Nikon D700 Hands-on




This past Saturday, I spent about an hour and a half with a borrowed D700. Gaby’s mom swapped with me for my D90 at Diego’s seventh birthday party.

I shot it with my 50mm f/1.4 AF-S G and she kept her 28-105 AF thing.

After twenty minutes, my neck hurt. Okay, there’s a strap for that.

Why is this thing so darned big? To make it a good fit with larger lenses, I expect. I’d love a full-frame DSLR the size of an F100, but Nikon doesn’t make one for some reason.

I basically hated it. Until I got it dialed in, then it was time to go. So who knows.

The photo preview took forever to display after pushing {Play}. Weird. I think it was her Kingston 133X card just sucking, or perhaps it needed to be formatted. Dunno. Same thing most times I pushed {Menu}. Occasionally the menu would appear instantly.

Finally found Auto ISO, pretty much too late.

A few comments for my future self:

  • No rush now. But I still want something FX.
  • Maybe FX isn’t a silver bullet.
  • I need to sit down and A/B this with my D90 to really see how much better it is.
  • The 50mm had a much better field of view — it wasn’t as restrictive as it is on my D90 — I only had to step back to take a group shot, not for any other shots. I usually have a lot of attention on my position when shooting 50mm on my D90. Though I don’t know if I’ve ever shot a birthday part with my 50mm.

I’ll probably get a D800 or a D800E. For the phenomenal detail.