My newest Nikon digital camera is a work of art. It feels solid, shoots smooth and fast, and the images are the best I have ever seen from any digital camera. However, to really appreciate them, you’ll have to use your imagination a bit. You see – the 12.4 megapixel images are 4288 x 2848 pixels in size. This makes them too large for viewing on any existing computer monitor, and way too large for posting on my blog. But it’s there sheer size that makes them so amazing. I’m sure these images would stand up to enlarging up to 16 x 20 inches or more. This is one case where size matters. I am anxious to print some of the images I’ll make with this camera at Pictopia.

That’s not the only thing to love about this fine camera though. Colors are excellent, flesh tones are very natural looking. Exposures seem perfect – even with the SB-800 flash. Images seem to have much better dynamic range than the D70. The images look less “digital” than any other digital images I’ve seen.

Camera vibration is minimal. The huge LCD is has many useful settings. The shutter is fast and makes a wonderful sound. (I’m not sure, but I think I prefer the sound of the Canon 20D.)

I’m surprised to say that post-processing times may actually decrease compared to the Nikon D70. The quality of the fine JPEG’s from this camera is so high that I may not need to use RAW much at all. With the D70, I shot almost everything in RAW, which adds considerably to the time it takes to prepare images. The new Nikon’s auto white-balance seems to work so well that one of the main attractions of RAW files – the ability to color-correct them after the fact – may not be needed. And the added resolution more than makes up for the other advantage of D70 RAW files.

If you have a broadband connection, and would like to see more of what this camera can do – along with the Sigma 80-400 zoom lens I bought to go with it – there are some large sample images here.

Stay tuned for many more images. The camera and lens came just in time for our trip to Europe. Woo-hoo!