ISO
The D3 and then the D3S were the undisputed kings of the high ISO world. The D4 delivers excellent ISO 6400, decent ISO 12800, and four extra stops of boost. You can do the calculation yourself: 25,600, 51,200, 102,400, 204,800. That's correct. At it's highest setting, the D4 delivers the equivalent of more than 200,000 ISO. Actually it's pretty grainy at that point, and you probably won't want to use it very often. But it means you can shoot in near darkness with a 500mm lens and not get shutter shake, you can shoot in true darkness with a wide-aperture lens, and, in effect, you will never need to use a flash-gun ever again to cope with insufficient light (though you'll still want them to control light).
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| Grainy at max ISO |
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| Caption: Grainy at max ISO Make no mistake the extreme ISO of 204,800 (+4) of the D4 comes at a price. If you need it to get the shot, go for it. Otherwise, keep it 'down' to 25600 (+1) (second image), which at the equivalent of the maximum boost on the original D3, is easily smooth enough for most available-light applications |
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Caption: making light of difficult darkness This old British phone box in dazzling sunshine on the left and shadow on the right gives a good picture of how well the D4 handles difficult lighting. This was shot at ISO 4000, which, on the D3, would have meant enough reduction in effective luminosity depth to have put a rough grain on the most deeply shadowed areas. The D4 image is pristine. D4, ISO 4,000, 1/1600, 500mm Reflex, manual focus |
The real winner is — manual focus
Video and ultra-ISO are great, but the single thing which really annoys me about the D3 is how hard it is to shoot in manual focus. The focusing screens on autofocus cameras are generally not well adapted for the tasks that old-fashioned matte and split field screens were designed for. I haven't been able to reference this anywhere, but there is something different about the D4 focusing screen. You can just about see it in some circumstances where it appears to be ridged in some way. But the result is that it is much, much easier to focus the near-impossible Nikon 500 mm reflex mirror lens. Shooting with the D4, I was able to quickly and accurately focus on moving objects and fleeting images, capturing far more than I ever could before. If you rely on manual focusing with difficult lenses, this is probably enough to sell you the D4 on its own.
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| Caption: Manual Focus perfection This was a snapshot point and focus. Not a difficult task for any camera, except that this was with the 500 mm Nikkor Reflex — a mirror lens with a depth of focus of less than half a centimetre at this proximity, and no possibility of autofocusing. Shots like this were simply impossible on the D3, because it took too long to get anywhere near focused. The focusing screen on the D4, though subtle, gives enough speed and confidence to make this image possible. |
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| Caption: Front focusing? The review model had the slightest tendency to front focus — note the narrow band of in-focus grain on the wood, rather than on the cufflinks where it should have been. This is no reason to send it back to Nikon: you can adjust the focusing characteristics yourself through the menus. |
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