Brian Tilley's comment about dynamic range might actually have something to do with it. I'm hugely addicted to rich open shadows in my prints -- I learned a lot of my photography from the old Ansel Adams series of books and shot a lot of black and white in my early days. I'm a very heavy user of curves, the shadow/highlight tool and its analogs in NX2 and ACR to pull out and accentuate shadow detail -- and I've never seen anything like the D3 for this kind of work...
Nikonians®, NikoScope® and NikoniansAcademy™ are trademarks owned by Nikonians.org.
Nikon®, Nikonos® and Nikkor® are registered trademarks of Nikon Corporation.