 24-70L problems.
Curious to see other's D700 impressions and whether that (and the D3) are enough to make them jump.
