nikon

The Nikon D850 Is Better. So Why Do I Still Prefer My D700 for Street Photography ?

cameras, Lenses, nikon, opinons, thoughts, photography, pictures, street

The Old Photographer Series

There shouldn’t really be much of an argument.

Put a Nikon D700 beside a Nikon D850 and start comparing specifications and the D850 wins almost everywhere.

It has 45.7 megapixels against the D700’s 12.1. It has vastly greater resolution, considerably more cropping room, a more sophisticated autofocus system, better high-ISO performance, better dynamic range, faster processing, video, live view that is actually useful, and files capable of making enormous prints.

The D850 is quite simply one of the finest DSLRs Nikon ever made.

I own one. I like it enormously.The pictures it produces can be bloody magnificent.

And yet, when I’m going out specifically to photograph people on the street, there is another camera I still find myself wanting to pick up.

The Nikon D700.

That doesn’t make much sense on paper. Fortunately, I don’t take photographs on paper.

The D850 is a camera I can admire. When I open one of its files on the computer, particularly a properly exposed RAW file made with a good lens, there is an extraordinary amount of information sitting there. You can go into the photograph. And then go further. And further still.

Details appear that I barely noticed when I pressed the shutter. Skin, hair, fabric, signs in the distance, little elements within the scene — they’re all there.

If I’ve composed slightly loose, I can crop. Sometimes I can crop brutally. There’s enough resolution available to effectively discover another composition inside the original photograph.

For printing, the D850 is wonderful. There is a richness to a good D850 file that reminds you just how far digital photography developed during the DSLR era. This isn’t an old camera that is merely “still good enough.” It is an exceptionally capable camera. Full stop.

But there is another side to photography that specifications don’t measure very well. What does the camera feel like when you’re actually making the picture? That’s where the D700 comes back into the argument.

The D700 arrived in 2008.

By modern standards, 12.1 megapixels sounds almost comical. Phones advertise more. Modern full-frame cameras routinely offer 24, 33, 45, 60 megapixels and beyond. But here’s the awkward question. How many megapixels does a good photograph need?

Twelve megapixels didn’t suddenly become worse because 45 megapixels arrived. A properly exposed D700 file is still capable of producing a lovely print. It is more than adequate for the web, social media, magazines, photo essays and most of the ways photographs are actually viewed.

And for street photography, I’ve never found myself walking home thinking: If only that moment had another thirty-three million pixels. I have certainly walked home wishing I’d reacted half a second faster.

That’s different.

The D700 feels like a street camera to me. Not because Nikon designed it specifically for street photography. They didn’t. It is big. It is heavy. It is conspicuous. Nobody is going to mistake somebody carrying a D700 for an invisible photographer.

But invisibility has never been the whole point of street photography anyway. The important thing is familiarity. Pick up a camera often enough and eventually your hands know it better than your conscious mind does. That’s when a camera becomes useful. I don’t want to look at the controls. I don’t want to wander through menus. I don’t want to think about which clever autofocus mode the camera has decided I should use. I want to see something, raise the camera, frame it and press the shutter.

The D700 encourages that kind of photography.

There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about it.

Perhaps the 12-megapixel sensor is actually part of the attraction.

The D850 makes me aware of precision.

Forty-five megapixels notices everything.

Slightly missed focus?

There it is.

A little camera movement?

There it is.

A lens that isn’t quite as sharp in the corner?

There it is.

The D850 is capable of enormous quality, but it also invites inspection. And inspection can become a disease.

We enlarge photographs to 100% and start examining eyelashes. We compare corners. We worry about microcontrast. We discuss whether one lens resolves slightly more detail than another.

Meanwhile the photograph itself is sitting there asking:

Is anybody actually going to look at me?

The D700 takes some of that nonsense away. Twelve megapixels. That’s what you’ve got.

Now make a photograph. I rather like that bargain.

And then there are the files themselves.

I am wary of romanticising old digital cameras. There’s an increasing tendency to talk about early DSLRs as though their sensors contained some mystical ingredient that modern manufacturers have forgotten how to produce.

They didn’t.

A D850 file gives me far more information to work with than a D700 file.

But information and character aren’t necessarily the same thing.

There is something about the D700 files that I continue to enjoy.

Particularly photographs of people.

Particularly monochrome.

