Big & heavy, but super-fast, sturdy, & great images

The D2Xs is my third D-SLR. I purchased my first D-SLR, a Fuji FinePix S2 Pro in January 2003, followed by a Nikon D70 (as a backup body) in 2005. I use my photography equipment for a combination of uses. I am a full-time real estate professional, so I depend on my D-SLR for architectural images. I also do professional photography work, mostly portraits and landscapes. Finally, I am the father of a fast-moving toddler, so I use the camera for some personal family photography, too.

My purchase of the D2Xs was motivated primarily by a desire for speed and accuracy. As I started shooting more critical jobs, especially weddings, I became frustrated with the slowness and focusing inaccuracy of the Fuji S2 Pro and the D70. Many would think of the ultra-fast focusing mechanism as being useful primarily for sports shooting, but the exceptional speed also makes a huge difference in the ability to capture a high percentage of “keepers” in virtually any setting where subjects are not static: wedding processionals/recessionals, people dancing at wedding receptions, candid shots of playing children, etc.

The D2Xs met my high expectations. I would not say that it has exceeded them, as the auto-focus system can still be fooled occasionally. Even this camera cannot offer mind reading capabilities to focus on what the operator has in mind 100% of the time. But this camera’s focusing system—both speed and accuracy—are exceptional and have made a major difference in my ability to capture important images. And with a myriad of auto-focusing options, a skilled user can theoretically provide enough guidance to the camera to ensure that the camera could always knows where to direct its focusing. Keep in mind that focusing speed and accuracy will depend in part on good lenses with Nikon’s AF-S silent wave motor technology, although the camera is compatible with a huge variety of other lenses as well.

The D2Xs has provided benefits beyond just speed. I thoroughly enjoy having a serious professional camera body with a large, bright viewfinder. My two earlier D-SLRs’ viewfinders seem almost painful to use after acclimating to the new Nikon beast. One minor complaint: While my old Fuji S2 Pro had viewfinder grid lines that could be turned on and off via the camera’s menu, the D2Xs required that I purchase a special viewfinder glass screen with the gridlines etched onto it. This cost an extra $30 or so, and it required performing minor surgery on the camera. The rear color LCD screen is also a major improvement over the older and less expensive D-SLRs.

The combination of a top-quality viewfinder and LCD screen make a noticeable functional difference. When I can see better (and with the viewfinder offering true 100% coverage), I am much more likely to get precisely the composition and framing that I intended. And a high quality back panel LCD helps me more accurately figure out if I achieved correct exposure, focus, and composition. With my real estate work, this has significantly reduced the amount of time I must spend in Photoshop after each shoot. Before the D2Xs, I was not seeing 100% of the image frame. When shooting architectural subjects, it is critically important to be able to see horizontal and vertical lines near the edge of the frame. With my older D-SLRs, I would finish shooting a property, and then realize when reviewing images in Photoshop that many images needed to be rotated by a few degrees or corrected for unwanted perspective distortion and then cropped to compensate for issues that I simply could not see in the inferior viewfinders.

The continuous shooting mode works beautifully as advertised. As is the case in so many other respects, this camera offers great flexibility with continuous shooting options. There are two continuous shooting speeds, selectable from the main shooting mode knob on the top of the camera. But through the camera’s menus, many more options are available, allowing the user to specify speeds ranging from 1 frame per second to 8 frames per second. This can be extremely useful, since different situations call for differing speeds. Firing off images unnecessarily fast can make using the flash more difficult or impossible for subsequent shots, as well as consuming unnecessary space on the CF card.

The highest speed continuous shooting mode, which operates at eight frames per second, only operates with the camera in a high-speed crop mode, which shoots six megapixels from the center of the frame. But this tends to work out well, since ultra-high-speed shooting will tend to be used most with sports and telephoto lenses, where the extra crop factor will typically not hurt framing options.

Image quality is generally excellent. The camera’s auto-white balance is often spot-on. I frequently shoot under mixed lighting conditions when I shoot home interiors, dealing with a combination of daylight, flash, incandescent and fluorescent lighting—all in a single image. I always shoot in RAW mode with auto white balance, leaving myself the ability to tweak white balance later in Photoshop if needed. But the images frequently come right off the camera with white balance perfect, even in complicated situations.

As one would expect, noise is a non-issue at ISO 100 or 200, and just barely so at ISO 400. ISO 800 has some noticeable grain, but is still very pleasing. I recently shot an image at ISO 800 that was subsequently printed at 48” x 48”, and it looked spectacular. I avoid ISO 1600 and 3200 whenever possible, but I do not hesitate to use 1600 if doing so lets me get the shutter speed fast enough to ensure that motion blur will not be an issue. Avoiding a grainy image is pointless if the image is blurry from a slow shutter speed. From my comparison of Canon images, there is little doubt that Canon image sensors tend to produce less noise at high ISO settings than Nikon, but noise has never been a major problem for me with the D2Xs.

Battery life merits honorable mention. While battery life was not a primary factor in my purchase of the D2Xs, it certainly has been a welcome improvement. I purchased an extra battery with the camera, so I would have my bases covered for extremely demanding shooting days, such as weddings. But I have not ever needed the backup battery. I shot 1,200 images at my first wedding with the new camera, including plenty of LCD use to review images, and I did not deplete the battery. I welcome not ever having to interrupt important shooting for a battery change.

The new D3 is supposed to start shipping this month. It offers a much higher resolution color LCD, which promises to be fantastic, as well as a full frame image sensor that claims to offer a drastic improvement in high ISO images. If high ISO shooting or full frame image sensor is not critical to your shooting, then the D2Xs will likely become a relative bargain as the D3 ships. In my case, I own the 12-24 mm and 17-55 mm Nikon DX lenses, which would not work across all ranges on the D3. So the D3 would require that I replace thousands of dollars of my lens collection. And I would miss the added reach that the 70-200 2.8 VR offers with the DX sized sensor on the D2Xs. So while the D3 will have some advantages, I doubt that it will render the D2Xs obsolete, especially for those who have invested in DX lenses.

I have been extremely pleased with the D2Xs. The fact that it enables me to capture perfectly focused shots that my other cameras would have missed, combined with the fact that I now spend less time in Photoshop, makes the new camera both fun and at least somewhat economically justifiable.