The Nikon D3 Journal

Derek posted a thread pointing to this source of Nikon D3 samples from web site of Fédération Française d’Athlétisme.

The link above takes you to a D3 photo. You’ll see two thumbnails above the photo – click the left one, and you’ll see Canon 20D pics (keep clicking the left thumbnail to see more 20D images); click the right thumbnail to see more D3 photos.

Due to the volume of images, you do get a mix of D3 and 20D pics, so you might want to try skipping several pics by changing the sequence number in the section of the URL that says mediaid=nnnnn. For some unknown reason, the Canon 20D photos are really bad – here’s Sean’s opinion.

Alternatively, go to their Osaka 2007 photos page, where you’ll see links on the right for each day of the event. Clicking the link takes you to the gallery of images for that particular day. Using this technique, I managed to locate this superb photo of Christine Arron doing her 100m dash (the bokeh’s fantastic! – data says Foc. 500,0 – I wonder if that means the new Nikkor AF-S 500mm f/4G ED VR lens was used?).

If you ask me, I think I prefer the D3 photos. And perhaps this photo is one reason why many have the opinion that the Nikon D2Xs camera is not at its best when high ISO is required (compare with the D3 equivalent).

Of course, this is provided the camera identification for each photo is legitimate, since there is absolutely no EXIF data available. Gerard McGovern, in a thread about the trial of the Canon EOS 1D Mark III’s latest firmware Version 1.1.1, confirms that there are a few D3 cameras in use at the games.

For what it’s worth though, they’re great images to look at regardless of the camera used to shoot them.

Nikon D3 images continue to appear on the internet, but no is able to claim with confidence, or otherwise, that these are indeed shot with the Nikon D3.

Thomas Comerford notes though, that if someone wanted to fake the EXIF, they certainly went to a lot of trouble, since the Nikon Makernote is present in the EXIF, complete with ” … an IFD that points to an embedded 570 x 375 JPEG preview image … “, which is also present. Also, if a file had been opened and saved with Photoshop, most of the EXIF data from the photos will not be readable in Nikon Capture / NX / Viewer.

EXIF may have been doctored, who knows? Personally, I’m not comfortable with the fact that Adobe Photoshop appears in the software field of the EXIF. This ISO 5000 shot, and another at ISO 2000 for instance, shows Adobe Photoshop CS2 being used on the image, although the focal length of 10.5mm and the image characteristics seem to suggest that the Nikkor 10.5mm DX f/2.8 fisheye lens was used.

For now, all we can do is just head over to these forum threads at DPReview.com (which then link to the Xitek.com threads, when you’re there, locate the page numbers at the bottom to progress through the thread) and hope that the D3 images are real:
• Mainly ISO 640 shots (these are from a recent volleyball championship in China)
• More D3 samples. There are three or more Canon EOS 1D Mark III shots in the mix, just so you are aware. Here’s a link that takes you to the entire collection of D3 images by this Xitek.com forum poster. My favorites are the Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye photos.
• Mainly ISO 5000 shots. These have gone through Photoshop, so we won’t know what sort of post processing, if any, were done on them. Joao Sobral is impressed with the Dynamic Range of the third ISO5000 shot.

Interesting is also the fact that quite a number of these photos have focal length of 600mm and Max Aperture of f/4 in the EXIF – perhaps the new Nikkor AF-S 600mm f/4G ED VR lens was used?