After a little persuasion we managed to get the loan of a D3X from the Nikon Press office. We gave it to 3 photographers with 3 very different briefs:

Sven Arnstein shoots a stylized engagement story for OK! Magazine

“It is always a mixed blessing being given a new camera to try out. Fun to be one of the first to get your hands on a new bit of kit, but then there is the dreaded learning curve – the manual, the menu and all the other little gizmos you have to know about – or do you? I still don’t know half of what my 4 year old D2X does!

Canon led the field ages ago with their full frame 21 Mpixel IDS Mark III, and there are by now probably thousands of comparative reviews out on the net, between the Canon and Nikon’s long awaited top end rival, if you are interested. However my mission in trying out the D3X was very simple: Can this £5K monster DSLR replace my much more expensive and recently purchased Hasselblad HD3 that I have come to love? Is there finally a DSLR with which I can happily shoot for all my editorial clients, to a standard that compares to medium format?

At 24.5 Mp it produces a similar file size to the 22 Mpixel back I have on the Blad, albeit in the editorially ungainly 3 x 2 format. It does have a very useful image area function where you can actually shoot 5 x 4 format, which although slightly fatter than the 4 x 3 format of the Blad back suits my work much better. Obviously you lose 1/6^th of the chip size but it still leaves you with 20 M pixels of chip area to shoot on.

I don’t really need to extol the virtues of the body. It’s a solid and professional work horse. The menu gives you some amazing functions including multi exposure, with automatic exposure compensation. It is a little heavier than the D2X with an amazing big bright screen, all the knobs and bits are in a similar place, so getting used to the controls is quite easy for a Nikon user.

Shooting is fast and efficient. Like the D3 there is space for 2 Flash cards, which allows you to shoot a back up simultaneously, good news for anyone who has had a Flash card get corrupted mid shoot.

To make my comparison between the Blad and the DX3, I needed to shoot in RAW mode, the processing of which was to prove more of a challenge than it should have been. I had to download umpteen versions of Nikon Capture NX2 (at the time of writing the only software that will process the new NEF RAW files). I had to start with the 60 days trial version, then upgrade it to 2.1 then download and install the updater to 2.11 (which critically contains the relevant converter for the new NEF files!). My head went BOING to be honest. Nikon were pretty helpful, but you would have thought it would be cool to send the up to date software out with the camera in the first place!

I then had to get to grips with the rather sluggish NX software, as opposed to Photoshop, which is what I use to process my D2X files, and zips through the processing really fast.

This camera ‘rocks’. The firmware is sophisticated and probably has more brain power than the average person operating it! I am sure there is an option in the menu that would take you to the moon if you wanted. I can’t imagine ever wanting more detail from a camera, certainly for my editorial client base, though if they ever made a 4 x 3 chip that would suit my work much better!

There is a noise issue, on a like for like shot I found the D3X noisier than the H3D, especially in the shadows, (see enclosed detail shot) and Nikon’s NX software that deals with this just seemed to make the whole image softer. But you know what? We have to keep a handle on this. In the old days you would NEVER look at an image as close as we now do on our screens, so is this all a bit pedantic? Well for £5500 you would expect a camera to be perfect, and in many ways it gets closer than anything else out there at the moment. I would certainly feel very confident shooting magazine covers and spreads on this camera.

Would I ditch my Hasselblad? Well no. It still just about has the edge, even with the 22 Mp back, and the H system is (I hope) fairly future proof simply because you can always bolt on a bigger and better digital back, if needed. That I suppose is one big advantage of the medium format system in this digital environment. So you won’t find mine on E bay just yet, and in the meantime I will look forward to the price of the D3X coming down, and will buy one then!

Sven Arnstein is freelance, and shoots portraits, celebrity fashion, PR and TV publicity.

Dave Barrett shoots still life for a library.

Having had a D3 for about 9 months and rattled at least 90,000 images through it, I was already a fan of Nikon’s flagship body. So the appearance of the “x” set the juices flowing.

For me the good news on opening the box was that the body has the familiarity of the D3, so no need for me to read yet another manual!

My advertising background shooting10 x 8’’ film trained me in the “bigger is better” school of image making. So a camera delivering massive file sizes, with the ease of use of a DSLR, sounded like good news.

My test was to shoot a studio still-life shoot and it was good to discover that the lower sensitivity range now goes to 100 ASA and beyond (as opposed to 200 ASA for the D3).

So, still-life shot set up and picture taken, the D3X delivered everything I would expect from the D3, but with twice the digital information. The results were, as I had predicted, superb, though, as with the D3, I found I still had a problem with a small amount of chromatic aberration, which I managed to minimise in Photoshop.

The large files this camera produces will please the picture library photographer, especially with location and travel shoots. I have already put this new offering from Nikon firmly on the top of my birthday wish list.

Dave Barrett is a staff photographer for Photoshot, whose work varies from corporate portraiture to still life.

Dave Wimsett takes the D3X to a photocall.

Putting on my hat as a press photographer I used the D3X at the London film premiere of Daniel Craig’s latest movie Defiance.

I found it very similar to my trusted D3 in the way it handles. In a press situation, where you may only have a fraction of a second to get the shot where the star is looking straight at you, speed is crucial. The menu allows you to easily opt to shoot in DX mode, which creates a smaller file and takes the FPS up from 5 to 7 frames a second, though this is still significantly slower than the 9 to11 FPS of the D3.

Speed of editing and uploading or transmitting to hungry picture desks is essential in my line of work, so ironically the camera goes beyond what I need. However, the one major advantage of the larger file sizes is that you can pull up a small part of the frame and still have a decent quality picture, but the majority of uses don’t require such a high degree of detail.

I can see that this camera is perfect for stock photography and studio work, but really it doesn’t suit photographers who have to shoot pictures quickly and then transmit them back to picture desks.

The D3 is definitely much more of a press camera than the D3X. However, Nikon seem to have tried hard to give it a degree of versatility so that it can be used in press situations, or where speed is essential, as in a fashion shoot with a lot of movement.
Dave Wimsett is a staff photographer at Photoshot and photographs press launches, red carpet events and photocalls as well as corporate portraiture.