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D4 - Autofocus For Bird Flight Photography Review

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Wow~ nice review! I needed that as i was start get get frustrated after reading that the D4 had little improvement over the D3s. Its about freakin time we hear more about the D4. So tired of those "other" threads ;)
--
"if it ain't broke" Get a new one anyway!
 
True.
jenella said:
Wow~ nice review! I needed that as i was start get get frustrated after reading that the D4 had little improvement over the D3s. Its about freakin time we hear more about the D4. So tired of those "other" threads ;)
--
"if it ain't broke" Get a new one anyway!
Click to expand...
--
Do I really care what you think? hell NO!
 
It is nice to hear about the d4, sounds like a wonderful camera, especially with the improved af. I have the d3s and I think the af is pretty darn good also after using other Nikon cameras. I just can't bare to divorce my d3s, it is the best thing since "corn bread". I wish more threads were on other subjects besides the d800 and when, if or who are we getting the d800 from.

Larry
 
Comments about the throughput speed of the new card standard are most exciting to me of anything in this review. Of course, if its so great, I'm left grumbling about why there aren't 2 slots for them.

Regarding the AF performance, what I'm getting from this interesting review, reading between the lines, is along the party line of what Nikon is saying - AF has been improved for low light. That seems to be what most people wanted, but unfortunately I'm not that interested in low light. I'm looking for improvements that help me lock and track animals in good light, and achieve focus on the eyes, and I'm not really hearing that there are any significant ones so far.
 
Hi!

Thanks for the review!

Your findings are consistent with what my brief experience has been.

I had no idea that the D4 focusing would be that much better than my D3, but it is.

Regarding the 2 card slots (one for XQD and the other for CF).
I would predict that a future D4s might just have the two slots for XQD.

Since the D4 has the two differing slots, I wish that there was the option of acquiring everything onto the fast XQD card and then after shooting, one could dump the XQD data onto the slower CF card.

As it is, when I fill up the XQD card, I have it programmed to overflow to the CF card. Unfortunately, I am then back to using whatever speed my Cf card has.

Best Regards,

RB

http://www.dpreview.com/members/2305099006/challenges
http://www.pbase.com/rbfresno/profile
 
The d4 sounds like truly a professional fast camera that is built to endure. It may only have 16mp, but from my d3s they are a very high quality pixel. I'm keeping my d3s, but I am sure that the d4 owners are going to get excellant results out of a truly wonderful camera.

Good Luck
Larry
 
Nice review...but could he be a little more cocky?

"Of course it needs to be said that I am a renowned action photographer and know how to do this stuff, "

Anyway, nice to hear some D4 news
 
"Of course I cannot say how the D3s would have coped"... that is all that needs to be said here.

Need to do a side-by-side comparison. I would guess a D4 would show some AF improvement over the D3s, but data always trumps opinions.
--
pbase/scorpius
 
Telefoto said:
Comments about the throughput speed of the new card standard are most exciting to me of anything in this review. Of course, if its so great, I'm left grumbling about why there aren't 2 slots for them.
Click to expand...
And how many more people would be left grumbling about no backwards compatibility and all their useless CF cards if that wasn't included? Smart move on Nikon's part to introduce the new format without forcing it on people in my opinion.
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcullenphoto/
 
commiebiker said:
Nice review...but could he be a little more cocky?

"Of course it needs to be said that I am a renowned action photographer and know how to do this stuff, "

Anyway, nice to hear some D4 news
Click to expand...
Hi commiebiker,

Mr Rouse does have a reputation for being cocky...not one of his best qualities!

He also is not totally renowned for action photography, he does do a bit but most of his stuff is general portrait wildlife taken on his expensive trips all over the world. He does produce the goods though. My money for best/good action bird photography is on Markus Varesvuo of Finland...cleans the floor with Andy Rouse.

Richard.
http://www.richardbedford.co.uk
 
Fearless_Photog said:
Telefoto said:
Comments about the throughput speed of the new card standard are most exciting to me of anything in this review. Of course, if its so great, I'm left grumbling about why there aren't 2 slots for them.
Click to expand...
And how many more people would be left grumbling about no backwards compatibility and all their useless CF cards if that wasn't included? Smart move on Nikon's part to introduce the new format without forcing it on people in my opinion.
Click to expand...
So if backwards compatibility is the excuse for the D4 screw up, what's the excuse for the D800 mismatch? Still see a "smart move" in there somewhere? Especially given how likely it is for lots of folks to want to use both together? Sorry, I don't see anything but a screw up in both.
 
Thanks for posting this. I'm envious of the barn owl shots.

The comment about the QXD card need more qualification. Which CF card did he use for his previous camera? I remember having major problems with RAW burst speed with the old 16GB Sandisk Extreme III's that had only a 12 MB/s write speed, which is roughly one D3 image/second. Modern CF cards have a 90-100 MByte/second write speed. XQD cards have 125 MB/second write speed. A D3 with a 90-100 MByte/second card should on par with a D4 with a 125 MByte/second write speed. My fastest CF card is only 60 MBytes/second (Sandisk Extreme Pro), so I can't run this experiment.

Also, I was hoping that Nikon's D4 would have allowed for alternating writing to each flash card to double the storage write speed.
 
XQD smokes every CF card on the planet. I'm using the fastest Lexar and Sandisk cards in my D4...destroys them
 
DMT said:
XQD smokes every CF card on the planet. I'm using the fastest Lexar and Sandisk cards in my D4...destroys them
Click to expand...
XQD has a new, faster interface, but since parallelism (more flash chips) is used to gain write speed, it seems that the larger CF will continue to dominate capacity (largest XQD card is 32GB, largest flash card is 128GB). Though, I'm pleasantly surprised that the mark-up for XQD is only 40% and brings a welcomed 30% increase in write speed.Write speed doesn't matter much to most, but when you're limited by write speed during a 2-3 minute boxing or MMA round, write speed is critical to sustain burst performance.

Does your Sandisk do 90-100 MBytes/second? Since you have both XQD and CD cards, I would be curious if the write speeds quoted by Sandisk and Lexar are achieved in the D4. I'll time how many seconds are needed to write 10 RAW files to a Sandisk Extreme Pro 32GB (60 MBytes/second) on my D3 this weekend.
 
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