D700 Somewhat Disappointing

And ...

I'd like to know a bit more about what your settings were and how the photos were processed and printed.

One of the things we get out of larger format media is better rendering of tonal range, as well as not needing to enlarge for the same print size.

By the way God's preferred format is measured in tetra-lightyears not millimeters and pixels

You are not going to see huge differences in daylight images. Try the D700 in some indoor, dim light situations at ISO 3200 and 6400. There is where the D3 and D700 shine. The following image is a D700, ISO 6400 example with the 14-24mm/f2.8 at 14mm:

I have printed some of my wedding images from the D2X to 20x30" and at least I am quite happy with the results. I am sure the D700 would do a little better.

I know Eric likes to buy two identical cameras, but I am afraid that is not a good strategy in the digital era. You'll simply have two cameras depreciating rapidly. I personally have never owned two copies of any Nikon camera. The closest I had was an FE and FE2. At least for me, switching among the D3, D700, D300, D2X, D200 and even a Contax 645 is not an issue.

As far is IQ, 10mp vs 13mp represents an insignificant increase in resolution. Even if the D700 was 24mp, you would not see a significant difference in resolution.

I find with any new body I use it takes time to figure out the optimal settings. Oddly, you would think the larger sensor would give you better IQ even at lower ISOs. As you (and I) have discovered, it does not. It obviously helps at higher ISOs.

If you don't need the larger viewfinder of the D700 over DX cameras or shoot above ISO 1600 often, you may not need it. Now wanting it is another story!

Did you apply any sharpening in post processing?

When the D3 first came out there were tons of comparisons between it and the original Canon 5D which was much older. Most people thought the 5D was sharper often times much sharper. Over the next month the discussion turned to the D3 having a much stronger anti alias filter and that the D3 image could be sharpened in post processing much more than people thought without creating oversharpening artifacts.

Ellis, as I didn't have a program in place to convert the D700 Raw files, I used Fine JPEGs from both cameras. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this would not effect either camera's gross resolution- i.e. I made the same print from an uncompressed D200 Raw file, which yielded the same number of pixels per inch.

Also, I thought I had the D700 set on Auto White Balance, but I may have had it set on Flash, which could account for the difference in color balance. But again, the point of my excercise was not color rendition.

Shun, when shooting event-type stuff, I have been using the Gary Fong Lightsphere. As such, I'm usually shooting at ISO 400-800 in larger rooms. So, I appreciate the enhanced high-ISO performance of the D700- though the D200 is pretty good- i.e. I haven't felt the need to run D200 images shot at ISO 800 through Neat Image. But yes, I'm more interested in what the D700 can do at ISO 200 than at ISO 3200.

Elliot, if I had $5-6K burning a hole in my pocket, I'd switch to the D700s today, despite the D700 not being vastly better than the D200. My wants always exceed my needs.

Again, I'm not slagging the D700. It appears to be somewhat better than the D200 in pretty much every way. Its just that I was expecting the FX sensor from a body at about the same quality level in Nikon's line (comparing a hundred-series body to a hundred-series body) to be dramatically better than a one-generation-older DX sensor.

Walt, I turned the sharpening off in both cameras. I did capture sharpening and output sharpening of both images I printed with PhotoKit Sharpener. Neither print lacked sharpness, per se, but both looked a little under-rezzed at only 200+ pixels/inch.

At least in my case, the D3 and D700 simply change the way I shoot events. Now I use a lot less flash as a result. Additionally, the D700 (or D300) should be able to give you much better AF under dim light, but as we have discussed lately, the way the 15 cross-type AF points in the Multi-CAM 3500 are placed is optimized for sports instead of event photography.

Another reason to get an FX body is for wide angle work. Now the 14-24mm/f2.8 and 24mm PC-E are much more useful in FX.

If you neither need high ISO results nor super wide results, perhaps the D200 and the DX format are just fine for you.

I shoot digital, too, but I'm not about to part with my Mamiya 7. But I will buy a D700 because of the high ISO capabilities. That is one area where digital trumps film.