The files aren’t enormous. They don’t encourage endless manipulation. I can work them, certainly, but I don’t feel compelled to excavate every last piece of information from the shadows and highlights.

Sometimes a photograph benefits from having limits.

Street photography certainly does. The street isn’t a studio. Things aren’t perfect. People move. Light changes. Backgrounds are messy. Somebody walks into the frame. Someone else walks out. The expression disappears. The decisive moment turns out to be indecisive.

That’s precisely why I love it.

Street photography is imperfect because life is imperfect.

The D700 somehow feels comfortable in that world.

The D850, meanwhile, is the camera I would choose when image quality becomes the overriding consideration.

If I know I’m going somewhere specifically to make photographs that I may want to print large, the D850 makes enormous sense.

If I’m photographing portraits where I have some control over the situation, D850.

If I’m working carefully with good light and want every scrap of detail available, D850.

If I suspect I’ll need serious cropping room, definitely D850.

It is an extraordinary photographic instrument.

But street photography asks something slightly different of me. It asks me to react. To anticipate. To watch. To become interested in people rather than equipment. And strangely, the older D700 helps me do that.

There is also something else that becomes important after you’ve been taking photographs for decades.

Confidence.

Not confidence in the sense of believing every photograph you take is brilliant. Most aren’t.

I mean confidence in the equipment. The feeling that when something happens, the camera will respond in exactly the way you expect. That matters enormously.

New cameras are impressive.

Familiar cameras are fast.

Not necessarily fast in frames per second.

Fast between the eye and the finger. That’s the speed that matters on the street.

When I know where everything is without thinking, the camera effectively disappears.

The D700 can do that for me.

And once the camera disappears, I can concentrate on the photograph.

Would I claim the D700 is a better camera than the D850?

No. That would be silly.

The D850 is objectively superior in almost every measurable photographic specification.

But I think photographers sometimes confuse better camera with better camera for me, for this particular job.

Those aren’t the same thing.

A Formula One car is considerably faster than an old Land Rover.

I’d still rather have the Land Rover if the road disappears.

Tools have purposes. And photographers have preferences.

After enough years, those preferences become more important than specifications.

There is a tendency in photography to assume that buying something newer automatically means abandoning what came before.

I have never really understood that.

My D700 didn’t stop working when the D800 appeared.

The D800 didn’t suddenly become incapable when the D810 arrived.

And none of them became useless when Nikon produced the D850.

Cameras don’t deteriorate because another camera receives a better review.

They remain exactly as capable as they were the day before.

What changes is expectation.

And expectation is largely manufactured for us.

Every few years we’re told that the camera we’ve been happily using has somehow become inadequate.

Not enough resolution. Not enough dynamic range. Not enough autofocus points. Not enough frames per second. Not enough technology.

Perhaps.

But enough for what?

That’s the question an old photographer eventually learns to ask.

For me, the D850 and D700 don’t really compete.

They complement one another.

The D850 is the camera that reminds me just how extraordinary digital image quality has become.

The D700 reminds me that extraordinary image quality isn’t the same thing as an extraordinary photograph.

One gives me enormous files.

The other gives me enough.

And enough is one of the most underrated words in photography.

Enough resolution.

Enough autofocus.

Enough dynamic range.

Enough camera.

Once you’ve got enough, everything beyond that becomes optional.

Then the responsibility comes back to the photographer.

Where it belongs.

So tomorrow, if I were walking out specifically to photograph the streets, which one would I take?

The D700.

Not because it’s better. Not because I’m nostalgic. And certainly not because I believe 2008 technology possesses some magical quality that Nikon subsequently lost.

I’d take it because I know it.

Because I trust it.

Because 12 megapixels is enough for what I’m trying to do.

Because I like what comes out of it.

And because when I’m carrying it, I tend to think less about the camera and more about the people in front of me.

The D850 makes photographs of astonishing technical quality.

I wouldn’t willingly give mine up.

But the D700 still has something the specification sheet cannot quantify.

It feels right.

And after more than four decades of making pictures, I’ve learned not to dismiss that feeling.

There is a difference between the camera you admire and the camera you reach for.

The D850 is the camera I admire when I look at the photograph.

The D700 is the camera I love while I’m making it.

Perhaps that’s why the old Nikon keeps finding its way back into my hands.

The D850 may be the better camera.

