As Canon announced their flagship camera a couple months ago, so Nikon did the same four days ago. This baby will boast a brand-spanking new 16.2MP sensor with the almost-brand-spanking new Expeed 3 processor (the Nikon 1 cameras both have this processor), and will have an ISO range exactly the same as the Canon 1Dx, from 50 to 204,800! It will shoot 10 frames per second onto a brand-new XQD memory card, which was developed by the Compact Flash Association. (It also has a CF card slot.) This is great for continuous shooting, as the new XQD spec allows for blazing fast 125MB/s (that's megaBYTES per second) read/write speeds!
As far as video goes, this is pretty sick. The Nikon will obviously shoot 1080p video in 24 or 30 fps, and 720p in 30 or 60 fps. This is not all that impressive. What is impressive is that plugging this camera through the HDMI port to a couple of gizmos, the camera will output uncompressed video! For colour timing and other such manipulations, this is incredible. Even Canon, who generally have stronger video capabilities, don't have that yet. (Canon, however, has complete SMPTE compliance, which allows multiple cameras to sync up to have the same timecodes, making editing a lot easier. Canon also supports PAL framerates. So here again, pros and cons for both companies.)
The only real disadvantage in this camera is the battery life. The D3s and its battery seem to have 40% more life. Whereas Canon shooters complain that the auto-focus system won't be able to handle f/8 lenses, Nikon has one hiccup, and it is a hiccup if one wants to shoot extensive videos.
Overall, this seems to be a beast of a camera, just like the 1Dx. Pros, however, will not mind plunking down the $6000 required to own one. Given this camera comes out in February, I'm sure many photographers will want to try this out for the Olympics.
I've seen some sample photos, and even at ISO 12,800, the pictures are impressively usable. It will be interesting to see the complete capabilities once these are in the hands of professionals.
We are not professionals, and so will not be buying this camera. However, you can see what we can achieve right here.
Frank
His note: Greatest thing to clean a keyboard and screen.
Shannon
Her note: This was taken awhile ago but it makes me proud to be Canadian.
My shot
I'm actually not going to say what this is. I'll leave it to you to figure it out. I will say I shot this in the morning and I wanted to shoot it brighter, but I do like it with this exposure. Good luck guessing!
Hopefully, I'll be fully awake very early tomorrow and see if there's something to shoot outside.
PS. I mentioned Speed Demos Archive about 5 months ago, doing a speedrun marathon, raising tons of money for the Organisation for Autism Research. This time they're helping the Prevent Cancer Foundation, and they just finished up another marathon today. Their goal in the past week was to raise $50,000, which they raised in about 36 hours. They ended up almost tripling their goal, with over $145,000 raised. They'll be streaming and taking donations until January 15th, so please visit their site and donate. These are great guys, and it's for a great cause.
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