Tokyo report: D3 and D300

They also say they are planningto have them at dealers sometime in November. Also a there are goign to be a lot of new lenses coming in the next year or so for what Nikon is calling the FX (i.e. the 23.9 x 36.9mm ) format including new primes.

Thanks Ellis. What are some of the features of the D300? Did you get a chance to get them?

Ellis, thanks for the information. BTW, the full 35mm film frame is 24x36mm. The format for the D3, which Nikon now called FX (vs. DX for the 16x24mm small-sensor DSLRs) is 23.9x36mm.

The D3 uses a Nikon-designed sensor, but it is not disclosed who actually manufactures it. The D300 uses a Sony sensor.

You know what size the sensor is on the D300 Shun?

I just found out, I think. The D300 will be a 12.3 MP DX sensored body.

To date, all Nikon DSLRs other than the D3 use DX size sensors, which is roughly 16x24mm (or 15.8 x 23.6 mm, but some DSLR models differs slightly), including the new D300.

The sensor format/size is not something you can just change because the lenses wouldn't match very well. As I pointed out in another thread, Canon's 3 DSLR formats is messy; they have no wide lenses dedicated to the 1.3x crop DSLRs and IMO it is very inconvenient.

I am happy that Nikon did not follow the pixel race (Canon FF 21Mpixel now) and the 12Mpix sensor with better noise floor was chosen over more pixels. More useful at least for my needs. I wonder if the 14bit specification will in real live give improved colors like skin tones.

I presume in 6 month we can afford the D300 at a nice street price and in 2 years we can afford the FF sensor in the D300x.

It looks like the D300 will be priced higher than the Canon 40D.

Sony claims that the new 23.6 x 15.8 mm CMOS 12mp sensor to have better high ISO performance with regards to noise than their current 10mp CCD chip.

It's good to see the DX format bumped up another notch, because I prefer the reduced bulk of the smaller format. The D3 and the EOS 1Ds Mk III are much bulkier.

Although it is not called a D3H, the D3 is effectively the continuation of the DnH line for sports/action photography. In other words, it is more optimized for high frame rate instead of pixel count, in this case 9 frames/second. As Ellis points out above, Nikon is comparing the D3 against Canon's 1D Mark III (not the latest full-frame 1Ds III) and is priced accordingly, so the D3 is definitely intended to be a sports camera.

However, 12MP is plenty for many other applications. By not cramping as many pixels into a fixed area, the photosites in the D3 can be larger, which helps low-light performance. I am glad that Ellis points out that the D3's low-light performance is good, but that is merely initial information. I'd wait for actual test results after the camera is available.

I am a bit surprised that Nikon is not producing a small DX sensor sports camera, though, as you can use shorter teles on such sports cameras. Clearly, Nikon is not going to use the new 12MP, 10 frames/sec Sony chip for its sports DSLRs.

Still, Nikon has nothing to compete against Canon's 1Ds, high-pixel DSLRs. Therefore, presumably, there will have to be another D3 variation, perhaps called D3x, to be Nikon's dense pixel, lower frame rate DSLR, but most likely that will be in 2008.