My new toy, Nikon D4

Upgraded the Nikon D3s that I owned since Feb 2012 to Nikon D4 last week. There were some problems with the Nikon D3s that pushed me to the disposal of it. First is the shutter problem. The shutter will get jam every now and then. You have to press the shutter 2nd time to “rewind” it. No big deal but felt irritating some time. 2nd problem is that one of the CF slot has a broken pin when I was using the SD-CF adapter last time. This will have corrupted RAW file when I use that slot. Since D3s has two CF slots, so again no big deal but mainly just emotional.

The buyer of my D3s knew about the problems of the camera, so he offered me a price which I think is reasonable, and I decided to move on.

No, this isn’t a brand new D4, but one with shutter count near to 60k. Since Nikon D4 shutter can last over 300k, I have no worry. The slightly irritating part is the rubber grip that got expanded. Changing all the rubbers on the D4 body costs slightly less than RM500. I don’t feel like spending that money at the moment.

Below are some test shots that I got from the D4. Initial impression is that autofocus is very accurate and sharp. One of the main reason why I want to upgrade is because of the AUTO shutter speed in Auto ISO setting in the camera. Yes, you let the camera choose the ISO automatically, and choose the lowest shutter speed based on the focal length of your lens. Eg. If you are using 200mm focal length, the D4 will set its shutter speed to 1/200s minimal. When you zoom down to 28mm, it will automatically set the minimum shutter speed to 1/30s. In D3s, you need to set the minimum shutter speed in the menu, if you set 1/200s but shooting at 50mm focal length, you are basically shooting at too high shutter speed and wasted a few stops and forcing the camera to set at higher than needed ISO. I hope this makes sense to whoever that is reading… 🙂

Nikon could have updated this small feature via firmware in the D3s, but they didn’t. Too bad…

Here’s some shots…