Every photographer loves the gear he/she uses, for me I covet Nikon’s Flagship camera the D3, so whenever someone posts a review about this camera I read it, bookmark it and in this case I link it to you folks.

I have a D300 and it is a very fine camera with a amazing performance but recently I have been shooting in low light situations where a flash is not always welcome; to compensate for the low light you to adjust 3 factors; the shutter speed, the aperture and the ISO sensitivity. I’ll briefly cover what those three important things do:

Shutter speed

This is almost self explanatory; it is the mesurement of how long the shutter stays open. The longer the shutter stays open the more light than can get through; the outcome is more obvious if you’re shooting in low light (dusk, night, indoors). Typically shooting at 1/200 is good enough for day shoots, but you will have to go to a far lower shutter speed sometimes longer than one second. Click this link for a good example. The D3 doesn’t do anything exceptionally different here, but it does allow the photographer to shoot up to 8 shots per second (also known as Frames Per Second).

Aperture

The simple way of explaining this is how wide the hole in the lens is, the bigger the hole means the more light it can let through faster. This is wholy dependent on the lens referred to as the F-Stop. Typically the lower the F number means the faster the lens; so an F1.8 would be much faster than an F2.8. Although not related to the D3 camera itself, it is a massive factor to be able to shoot in low light.

ISO

This is where the killer feature of the D3; I shoot in low light so it is essential my gear gives me options to click in such conditions. Currently I can take my Nikon D300 up to ISO 1600 but the D3 is fully usable at 3200. If I were to combine that with F2.8 lens then the options are limitless. The problem with ramping up the ISO sensitivity is noise. Noise is the random speckles of colour that appear when you zoom right up close to in image; in 99% of cases it is an undesired effect and people who have the D3 rave on about it’s low noise output as much as anything else the camera is capable of.

It is my opinion that even if you buy a fast lens (F2.8 or faster) then it still is not enough to take clear, sharp and balanced low light photography, and by low light I mean music gigs, almost any indoor situation including wedding receptions, concerts, churches, public meetings… the list goes on. With the high ISO ratings and low noise output the D3 has no equal in the DSLR world.

Below are some good examples from Todd Owyoung.

D3 - Image in full

D3 - Image at 100% crop. Very little noise even though it was shot at ISO 3200

As a comparison, below are shots taken at 3200 in my shaded kitchen on a very sunny day.

D300 - entire image

D300 - Same image at 100% crop. A very noisy image which would not be used.

Bear in mind that mine was taken in daylight which wouldn’t require shooting at 3200 in most occasions.

So, there are three main factors, I have the lens but I need the D3′s low noise capabilities and to me that is the reason, among many, why the D3 is the best DSLR around.

I have compiled 3 of the most comprehensive reviews of the D3 below.
Nikon D3 Review – photo.net

Kenrockwell.com reviews the D3

Ephotozine’s review of the D3