Product Reviews

Nikon's D1x, released four years ago, is looking dated, so this update, the D2x, is long overdue. Its headline feature may be its 12.4 megapixel effective resolution, but it also opens up access to a large supporting system, is robust, and packed with useful tools.

Arguably, the D2x is actually two cameras in one. The High-Speed Crop function utilises only the central part of the CMOS sensor. The resulting fast-capture at up to eight frames per second and the 6.8 megapixel resolution make this an ideal camera for taking action shots. The captured area is easy to judge on the standard focusing screen, and you move between this and full-area mode using the viewfinder.

Full capture increases effective focal lengths by 1.5x, while the High-Speed Crop option makes that 2x compared with a 35mm frame. This is a benefit for those using longer lenses - for example, a 300mm f4 on the D2x becomes effectively the equivalent of a significantly more expensive and heavy 600mm f4 on a 35mm area. Nikon has an increasing number of specific digital lenses (its DX range), which offer extreme wide-angle capabilities to increase the camera's functions.

For such a versatile and feature-packed camera, it boasts amazingly good handling. It's more substantial but heavier than Fuji's S3 Pro, and it's lighter and easier to use than Canon's EOS 1Ds Mk II. The 2.5in rear TFT really stands out, making those on other cameras seem painfully inadequate. We were disappointed to find only one storage slot (Compact Flash Type I or II), but you can shoot simultaneous Raw and Jpeg files if you want. Furthermore, there's no FireWire port, so you'll need USB 2 compatibility for high-speed transfers.

As for colour, Nikon has improved tone reproduction using a dual digital and analogue processing route that provides more gradual colour changes than with a D1x, for example. There are plenty of in-camera adjustments for

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hue, saturation and colour space settings to suit various tastes. The latter has both Adobe RGB and sRGB options, while a new sYCC colour profile enables some printers to increase the range of colours obtainable from a Jpeg file.

We found minimal colour changes across the normal 100-800 ISO sensitivity, but no more than with other cameras. Nikon also provides H1 (1600 ISO equivalent) and H2 (3200 ISO equivalent) settings where quality falls off in colour and noise terms. Images are good between 100 and 400 ISO, and 800 ISO is quite usable. The others are for times when you must have an image no matter what and don't mind lots of noise.

The new 3D Colour Matrix II metering is good, but didn't produce the best out-of-camera exposures we've seen - the EOS 1Ds Mk II does a better job. The results were a little under-exposed, but a bit of post-production tinkering yielded some impressive images.

The D2x's killer feature is Fine Tune Optimal Exposure, which enables you to set 0.6 EV metering adjustments for truly out-of-camera-ready files with little or no post-production tweaks to exposure required.

This camera takes digital-capture accuracy to the next level, and works with all metering modes, including the alternative Spot and Centre Weighted options. There's also a multi-pattern metering capability called Colour Matrix for older manual focus lenses. If you have more creative or technical needs, you can add multiple exposures and an overlay function to the capabilities list, options that you don't find elsewhere. The bad news is that you really need Nikon Capture 4.2 software to work on Raw files to any practical degree beyond the basics. This is a rather cheeky £120 on top of the price of the camera, but you do get better software than most camera manufacturers supply with a professional camera. However, the D2x does come with PictureProject, a basic, but user-friendly browser and manipulation program.

Regardless of the files captured, resolution is impressive. Using the full 12.4 megapixels enables you to create massive prints. Even the 6.8-megapixel High Speed Crop produces some truly excellent results.

The D2x has the best toolset among its peer group. It's just what you would expect from a premium manufacturer. However, it narrowly misses out on five mice because of some erratic exposures using the default settings of its most automatic metering mode. The Nikon D2x is among the best digital SLRs we've seen, and we can't help but drool over it.