Anyone out there using a Nikon D1 for photojournalism? I'm considering buying one for my part time newspaper gig (I'm keeping the day job until the new toys are paid for). After pricing the 300/2.8 AFS the D1 is starting to make sense. I can get by with shorter, less expensive lenses, with the D1. This is for newspaper reproduction after all. I'm keeping my 4x5 for serious photography :-)

I'd like to know how well the dynamic autofocus works on this camera, and if really shoots 4.5 frames per second in real world use.

-- Darron Spohn (dspohn@photobitstream.com), April 17, 2000

Answers

I don't own a D1, but I have tried one out, and the autofocus is exactly the same as the F5 and F100, meaning great. The D1 uses the identical CAM-1300 autofocus sensor present in the F5/F100. I have also spoken with a D1 user who confirmed the frame rate delivers as advertised.

Personally, I don't think a D1 makes a lot of sense for an individual, unless it's going to generate a lot of revenue in a very short time. I have also heard an unconfirmed rumor that the D2 will be out within the next 12 months. This will certainly drive down the price of the D1. The 1.5X increase in focal length is largely illusory, because you could get the same result by cropping a normal 35 mm negative after scanning.

However, I will say that the D1 is an amazing machine that will produce results with sufficient resolution for most PJ uses for the forseeable future. One thing to keep in mind, is that the 300 2.8 AFS will retain 85% of its value in 5 years as opposed to the D1 which will likely lose 85% of it's value in the same amount of time.

-- Barry Schmetter (bschmett@my-deja.com), April 18, 2000.

I'm not a D1 user, but there's been quite a bit of talk about it on the Nikon Users' Mailing List. Juergen Specht even created a new list for it call D1scussions. Here's his posting to the list from 12/09/99.

Dear Nikonians,

because the D1 is a completly different kind of camera, you need
completly different information about it. No one who ownes
a FM2n is interested in how many pictures you can take with a 96MB 
card. 

So i created a new list, especially for Nikon D1 users.
You can find details here:
 
http://www.meta-list.net/query?l=d1scussion@liste.anima.de

or you can join directly by sending a blanc[sic] mail to this
address: join-d1scussion@liste.anima.de

Because the list is working with a Lyris listserver, you don't
have any problems with people who didn't know about unsubscribing,
there are no quote problems, also a digest and archive is available.

Thanks for your interest,

Juergen



-- Geoffrey S. Kane (grendel@nauticom.net), April 18, 2000.

Oops. Dang </pre>

-- Geoffrey S. Kane (grendel@nauticom.net), April 18, 2000.

This makes too much sense. Can it be true?

-- Stan McManus (stanshooter@yahoo.com), April 19, 2000.

I use a D1 for photojournalism. It excels in this application. The dynamic AF works just like it does on a F100, which is very good. It does do 4.5FPS in high speed mode, and can buffer 21 frames in JPG mode before pausing to save to memory card.

You're right about the lens advantage in the long end, with the 80- 200AFS taking the place of the 300 2.8.

You will also find hand held performance much better compared to film cameras due to the focal length magnification and electronic shutter which gives less image vibration in my experience. I can often hand hold this camera at 1/30 to 1/60 with much better result than I previously had with the film units.

-- John Robison (johnrobison@attglobal.net), April 23, 2000.