For the street, the D700 is still my camera.

— The Old Photographer Series

The $380 Nikon D850: When Shutter Count Stops Mattering

cameras, Lenses, nikon, opinons, thoughts, photography, pictures, street, Travel

The Old Photographer Series

There comes a point in a photographer’s life when numbers begin to matter less.

Megapixels. Frames per second. Dynamic range. Autofocus points. Shutter counts.

I’ve spent more than 45 years taking pictures, and I’ve lived through enough generations of cameras to know that we photographers have a peculiar ability to worry about things that aren’t actually stopping us from making photographs.

And then I bought a Nikon D850 for $380.

There had to be a catch.

There was.

The shutter count was north of 300,000.

For some photographers, that number would be enough to put the camera straight back on the shelf. Nikon rated the D850 shutter mechanism for 200,000 cycles, so 300,000 sounds rather like buying a car with 300,000 miles on the clock.

Except cameras aren’t cars. And shutter ratings aren’t death sentences.

The camera was sitting there looking almost ridiculously good. Externally I’d describe it as A1. It hadn’t been knocked about, the body wasn’t scarred from years of abuse, and nothing immediately suggested a camera that had already made more than 300,000 exposures.

I picked it up. That familiar Nikon solidity was there. Then I pressed the shutter. It sounded good. Not tired. Not hesitant. No strange metallic noises or anything suggesting the mechanism was preparing to throw itself across the room. Just that wonderfully purposeful D850 shutter. Clack.

A photograph. And suddenly I wasn’t terribly interested in the number anymore.

I’ve owned and used enough cameras over the years to understand that mechanical things eventually wear out. A shutter can fail at 50,000 exposures. Another can carry on well beyond its manufacturer’s rated life. Two hundred thousand actuations doesn’t mean that the D850 shutter self-destructs at exposure number 200,001.

It is a durability rating, not an appointment with the undertaker.

My camera has already proved the point rather convincingly. It’s passed 300,000.

The interesting question isn’t how many photographs the camera has already taken.

It’s how many photographs it still has left in it.

And nobody knows. Perhaps the shutter will fail next week.

Perhaps it will make another 100,000 exposures. That’s the gamble. But at $380, it’s a gamble I’m perfectly comfortable taking.

There was a time when I might have thought differently.

When you’re younger and buying equipment represents a substantial investment, you tend to protect it. Every scratch hurts. Every little mark on the baseplate feels like a personal tragedy. You buy protective screens. Protective filters. Protective cases.

Then you put your expensive camera inside an expensive bag designed to protect the protective things protecting the camera.

Eventually you realise something.

Cameras are supposed to be used.

That’s particularly true of the Nikon D850.

When Nikon introduced the D850 in 2017, it was one of those rare cameras where almost everything came together.

The 45.7-megapixel full-frame sensor delivered extraordinary detail. Dynamic range was superb. Autofocus was inherited from Nikon’s professional D5 generation. It could shoot quickly enough for serious action photography while simultaneously producing files capable of enormous prints.

It wasn’t really a specialist camera. It was a camera that could do almost everything.

Landscape photographers loved it. Studio photographers loved it. Wedding photographers used it. Wildlife photographers used it. Photojournalists used it.

And people like me discovered that despite its size, it could make a formidable street camera.

Nearly a decade later, none of those abilities have disappeared.

That’s something we sometimes forget.

A camera doesn’t become worse because something newer has appeared.

The photographs coming out of a D850 today are every bit as good as the photographs that came out of one when photographers were queuing to buy them new.

Technology moves forward.

Image quality doesn’t move backwards.

And 45.7 megapixels is still an enormous amount of information.

In fact, for most of what I photograph, it’s far more than I actually need.

The great advantage of my particular D850 is that I don’t have to worry about it. That’s worth more than people realise.

I didn’t spend several thousand dollars on it. I spent $380. If I put another scratch on the bottom plate, I won’t lose sleep. If the rubber gets polished from my hands, good. If the paint eventually wears around the edges, even better. That’s what cameras are supposed to look like. They’re tools.

I’ve always had a fondness for old cameras precisely because they develop character. A camera that’s been used carries something of its history with it.

And this D850 certainly has a history. Three hundred thousand photographs.

