Nikon D3S: hands-on first look

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By David Fearon

Posted on 14 Oct 2009 at 12:05

Nikon has unveiled the new model in its professional DSLR range, the extremely impressive D3S. We got a hands-on session with a pre-production version at the launch in Surrey.

This is a high-end professional camera, designed for jobbing sports and wildlife photographers. And it’s built to match. The magnesium-alloy body is seriously heavy, and with a decent lens attached the whole thing weighs well over 2kg – enough that our arms started to ache after holding it for only a few minutes.

The headline feature is the D3S’s ISO sensitivity rather than pixel count. It remains a 12.1-megapixel camera, the same as its predecessor the D3. But with a new maximum ISO setting of 102,400 it will, almost literally, take pictures in the dark.

However, while Nikon was proud enough of its noise handling to show us lots of actual shots taken by professionals at that setting, the results, while not dreadful, are very noisy. The same went for sample low-light footage resulting from the camera’s 720p HD video-recording – noise was very evident.

Drop the ISO setting down to a still astronomically sensitive ISO 12,800 and the results are more than acceptable for sports shots. And at ISO 6,400 we were still able to take our own handheld shots in a darkened room and on first looks they seemed great.

Nikon didn’t allow us to take sample shots away with us since the camera on show was a pre-production unit, but zooming in very tight on high-ISO shots using the camera’s 3in monitor was enough to convince us that this is a camera you could leave on ISO 6400 and not worry a jot about excessive noise.

Burst rates

Shutter performance matches noise performance, with a burst frame rate of 9fps at full resolution, rising to a spectacular 11fps in the DX crop mode. The battery is suitably durable too, with Nikon claiming more than 4,000 shots per charge; almost ten times the rating of a typical consumer DSLR.

If you’re salivating at the prospect of all that performance, be prepared to dig deep. Body only, the price will be around £4,200, and a set of lenses to do the body justice won’t be cheap.

Nikon’s strategy of abandoning ever-spiralling megapixel ratings and concentrating more on noise performance seems to be paying off. The company claims it now has more than 60% of the professional (£2,500+) DSLR market, compared to only 16% for its "main competitor" (ie Canon).