As Nikon’s new flagship model, the successor of the D3 – or “the Boss” as photo nerds call it – the D3X has plenty of new features for a lot of money.
The first part of a recent showcase in Budapest, Hungary was a 30-minute long presentation of the D3X, comparing the D3X to the D3.
We were also able to confirm that the “world premiere” will be this Friday, December 19th.
Let’s see some details.
The D3X is more sensitive, faster, larger, better, nicer, and sexier than the D3. I won’t go into technical details here since it’s better if you read it yourself, but the main advantage of this camera is the built-in image editing function.
Nikon built an interface which is a shortcut system — basically a set of pre-defined image processing setups. After you define some of these, you can quickly access them on the large LCD screen, allowing you to quickly process your shot right after exposure. Nikon’s position is that using presets saves time. They don’t, however, consider the fact that once you use a preset on a shot, you can’t revert to the original unprocessed image. That could be bad if, for instance, you just shot the perfect picture but you forgot to take off the high saturation preset before shooting.
Engineers at Nikon also created a color and angle tracking auto-focus system. According to the presenter, this is cool because the machine automatically finds the face and focuses on it. So you don’t have to do anything but concentrate on image composition.
The D3X feels great. It features a nice design and a sturdy build, resisting humidity and dust. Startup time is immediate, too — once you turn the D3X on, you can take photos right away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any actual photos of the camera itself.
Another great feature is GPS and Wi-Fi. If you’re into nature photography, for instance, you can set the camera in a 50 meter (164 feet) radius of your laptop and control it wirelessly.
This all sounds compelling, right? Well how about the $8000 retail price? That’s just for the body, no lens included, so start saving up. According to Hungarian site Tripont.hu (the reseller who hosted the event), the Nikon D3X will go on sale worldwide this Friday, December 19th. The highlighted part at the bottom of that link says “Don’t forget the rule, purchase and bill is only available starting on the 19th.”