Think about that for a moment. I have no idea what those photographs were. Perhaps weddings. Perhaps portraits. Perhaps products photographed in a studio. Maybe somebody used it for time-lapse work. Perhaps there are thousands upon thousands of photographs of things completely forgotten now.

I’ll probably never know.

But somebody pressed that shutter more than 300,000 times. Now it’s my turn. There’s something I rather like about that.

The obsession with shutter count has grown alongside the used-camera market.

Mention that you’re looking at a used DSLR and one of the first questions you’ll hear is:

“What’s the shutter count?”

Fair enough.

It’s useful information.

If two otherwise identical D850 bodies are sitting beside each other at the same price and one has made 20,000 exposures while the other has made 300,000, I’d take the 20,000-exposure camera.

I’m an old photographer. I’m not completely daft. But price changes everything. At $380, I’m not comparing this camera with a pristine low-mileage D850. I’m asking a different question.

How much photography can I get for $380?

And the answer is potentially quite extraordinary.

For less than the cost of many modern lenses, I’ve got one of the finest DSLRs Nikon ever produced.

A professional-grade body. A magnificent sensor. Excellent autofocus. Superb handling. An enormous optical viewfinder.

Files with enough latitude to take considerable punishment in processing.

And, perhaps most importantly, a camera that makes me want to go out and take photographs. That’s the bit specifications can’t measure.

I’ve reached an age where I’m increasingly uninterested in owning cameras simply because they’re new.

I’ve watched photography travel from film to early digital cameras, through the DSLR revolution and now into the mirrorless age.

Every generation arrives accompanied by claims that everything before it has suddenly become obsolete.

It never quite happens.

My old Nikon D700 can still make wonderful photographs. So can a D800. So can a D810.

So can the professional Nikon bodies that once sat in newspaper offices and photographers’ bags around the world.

And the D850 sits very close to the summit of that entire DSLR era.

Perhaps it is the summit.

It arrived when Nikon had decades of experience building professional SLRs and nearly two decades of experience making serious digital SLRs.

Everything Nikon had learned seemed to end up inside it. The ergonomics. The viewfinder. The autofocus. The metering. The sensor. The durability.

It feels like the final flowering of a particular philosophy of camera design.

Put your eye to the viewfinder and you’re looking through the lens. Not at a tiny television.

At the world.

There’s still something wonderfully direct about that.

I don’t know when the shutter in my D850 will eventually stop. That’s part of the deal.

If it happens, I’ll make a decision.

If replacing the shutter makes financial sense, I’ll replace it.

If it doesn’t, I’ll have had my money’s worth. But I’m certainly not going to spend whatever life remains in the shutter worrying about its death. That would be rather ridiculous. Imagine buying an old Leica and refusing to use it because operating the shutter might wear it out. Or buying a classic car and never driving it because the engine has already done too many miles.

Objects designed to work should work. Cameras designed to take photographs should take photographs. So this D850 is going into the bag. It’ll walk the streets. It’ll get hot. It’ll get dusty. It’ll probably acquire a few marks. And every time I press that shutter, the supposedly frightening number will increase.

300,001.

300,002.

300,003.

Good. Keep going. Because after all these years, I’ve realised that the shutter count that really matters isn’t the number already on the camera. It’s the number of photographs still inside the photographer. That’s the count I’m interested in now.

And at $380, this battered-in-spirit but beautiful-in-the-hand Nikon D850 and I have made a rather simple agreement.

I’ll keep looking. It’ll keep clicking.

And we’ll see which one of us gives up first.

Old Photographer Series

Nikon D850 + AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G

cambodia, cameras, Lenses, nikon, opinons, thoughts, photography, pictures, street, Travel

One Camera One Lens

The Old Photographer Series

There is a peculiar disease among photographers. I have suffered from it myself for years.

We convince ourselves that we need another lens.

A 24mm for when things get tight. A 35mm because it is supposedly the perfect street lens. A 50mm because everybody ought to own one. An 85mm for portraits. A zoom because changing lenses is inconvenient. And perhaps a telephoto because, well, you never know.

Before long we’re heading out to take photographs carrying enough equipment to document the invasion of a small country.

Then, after walking around all day with several kilos hanging from our shoulders, we get home and discover that most of the pictures were taken with one lens.

Eventually an old photographer begins to see the absurdity of it.

So here is my alternative.

One Nikon D850. One AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G. Nothing else.

Well, perhaps a spare battery.

