Nikon D1 Digital Camera - First Look
an in-depth review by Photographer Mike Berceanu

All images and text in this report, copyright (c) 1999 Mike Berceanu

Top left is the LCD screen for reviewing images and some image related commands. The small screen bottom centre is used to select camera related commands such as ISO rating. The focus area selector / image selector is centre right.

When we first saw the Nikon D1 in prototype we were impressed and eager to test the camera, but had to wait three long months to get one for a proper review, such was the demand on the few cameras in the country. We all have high expectations from Nikon but were still surprised by the D1. This is some camera! The D1 is already making quite an impact in the professional photographic community. Anyone who has used Nikon Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras will find this camera quite familiar since it is the digital brother of the F100 film camera and has the look and feel of a film camera.

Coming some 18 months after the advent first of the Kodak/Canon DCS digital cameras, Nikon has been slow to meet the challenge with a top end professional digital camera, but by setting the price of the D1 very low in comparison to the competition, and by producing such a remarkable product, Nikon has signalled war as it battles to regain market share in the professional digital camera market.

big burst

Nikon has achieved a remarkable burst rate of 4.5 frames per second in the D1 with a large buffer to hold 21 compressed frames before refresh is necessary. This feature will be very attractive to editorial and sport photographers who need to shoot very fast sequences and can't wait around for a camera to get its act together. Add this to excellent image quality, advanced auto focus, sophisticated metering, accurate automatic white balance and superb Nikon optics and you have a formidable camera.

Remove the lens and raise the mirror to reveal the CCD sensor behind the cyan coloured lithium niobate (LiNB) low-pass filter which blocks infrared wavelengths.

Perhaps the most important thing about any digital camera is image quality and it's in this area that D1 really shines. The D1s 23.7 x 15.6 mm CCD sensor with an effective pixel count of 2012 x 1324 produces an RGB image with 2000 x 1312 pixels, capable of excellent reproduction in the A4 to A3 range. Nikon has achieved very good quality at quite high sensitivity ratings. The camera can be set at ISO 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 plus custom settings at 3,200 and 6,400. As one would expect, noise appears with speed increases but there is very little evidence of noise even at ISO 800 and certainly not the noise one would see on film at the same rating. We shot mostly at ISO 400 which gave great results.

Just in front of the CCD is an ultra-thin lithium niobate (LiNB) low-pass filter which acts as an anti-aliasing device and also cuts infrared rays. This makes for a smooth tonal range and almost no moiré detectable in the captured images.

The interchangeable 7.2 V DC Ni-MH Battery Pack EN-4. Note the clip-on cover for the LCD screen which protects the screen when not in use.

Firewire

The D1 can be connected to a computer via an IEEE1394 Firewire cable, enabling file transfer and computer control of camera functions in a studio setting. Another option for file transfer is to extract the memory card and use a third party card reader.

The D1 uses CompactFlash (CF) Cards (Type I and II) which are the most commonly available memory storage cards on the market. This includes both solid state cards and the new IBM 340 MB & 170 MB microdrives. Larger rotating media (type III) PC cards, also known as PCMCIA cards, are currently not supported and although we see no strong reason to support PCMCIA, there have been rumours that this may change in the future. Our test camera came with a 64 MB CompactFlash which can store 48 frames at a JPEG compression setting of 1:4, 97 frames at 1:8, and 195 frames at 1:16 at which, by the way, there is surprisingly little evidence of compression artifacts.

While most photographers will use the JPEG format, three uncompressed file formats are also available: 12-bit RAW, 8-bit YCbCr-TIFF and 8-bit RGB-TIFF. The 12-bit RAW form conserves all the data in a raw format, while 8-bit YCbCr-TIFF uses a device independent LAB colour space. High-quality black and white images directly from camera are also possible. Unfortunately, in order to read raw files "Nikon Capture" Control software must be purchased separately from Nikon. The capture philosophy is different from that of Nikons main rival, Kodak, which captures and stores all data raw for acquiring later via software that it provides free on the internet and often updates.

Shutter Speeds range from an astounding 1/16,000 sec. and Bulb to 30 seconds. As with all CCD cameras, long exposures tend to produce more noise, and as a general rule it's best to keep exposures shorter than one second. The uniquely high shutter speeds of 1/8,000 sec and 1/16,000 sec may find some use at high ISO ratings where there would otherwise be too much light to contend with. While on the subject of shutter speeds, the D1 offers a very high flash sync speed of 1/ 500th of a second.

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