[shuttertalk]

Anyone been keeping track of the new Nikon D700? Looks pretty interesting!

- 12 MP, Full frame sensor
- Same form factor as the D300
- "pro" body construction, magnesium alloy + weather sealing
- Live view
- 3" viewfinder

Now we're starting to see more full frame sensors, hopefully they'll one day be in the price range of "average" consumers... here's hoping!

[Pavel]

Remember however, that the big jump in cost is not just the body, but the cost of bigger glass and the need to abandon any investment in DX lenses. That is what makes the decission painful, if you consider it. It is not my problem however. D300 will allways be better camera than the photos I am able to deliver with it. In my hands, D700 and D3 would not deliver better photos than I can take now with D300, except that they would perhaps be less noisy at higher ISO settings, allowing for higher shutter speeds or smaller apperture, which i would find handy in some situations. Other benefits would probably be lost on me. That is not to say that this is not a desirable camera, of course. D300 is a great improvement over D70s ( my provious camera) and I have no doubt that D700 and its "full frame" are better still. Pavel

[Zig]

Yep....but for some reason I've slid through unaware of it being full-frame(!); I wonder if Canon have hung on till after Nikon did this to sorta "get them back" for their coup with the wide-zoom not so long back? I'm very grateful and all that ...but can't help the feeling that I'm becoming increasingly a pawn in the market-share gameplay. I know, maybe it's just taken me this long to realise, and that this is the "way of things"...

By the way, I meant as regards Canon's release of the 5D2 or whatever it is.

[Pavel]

I know what you mean Zig. I love toys just like you do. However, as I am focused on landscape photography, my hardware needs are fairly narowly defined ("go wide and sharp old man"), portability matters and speed does not matter that much. There is a lot of nifty software that tugs on me, but what is the point, if I can not use CS3? So I am trying to resist playing with new software and to learn Photoshop. I still like to read about toys. Pavel

[shuttertalk]

Good points pavel - although they don't have to abandon their investment in DX lenses. Apparently, it is compatible with DX lenses as well, and it automatically crops out the viewfinder, although if you think about it, it will probably be throwing away a lot of the pixels due to the smaller crop.

[Pavel]

I agree Zig. In effect you would be cropping the realestate of your nice expensive big chip, so you would end up with effectively a chip the size found in D300, but with fewer and fatter pixels ending up with low noise, poor resolution at great cost. Pavel