Nikon D1X: Second Opinion

A review by Uwe Steinmueller

Digital Outback Photo

Also photos by Bettina Steinmueller

We have taken about 1,500 D1x NEF(raw format) photographs during the first two weeks with the D1x. We only use the RAW format images as we want to get the most out of this camera although the D1x seems to have improved its JPG and TIF format a lot (see Steve's review).

We have used two D1s for more than a year so there wasn't much to learn before using the D1x.

This review will show some photos we like and the lessons we've learned so far using the D1x.

No problem with D1x photos. Due to the high resolution this crop could be easily printed on our letter-sized Olympus P-400 printer.

Here is a crop of the full resolution image for your reference.

In some way the D1x renders the colors very truthfully. But if you compare this to photos taken with Velvia film you are often missing a bit more saturation. Have a look at our article about " Digital Velvia".

We had the pleasure of visiting Galen Rowell's new gallery in Bishop. The many Lightjet prints demonstrate that good saturation/color/contrast is needed to provide prints with some "punch".

We watch the histogram all the time with the D1x. There should never be a spike on the right side as this means lost highlights. Very handy is the auto preview, it shows the image plus the histogram for about 2-3 seconds after it's taken. With the D1 we had to wait forever using a Microdrive!

The above photo had a little spike on the right and is not really technically optimal. We have the impression that it is more difficult to read the D1x histogram and find these little spikes. If there is a spike visible then the highlights are lost anyway. But small spikes like in the above photo are difficult to analyze.

The D1x is a very impressive camera and builds on the strength of the D1 while removing some of its weaknesses. Resolution is there and the discussion about the strange CCD layout is mute if you look at the convincing results. Some other digital cameras provide more "punch" with the resulting photos. In our opinion the color rendering of the D1x is very accurate but some might like a bit more saturation (see lesson #3).

Problems so far:

• There is this strange bug which changes the menu language to Japanese and also the image counter to 1.
• As of now the only serious problem we found (again) was dealing with dust on the CCD. In the news groups there is a whole subculture dealing with hot recipes on how to clean a D1/D1x CCD. Would be nice if Nikon came up with a more reasonable solution than sending in the camera.