I’m old, not stupid.

The Nikon D850 is hardly anybody’s idea of a small camera. It is a substantial DSLR, built in that wonderful Nikon tradition of cameras that feel as though they could survive considerably more punishment than their owners.

And I like that.

I’m not looking for a camera that disappears into a jacket pocket. I want something that sits properly in my hands. Something with a real grip, proper buttons and dials, and an optical viewfinder through which I can simply look at the world.

The D850 gives me that, together with a 45.7-megapixel FX sensor capable of producing quite extraordinary files.

But here’s the important bit.

I don’t need to think about any of it.

After enough years using Nikon DSLRs, the controls become familiar. Aperture. Shutter speed. ISO. Focus point. Exposure compensation.

Everything else can largely bugger off.

The camera is there to make photographs.

Then we put the little 50mm f/1.4G on the front.

And suddenly this enormous photographic machine becomes beautifully simple.

The AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G is an interesting lens because it isn’t one of Nikon’s modern optical monsters.

It dates from 2008. It has eight elements in seven groups, weighs only about 280 grams, focuses down to 45cm and uses a nine-bladed rounded diaphragm. Its Silent Wave Motor provides autofocus, while M/A mode allows immediate manual adjustment.

In other words, it is refreshingly ordinary.

And I mean that as a compliment.

On the D850’s FX sensor, 50mm gives us that classic normal perspective. Not dramatically wide. Not compressed like a telephoto.

Just 50mm.

You look. You frame. You photograph. There is nowhere to hide.

Your feet are the zoom

The first thing that happens when you spend an entire day with a prime lens is that you stop thinking about lenses.

At the beginning you might see something and think:

I wish I had the 35mm.

Twenty minutes later:

An 85mm would be handy here.

Ignore it. Keep walking.

Something rather interesting eventually happens. Your brain begins adjusting to 50mm.

You start seeing pictures in 50mm before the camera reaches your eye.

You know roughly what will be in the frame. You know how close you need to get. You begin moving instinctively.

Want the person larger? Walk closer.

Want more environment? Walk backwards.

Can’t walk backwards because there’s a wall behind you?

Good.

Find another photograph.

That limitation is part of the exercise.

Modern photography has become obsessed with eliminating limitations. I increasingly think limitations are good for us. They make us think.

And 50mm makes you participate

This is particularly important when photographing people.

With a long lens, I can stand well away from somebody and photograph them almost anonymously.

With a 50mm, I can’t.

If I want somebody to occupy a significant part of the frame, I have to get reasonably close. I have entered their world. That changes the photograph.

There’s an intimacy to 50mm street photography that I like. I’m not right under someone’s nose, as I might sometimes feel with a very wide lens, but neither am I standing across the road pretending I wasn’t there.

I’m part of the scene.

For the sort of photography I enjoy — people, faces, gestures, little human moments and the environment around them — that feels right.

About that f/1.4

Naturally, the great attraction of this particular 50mm is written around the front of the lens.

1:1.4.

That’s fast.

It means I can keep working when the light begins to disappear. It means I can isolate somebody against a distracting background. And that rounded nine-blade diaphragm can produce very pleasant out-of-focus areas. Nikon itself positions the lens for low-light work, portraits and general photography.

But here’s something I’ve learned. Just because I’ve bought an f/1.4 lens doesn’t mean I have to photograph everything at f/1.4.

There seems to be a modern fascination with obliterating backgrounds.

Eyes sharp. Ears blurred. Nose blurred. Background transformed into expensive-looking soup.

Very impressive.

But sometimes I actually want to know where the person is.

For street photography especially, the background frequently provides the story.

So I’ll happily use this lens at f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6 or f/8.

I want the aperture that makes the photograph work.

Not the aperture that proves what is engraved on the lens barrel.

The D850 will expose your mistakes

There is another reason I like this combination.

The D850 doesn’t flatter sloppy technique.

That enormous resolution records an extraordinary amount of detail, which means that when focus is right and the camera is steady, the results can be beautiful.

But miss focus slightly? You’ll know.

Use a shutter speed that’s a little too slow? You’ll know.

Get lazy with technique? Oh, you’ll definitely know.

And I rather like that.

A camera should occasionally remind the photographer that he is still involved in the process.

The D850 is capable of extraordinary image quality, but it doesn’t magically create good photographs.

