WALLET-BUSTINGLY GOOD?

(Canon and other brand users: Move along, nothing to see here...) 😃

After the trip to Canterbury for the new Archbishop, I made another little trip to London and Grays of Westminster...

Yes, I have finally succumbed and stumped up for a D4. Well, if I can't have one for making a half-century, when can I have one??!

Is it worth the money? Well, this is an accusation you can throw at any pro-spec camera. Most all of today's "consumer" DSLRs take excellent quality pictures, so unless you buy into something like the mega-resolution of the D800, or the High ISO and frame rates of the D4, what's the point of spending more?

It's "robustness" and "build quality", two very ephemeral qualities, I think. My D4 hasn't been used solely - I have two D3Ss still - but already has 17k frames on it. It has been rained on, several times, too. Pro bodies DO cost a lot, undoubtedly. But that does bring some peace of mind as well as their capabilities.

D4. Just add ££££s

OK. So is it better than the D3S and therefore worth the extra premium?

More after the break...

Um. 

Maybe. Maybe not. That's firmly fence-sitting, even though I've forked out for one.  If you shoot raw at high ISOs, the two cameras are very similar, with a small but useful bit of extra resolution to the D4. JPEGs are a different story, and the D4 wins at high ISOs by quite a bit. 

The extra resolution is useful - 7mp upright crop, say, from a 16mp view image of football: that'll do nicely - but if you are doing frame-filling portraits and such it's less noticeable.

Controls? I like the ability to set different focus points for upright and view (e.g. focus on a player's face in view, turn the camera to upright and the focus point can be automatically in the top third of the frame ready to focus on his face again). The thumb controllers for AF points I'm less struck on, and if you swap back and forth D4 to D3 then you tend to stick with the multi-selector in any event,

Nice to be able to split exposure compensation for daylight and flash - moving to, say, +0.7 EV compensation on previous Nikons for the daylight automatically boosts the flash too, which you may not want. Again, because the D3S uses the "old" way, it can be odd swapping back.

Metering? Hmm. Think the D4 is a little more consistent and to my tastes, plus its dynamic range is a little bit better, I think. Having a true ISO 100 available is nice, too. Still not much, though.

AF? Ah, here we might have something. The AF on the D3S is very good BUT is sometimes a little slow off the mark. The D4 is noticeably quicker to acquire accurate focus and I can see the difference in my images of football, especially. Basically, if you have to wait to see who a cross is going to drop to (because, lets face it, at lower league football even the kicker is not entirely sure!) the D4 will acquire, track and give you a focused image of the receiver more often.

So I guess if you do rely on AF, a bit of resolution, need good JPEGs and some of the control updates then it might be worth cracking the wallet for a D4. I don't regret my purchase, even if I'm not really convinced the upgrade is worth the extra money.

But in the meantime, let's be clear; the D3S remains a damn good camera...