I've been looking to get a Nikon D4 for a while now.  Quite simply, the cost of it has kept me from buying it.  I had a shoot over the weekend where I knew the light would be poor, flash wouldn't work, and fast shutter speeds would be necessary so I rented it from Lens Rentals.  I wanted to see if it would really make a difference over my Nikon D800E.

It did.  And it didn't.

Most of my income is from either product shots in a studio or event photography.  The D800E is fine for what I do, even though 36 megapixels is overkill 99% of the time.  For product shots, I actually use my D700 since my clients don't need anything that large.  I use my D800E for events and I find that I need to shoot at high ISOs quite often.  The D800E is not bad since I can reduce the noise and still retain quite a bit of detail since I usually down-res the files for the client.

I've often thought about what a D4 could do.  With fewer pixels, I would cut down on import speeds and storage.  Plus, it has a one stop advantage in noise (according to DXO.)  So I rented one instead of buying one.

First the negatives...  it's $6000!

Now the positives...  it is better in low light, but not that much better when viewing on my 27" screen.  When viewing at 100%, you can definitely see the noise difference between the two.  When viewing the photos full screen, there really isn't that much difference.  One thing I did see is the D800E's contrast and colors are affected more than the D4's at high ISOs.  The D800E loses contrast and color at higher ISOs when the D4 doesn't.

The D4 can shoot at 10 frames a second; the D800E shoots about 4.  Do I need 10 frames a second?  Not very often but it's nice to know you can when the need arises.  It sounds cool.  Not only shooting at 10 frames a second but just a single shot.  It reminds me of the sound a Viper makes when firing on Battlestar Galactica.  

A couple of minor issues that I noticed...  blue skies are just too blue.  I blame this less on the camera and more on Adobe.  Second thing I noticed was the autofocus.  It wouldn't lock on to focus as quickly as I thought it should.  I missed quite a few shots because the camera just wouldn't focus fast enough.  It has the same focusing system as my D800E, and I don't recall ever having this issue this bad.

Do I want the D4?  Yes.  Do I need the D4?  No.

Do I need the D800E?  No.

Do I need the D700?  Yes.

Do I want Nikon to put the D4 chip inside a D600 body and charge $2000 for it?  YES.

Image above shot at 20,000 ISO with no noise reduction.

Last year, I was hired by a company to photograph one of their teachers.  The company is a leader in online education mostly catering to musicians.  I shot this guitarist in their studio which is nothing more than a mottled backdrop.

I sent the finished images to the client for use in their advertising and website.  The images made their way to the musician (I suppose for his review).  Unfortunately, the images also made it to the musician’s guitar maker.  The guitarist has a signature model guitar made by this company.  I was looking for an image of his signature guitar when I found my images all over Google.  A little more digging showed that this company not only was using my images of the musician and his guitar on their site, they were also using my images (at least a dozen of them) in their online advertising, printed brochures, stock images for use on music store sites, and annual report.

Needless to say, I was quite annoyed at this.  I got no credit.  I wasn’t asked permission.  I certainly wasn’t compensated in any way.  

I emailed the musician’s manager who put me in contact with the guitar company’s attorney.  After a few emails back and forth, the conversation abruptly ended.  I got some advice from an attorney friend who said that since I didn’t register my images with the copyright office, I’m out of luck getting any monetary damages.  Technically, yes, I do have the copyright on my images, but it doesn’t count unless those images are actually registered.

Lesson learned.

Click the photo to see how this particular image was used...

Just a fun, little story...

A regular client came to me last week needing another bottle shot.  The bottles were ready, but the wine wasn't.  He gave me an empty, etched bottle.  I couldn't shoot the bottle empty, as the light would leak through and you'd be able to see the etching on the back.  I needed to fill the bottle with something, but what...

Cheap, Safeway coffee.

I've always felt Nikon's Capture NX2 did the best job in rendering the NEF files from my D700.  Where I noticed it most was in the subtle gradations in color and brightness.  Adobe's Camera Raw/Lightroom and Apple's Aperture could never render smooth changes in color and luminance like Capture NX2.  I noticed this many years ago when shooting Christmas lights on our tree.  Using Lightroom 3, the lights had a solid white center with a band of color surrounding.  Using Capture NX2, the lights were rendered as a solid color but with a smooth transition between the brighter center and the edges of the bulbs.

More recently, I was photographing an event and using Aperture to import/edit/export a large batch of photos.  Again, I noticed how poorly Aperture was rendering lights.

I ran a little experiment with one of the photos.  Using default settings, I rendered the same file using Lightroom 4 (ACR 7.1) using Adobe Standard, D2X Mode 1 v4, Aperture, and Capture NX2.

First up, Aperture:

Note the overall darkness but really pay attention to those three rocks being illuminated with three lights.

Next, Adobe Standard:

Overall brightness is better, but those lights are ugly.

Now, to see what it should look like using Capture NX2:

That's better.

In trying to replicate that look using Lightroom 4, I came across this camera profile called D2X Mode 1 v4:

It's a little more contrasty, but that's a simple fix.

I've found my workflow solution.  Capture NX2 just couldn't meet my needs as an event/wedding photographer.  Up until last night, I didn't like using other software for my conversions, but I needed to because of the amount of photos that I needed to quickly import/edit/export.