By Lori Grunin
20/11/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/digitalcameras/0,39005881,43704946p,00.htm

For those who don't need the indestructibility or built-in vertical grip of a traditional pro dSLR like the Nikon D3 or the Canon EOS-1D Mark III--and that's quite a chunk of the pro market--smaller, lighter, and cheaper full-frame models such as the Nikon D700, the Canon EOS 5D and the 5D Mark II are the real workhorses. Plus, their (relatively) lower prices put full-frame shooting in the hands of deep-pocketed amateur photographers.

Design

The D700 comes in two configurations: Body only, and a kit with the veteran AF-S VR 24-120mm F3.5-5.6G IF-ED lens. With the kit version you end up paying about US$300 to US$400 for the lens, which sells independently for about US$500, but if you're paying more than US$2,500 for a camera body, opting for the somewhat middling lens seems a bit pound foolish, penny wise. On the other hand, it's relatively compact, and replacing it with something superior would probably require multiple, larger, and more expensive lenses.

Though one normally doesn't consider a 995g weight for the camera body an asset, the shooter comes up lightweight compared with 1.2kg-plus models like the D3 or Canon EOS-1D line. However, it's still a tad heavier than full-frame competitors such as the Sony Alpha DSLR-A900 (850g) and the Canon EOS 5D series (about 810g). The magnesium-alloy body feels like a Hummer and is better sealed than the D300. But it's not as good as the dust- and weatherproofing standards of the D3.

The body design clearly has more in common with the D300 than the D3 and is quite Nikon conventional. Almost all the settings are adjusted via combinations of buttons and the front or rear dials. On the top left, you got the quality, white balance and ISO buttons, plus a locked wheel that selects different drive modes (single shot, continuous low, and continuous high), Live View, self-timer, and mirror lockup. This makes Live View operation a bit clunkier than it needs to be. Newer models have a dedicated button for popping into Live View, which makes it faster and slightly easier to use. On the top right, the power switch surrounds the shutter release, plus there are buttons for exposure compensation and exposure mode selection (P/A/S/M). Nikon provides a traditional status LCD which displays slightly different information than the viewfinder: It doesn't show metering mode or ISO speed.

Features

On the front left side of the body sits a switch for focus mode (single, continuous, and manual), flash pop-up and compensation buttons, and ports for a wired remote and flash sync cable. There's a programmable function button between the grip and the lens that you press with your right-hand ring finger; you can assign it from a variety of options, but our perference is probably the virtual horizon which uses the exposure compensation readout to display off-horizontal tilt. You can also reassign the depth-of-field preview button which sits higher between the grip and the lens.

One of our favorite aspects of the D700--common to all Nikon's midrange and above dSLRs--is the use of switches for directly selecting metering mode (1.5 percent spot, center-weighted, evaluative) and AF area mode (single point, dynamic area, and auto area). We then used the eight-way multi-selector to pick our focus point in the viewfinder. It's the same navigation control as on the D3, and while it's quite convenient, we found the switch itself--which we also used to scroll through photos and information displays during playback--just a little too jumpy when we were moving fast. Still, it beats the alternatives.

Other controls on the back include separate AF activation and AF/AE lock buttons, as well as the usual assortment of playback, delete, info, menu, and so on. As is typical of Nikons dSLRs, the D700 has a two-button format (delete plus mode) and reset (quality plus exposure compensation).

Like the D3 and D300, the D700 provides lots of customization capabilities, including two banks of settings you can save with four slots each and a user-defined menu page. As with the D300, your dynamic area options are 9-, 21-, or 51-point AF areas plus 51-point 3D tracking; also like the D300, they're unfortunately buried in the menus. We also like the ability to choose the size of the center for center-weighted average metering. The 5D Mark II, with its movie-capture mode and high-resolution 21-megapixel sensor, overshadows the D700's relatively low-resolution 12-megapixel CMOS--the same as the D3's. But its bread-and-butter feature set is more than enough for any pro. Like its Nikon siblings, it's especially suited for high dynamic range work, with bracketing options of up to nine shots at +/- 5EV in third-, half-, or full-stop increments. Other notables include the now common Picture Controls for adjusting and saving contrast, brightness, sharpness, saturation and hue. Active D-Lighting, Vignette control and a rather annoying multiple exposure option reset to Off after every batch and require a trip into the menu system to turn back on. There are RAW file options of 12- or 14-bit with lossy compressed, lossless compressed, and uncompressed variations. Like the D3, the D700 has a DX crop mode to match DX lenses.

Performance

As long as you don't need pro sports-speed continuous-shooting performance, the D700 is quite fast--just a bit slower than the D3 on occasions. From power on to first shot, it took less than 0.2 second. To autofocus and shoot with ample light took 0.3 second, and in dim light only 0.6 second; shared with the D3, that's class-leading performance. Two sequential shots took about 0.5 second, even with flash, like the D300. The one aspect that the D700 cedes to the competition is its 4.9fps burst rate, though it's more than adequate for most situations. If necessary, you can spring for the MB-D10 battery grip--it uses many of the same accessories as the D300--to bump that to a rated 8fps, which essentially turns the camera into a D3 (almost).

Furthermore, with the same AF system as the D300, the D700 delivers fast, accurate focus, even in low light. Disappointingly, the viewfinder delivers only 95 percent coverage. This is odd, given that both the D3 and D300 provide 100 percent visibility. The D700 also lacks interchangeable focusing screens which many of its competitors offer.

Image Quality

It was no surprise to us that the D700 delivered great photo quality. With a really good lens, the photos were very sharp and the camera rendered excellent exposures and a broad dynamic range. Both visually and by the numbers, it exhibited first-rate color accuracy, though it seemed to have somewhat glitchy automatic white balance under tungsten lights. It has a robust noise profile as well. Photos showed no degradation until about ISO 6,400 and were quite usable at ISO 6,400 and ISO 12,800, depending on the subject matter. As for ISO 25,600, the pictures were not as bad as the Canon EOS 50D's at that level, but it's very much an emergency-only option.

The only possibly significant drawback to the Nikon D700 is its resolution. If you ascribe to the no-scaling school of printing, then the largest 300dpi print you can get out of its 12-megapixel files is 14.2 x 9.4 inch, and moving up to 11 x 16 inches requires 15.8 megapixels (though on an Epson at 240dpi you can cover 11 x 16 at 12 megapixels). Also, at that resolution, its prime competitor is the veteran and now less expensive Canon EOS 5D which is still widely available despite being dropped from Canon's official product line. Compared with the 5D, the D700 has greater latitude, a better AF system, and a more modern feature set. On the other hand, Canon arguably has a more comprehensive full-frame lens lineup with more options at midrange prices. And, of course, if you want the movie capture your full-frame options are limited to the 5D Mark II at the moment. Otherwise, the D700 is a great full-frame camera for professionals and prosumers.