Neither does the 50mm f/1.4G.

That’s still my job.

Leave the bloody camera bag at home

This might actually be the most important part.

Don’t put the D850 and 50mm into a bag containing another four lenses.

Because then the temptation remains.

Take the D850. Attach the 50mm. Put a spare battery and memory card in your pocket. Walk out of the door. That’s it.

For the next few hours, 50mm is the only focal length in existence.

It is remarkably liberating. No lens changes. No sensor dust. No wondering whether the photograph might look better at 35mm. No staring into a bag while the interesting human moment happening three meters away disappears forever.

Just photography.

One camera, One lens changes the way you work

The longer you use the combination, the less you notice it. And that’s when things become interesting.

The camera stops being the subject. You start noticing light.

A face appearing through a doorway. Someone sitting alone at a café.

A child running through a shaft of afternoon sunlight. Two people arguing. Someone laughing. A hand resting on a shoulder. A tired face on a bus.

The ordinary theatre of the street. These are the things that matter. Not whether Nikon has released something newer. Not whether another lens resolves another hundred lines on somebody’s laboratory chart. Not whether my autofocus system contains the latest artificial intelligence.

Did I see the picture?

That’s the question.

Could I really live with just this?

Photographically?

Yes.

The D850 and 50mm f/1.4G could cover an astonishing amount of what I enjoy photographing.

Street. Portraits. Environmental portraits. Travel. Documentary work. Family. Night photography. Details. Even landscapes, if I stop believing landscapes must automatically be photographed with wide-angle lenses.

Would there occasionally be photographs I couldn’t make?

Of course. That’s life. I’ve missed photographs while carrying three lenses as well. Usually because I was fiddling with the bloody equipment.

After decades around cameras, perhaps the greatest luxury isn’t owning more equipment. It’s needing less.

When I was younger, another lens represented another possibility. Now I increasingly see it differently. Every additional lens is another decision. And every second spent thinking about equipment is a second I’m not looking at what is happening around me.

So give me the Nikon D850. Put the AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G on it. One battery in the camera. Another in my pocket. An empty memory card. Good walking shoes. And send me out onto the street.

No zoom. No second body. No bag full of alternatives.

If the photograph is too far away, I’ll walk towards it.

If I’m too close, I’ll walk backwards.

And if neither works, I’ll wait for another photograph. Because there is always another photograph. You just have to be looking.

One camera. One lens. One photographer.

After all these years, perhaps that is enough.

Perhaps it always was.

— The Old Photographer Series

One Camera, One Lens: The Simplicity of the 35-135mm: Old Photographer Series.

Lenses, nikon, opinons, thoughts, photography, pictures, street

There is a particular pleasure in leaving the house with one camera and one lens.

No bag stuffed with primes. No second body. No agonising over whether I might need a 24mm, an 85mm or something longer. Just a full-frame Nikon with an old AF Nikkor 35–135mm f/3.5–4.5 attached.

Then I go for a walk.

The 35–135mm AF comes from a very different period of Nikon photography. Introduced in the late 1980s, it belongs to the first generations of Nikon autofocus lenses, when AF was still something rather exciting rather than something photographers simply expected.

There is no AF-S motor inside it. On compatible Nikon DSLRs, autofocus is driven mechanically by the motor in the camera body — the famous Nikon screw-drive system.

It isn’t silent.

It isn’t particularly elegant.

You can actually hear the bloody thing focusing.

I rather like that.

Put it on a full-frame Nikon DSLR with a built-in AF motor — something like a D700, D800, D810, D3 or similar body — and you’ve got an autofocus combination that may be old-fashioned but remains thoroughly capable of taking photographs.

More importantly, on full frame the focal range makes enormous sense.

35–135mm.

Forget specifications for a moment and think about what those numbers actually mean when you’re walking around with a camera.

At 35mm you’ve got a proper documentary focal length.

It is wide enough to photograph the street, markets, cafés, buildings, groups of people and environmental portraits without the dramatic perspective of an ultra-wide lens.

Thirty-five millimetres is also wide enough to give a person somewhere to exist. That’s important to me.

Street photography isn’t always about isolating a face. Often the surroundings explain the person. The shop they’re sitting outside, the food they’re selling, the people around them, the light falling through an alleyway — these things can be as important as the subject.

