In any case, when looking for flexibility, you inevitably compromise, and that usually comes in the form of less maximum aperture and some more distortion. Today’s zooms rarely compromise on image quality and sharpness, and I am very careful which lenses I choose. It takes me weeks or months of research and reading reviews to decide on whether I will buy a lens or not. Until now I’m quite happy with my choices, although I must say that my 18-35 Nikkor ultra wide does have some very uncomfortable distortions which would make anyone swear in Photoshop. Thank heavens for DxO Optics, a brilliant piece of software which does miracles to correct distortion – so that’s one less headache. Just be careful that your lens and body combination are actually supported, since they can sometimes be limited, especially for newer cameras.

This brings me to my choice of camera body. Just in case it is not clear yet, I’m a Nikon guy. My dad was always a Nikon fan, and that’s permeated through to the next generation. I must admit that Canon has had the leading edge for most of the past decade when it comes to digital camera bodies. I wasn’t involved in the DSLR market until a few years ago, but it was clear that Canon’s sensor technology was more advanced. I still think that Nikon always had (and still has) and edge when it comes to usability and user friendliness of its equipment, apart from a generally better rendition of images with higher noise levels, but these are all subjective, and I am sure most Canon users will disagree with me.

Things inevitably change, and the turning point came towards the end of 2007, by the name of D3. The technological leap Nikon took with the D3 was astounding, and it left its competitors biting dust. The D3 was also the first full-frame (by digital-speak, that is, meaning 35-mm film equivalent) camera which was launched, and it rocked big time. The great news came for me in the form of the D700. A D3 with some cut corners, a smaller body, but the same great performance. It didn’t come cheap, but its high ISO performance was perfect for what I needed. True, I would never get the shallow depth of field of an f2.8 lens, but what the heck, they don’t call them compromises for nothing!

I had high expectations of the D700, and I can tell you I was not disappointed at all. This camera is a jewel of technology. ISO performance is fantastic, handling is great, and the new 3D tracking system works like a charm. When deciding whether to go for the D700, I was also considering the D300. There is a notable price difference, so I needed to decide whether the extra money would be well spent. There are a number of key points which made me choose the D700 over the D300. These might not apply to everyone, but essentially, there are a couple of items which had me hooked. Apart from the couple of stops of extra ISO performance, which is a big selling point for me, there the 14-bit performance. I tend to do some serious post processing to some of my work, and therefore I need all the flexibility I can get, with as little loss of detail as possible. The D300 does support 14-bit Raw recording, however the whole thing slows down when switching to 14-bit. Essentially, you get less frames per second, and I knew I’d be shooting 14-bit 95% of the time, so that was a big disadvantage.

The D700 (as the D300) also has got a new feature which goes by the name of Active D-Lighting. It is essentially a dynamic range modifier which uses the advantages gained by 14-bit recording to preserve highlights. The main advantage of 14-bit recording is that you gain more detail in the shadow areas, which would otherwise tend to be very noisy when boosted in post processing. This allows editors to lower the exposure, preserving blown highlights, while retaining detail in the shadow area without experiencing those ugly blotches of noise which sometimes appear when applying fill light. The Active D-Lighting does exactly this, and is mainly used when recording JPG images (since you can do the process manually when recording RAW). The newly added Auto setting (which was not present in the D3, and is still not present in the D3x), will detect the contrast of a scene and automatically lower the exposure to preserve the highlights, while boosting the shadows. This would obviously require the camera to shoot continuously in 14-bit mode, even though JPG will eventually be recorded in 8-bits. This would have meant that the D300 would always be running in “slow mode”, which was a deal breaker for me. Luckily the D700 does not suffer from this, which is why I have one in my bag today.

Overall, my experience to date with the D700 is that it is a great camera with little to fault, and I am entirely happy with my decision. I have used it with a variety of lenses, and they all perform brilliantly with it. I’ve used it for fine art, landscapes, architecture, journalism and sports, and it has performed excellently in every occasion.