http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/images/D700/NVN_0127.jpg

This evening I drove in to Manhattan to roam around Times Square to test the low-light capabilities of this camera out. This is after all what the D3 is renowned for, and the D700 promises to deliver the same quality. Outside Toys’R'Us, there was a line of Star Wars fans waiting for a pre-release party to start, and a few of them graciously posed for me - most impressively of all, a Darth Maul look-alike. (I composed the photograph so that the ferris-wheel inside the shop radiates outward behind him to make for an even more striking portrait.)

The image you see there was taken with only the available light in Times Square. And fair enough, the place is flooded at night with light from the numerous billboards - but I was able to get this image at 1/125th @ f3.5 .. which are ‘easy’ settings to use, but this was at an incredible 3200 ISO.

Here is a 100% crop of the area around his eyes to see the high-ISO noise performance. This is from the straight-out-of-camera JPG. I am impressed!

http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/images/D700/NVN_0127-crop.jpg

So for anyone who has been drooling over the D3, but haven't pulled the trigger on that decision yet, *here* is the camera you've been waiting for.



Neil vN.
http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/