1/2000s, f/5, ISO 200, 70mm
In two recent posts, I have written about my experience with Nikon’s new retro-style DSLR, the Nikon Df. Nikon was kind enough to lend me the camera for a month and I’ve put the camera to use for my street and urban landscape photography.
The image quality and light weight make the Df a versatile fit for all day shooting. And the readily available manual controls made me feel that I was truly crafting my images. In this post I will wrap up with some general thoughts after taking the Df with me on a hike on the Great Wall.
For my last day with the Df, I went to the Great Wall at Simatai (司马台). Simatai is a few hours northeast of Beijing and offers stunning and dramatic views of the wall and Yanshan mountain. To keep things light, I only packed the Df with the AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED.
1/1250s, f/5, ISO 200, 24mm
Back to the Future: Nikon Df Impressions | Part III
Back to the Future: Nikon Df Impressions | Part II
8s, f/4, ISO 400, 24mm
In my last post, I shared my impressions on using Nikon's new retro-style DSLR, the Nikon Df, for my street photography. In this post, I will share some thoughts on how I thought the camera performed for the urban landscape photography I do.
Doing landscape photography in Beijing can be challenging. The city’s unpredictable air pollution means that you rarely know what the light and the sky will look like the next day or even later the same day. The convenience of being able to have a light camera to carry around and yet still have the power of an amazing sensor make the Df a great fit for a place like Beijing. The camera makes it possible to shoot handheld in the low light around dusk and dawn and still get sharp pictures. Images are amazingly crisp at ISO 1600 and even at 6400 and beyong there is plenty of detail left.
1/125s, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 34mm
Back to the Future: Nikon Df Impressions | Part I
1/4000s, f/2.8, ISO 100, 55mm
Earlier this month, Nikon gave me a chance to try out the Nikon Df, Nikon’s new retro-style full-frame DSLR. The camera itself is beautiful, taking design cues from Nikon's 1970s-era FM film cameras.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve put the camera to use for the photography I do the most: urban landscape and street photography. I will cover my impressions of the camera for street photography in this post. For my next post, I will focus on using the camera for landscape shots, and then wrap up with some more general thoughts in a final post.
The technical specifications of the Df have been well documented, so I won’t go into a lot of detail here. The camera features the same 16-megapixel image sensor as the Nikon D4. The images are sharp and the performance in low light is superb.
Images at ISO levels of up 25,000 maintain plenty of details and the noise is kept under control. The camera’s dynamic range (the ability to capture shadow and highlight details at the same time) is also exceptional. In short, the Nikon Df is plenty capable of producing stunning pictures in the right hands.
1/400s, f/7.1, ISO 5000, 55mm
