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Built like a tank and ready to take any hardship coming its way, Nikon’s D3 is its first full-frame DSLR, a model awaited by Nikon fans for five years now. Dpreview is taking a full review and guess what, it concludes that the D3 is “possibly the most compelling, capable and well-rounded professional digital SLR ever made”!!!!

Now this is quite a heavy statement and a surprise for Canon that has been the king in the full-frame field up to now. So what makes the D3 so special? It is a full blown professional camera with menus and settings to satisfy any taste. Handling, focus, speed, choice of settings are top notch.

And not only that, it takes two Compactflash cards that can be copied to each other or used in mirror mode to ensure your files are absolutely safe. Nikon has gone as far as designing the D3 to accept DX lenses designed for its APS-C bodies! Admittedly you get limited to 5.1 megapixel resolution, but you get all the D3 performance and it shows the level of attention put in the body design. Nothing goes to waste!

But what takes the D3 apart from Canon’s competition? After all the 12 megapixel resolution is not that impressive. According to my opinion, two things:

1. The D3 provides dynamic, wonderful, beautiful images like no other camera. Its large pixels have given Nikon the margin to achieve impressive results.
2. High ISO performance is unparalleled. 3.200 ISO and 6.400 ISO are looking awesome, and 12.500 ISO or even 25.600 ISO could be of use in certain situations.

The above two have been the points where Canon was up to now superior to any other DSLR manufacturer. Evidently, Nikon has learned the game so well that we can safely talk about professionals migrating from Canon to Nikon, a trend opposite to what was happening so far… DSLR sales have already started to reflect Nikon’s rise.

The D3 is a super machine for sports, journalism and action photography, pretty much everything but studio work where higher resolutions might be preferred. At 1240 grammars without batteries and lens, it is a mean piece of equipment to live with day in day out. This means that it is strictly for professionals, something also signified by the €5.180 price.

Link: dpreview