Nikon D700

Is it rational to call a $3000 camera a bargain? It is when it delivers nearly all the features of the company’s revered $5000 pro model, which is precisely the case with the Nikon D700. Basically the D700 takes the best parts of two established cameras and blends them seamlessly. The $5000 Nikon D3 contributes a full-frame image sensor with low-noise performance that makes previously impossible photos as simple as pressing the shutter. From the Nikon D300 comes a nearly unchanged body that’s hefty but nicely balanced, tightly sealed against the elements and nearly 20% lighter than the D3.

What exactly is a full-frame sensor, and why do you care if your camera has one? Back in the days when men were men and cameras used film, lenses and bodies were designed to take pictures on 35mm film. Most lenses (though admittedly not all) are still built in a shape and size to illuminate a 35mm film frame but, on most digital cameras, the actual sensor that’s capturing the light is much smaller. The result is the apparent magnification effect (ordinarily 1.5x) you see when mounting a lens on a digital SLR. In other words, a 100mm lens on most digital SLRs is going to produce an image similar to a 150mm lens on a 35mm camera. Sometimes that’s great – more telephoto lens with less bulk to carry. Sometimes it’s a pain – that 28mm lens that produces lovely wide-angle shots on a 35mm camera is suddenly shooting like a 42mm lens, producing photos that look roughly like what you'd see with the naked eye instead of breathtaking panoramas. What’s happening is that only the middle of the lens is actually being used – the light captured by the remaining glass falls outside the sensor area and is lost. With a full-frame sensor, though, the camera behaves optically like a 35mm film camera, squeezing all the goodness out of the lenses you carry.

In the case of the Nikon D3 and D700, the larger sensor also means larger light receptors on the sensor surface. Sure, you'll find tiny cameras that shoot at 12 megapixels, but the light receptors on the sensor surface are very small and crammed together very closely. The result? Lower light sensitivity (the receptors just don’t have enough surface area to see very many photons) and higher image noise caused by electronic crosstalk among components. Take that same 12-megapixel specification, spread it across a 24mm x 36mm chip and you have a camera that loves the dark and laughs at grainy photographs – in short, the Nikon D700.