At 35mm I can include that information.

Turn the zoom ring a little and I’m around 50mm.

Now things become quieter. Perspective feels natural. I’m looking rather than announcing that I’m using a wide-angle lens.

Keep going.

Seventy millimetres. Eighty-five. One hundred.

These are wonderful focal lengths for photographing people.

And then there’s 135mm.

Now I can stand back. Not hide. Not photograph people from half a mile away pretending I’m invisible. Just give somebody a little breathing room.

That makes the 35–135 particularly interesting as an everyday lens for the sort of photography I enjoy.

I have always liked photographing people, and I have never believed that street photography requires sticking a 28mm lens eighteen inches from a stranger’s nose.

Some photographers work brilliantly that way. Good luck to them. It isn’t a rule.

At 85mm, 105mm or 135mm I can watch relationships developing between people without immediately changing those relationships simply because I’ve walked into the middle of them.

Then, five minutes later, I can zoom back to 35mm and photograph the whole street. That flexibility is what makes this old Nikkor such a useful walkabout lens.

Of course, somebody will immediately point out the obvious problem.

“But 35mm isn’t very wide.”

No, it isn’t. And I’m not sure I care.

Modern photographers have become accustomed to zooms beginning at 24mm. A 24–70mm feels normal. A 24–120mm seems almost ideal as a general-purpose full-frame lens.

On paper, a 24–120mm is certainly more versatile.

But photography doesn’t happen on paper.

For the way I tend to see photographs, 35mm is wide enough most of the time.

And the price I pay for losing 24–34mm is that wonderful reach out to 135mm.

For photographing people, I’ll happily make that exchange.

There is another reason I like this focal range on full frame.

It makes me move.

If 35mm isn’t wide enough, perhaps I need to take three steps backwards.

If 135mm isn’t long enough, perhaps I need to get closer.

Zoom lenses sometimes make photographers lazy. We stand in one place and compose entirely by twisting a ring.

A limited zoom range doesn’t completely remove that temptation, but it reminds me that my feet remain part of the photographic equipment.

The lens itself is unmistakably from old Nikon. It feels like a lens.

Metal, glass, mechanical movement and enough weight to remind you that you’re carrying something built during an era when Nikon expected its equipment to spend years being knocked around by working photographers.

Nobody would mistake it for a modern lightweight plastic kit zoom.

On a substantial full-frame Nikon DSLR, though, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Put it on something like a D700 or D810 and the combination feels balanced. Neither camera was designed around the idea that photographic equipment should disappear into a coat pocket.

These are proper cameras. The 35–135 feels at home on them.

Optically, I’m not going to pretend an old zoom from this period magically defeats thirty-odd years of optical development. It doesn’t.

Modern lenses can be sharper, particularly towards the edges. They can control flare, chromatic aberration and distortion better. Modern autofocus is faster and quieter. Modern stabilisation can rescue shutter speeds that would have been risky when this lens was designed.

All true.

But here’s the question that matters:

Does the 35–135mm make good photographs?

Yes. Absolutely. Especially stopped down a little, it is capable of producing perfectly respectable sharpness, contrast and colour.

And there’s something else.

Older lenses sometimes render photographs differently from modern optics designed to pursue technical perfection. Contrast can be gentler. Out-of-focus areas can have their own character. The transition between sharp and unsharp isn’t necessarily the same as the latest computer-designed lens.

I hesitate to call that magic, because photographers use that word far too easily.

Let’s call it character.

I like lenses with character.

The variable f/3.5–4.5 aperture is hardly spectacular by modern standards, but neither is it terribly slow for a general-purpose zoom.

At the wide end, f/3.5 is perfectly usable.

At 135mm, f/4.5 still allows some useful subject separation, particularly when you’re reasonably close to the subject and the background is further away.

And remember what we’re putting it on.

A full-frame digital Nikon. With modern ISO capability, even on an older DSLR, losing a stop or two compared with a fast prime isn’t the disaster it once was.

If the light drops, raise the ISO. That’s what the bloody button is there for.

There is no VR, of course. Photographers managed for decades without it.

Watch your shutter speed. Hold the camera properly. Brace yourself when necessary.

Take another frame. It’s remarkable how much photographic technique can compensate for technology we haven’t got. That may sound like an old photographer grumbling about modern conveniences.

It isn’t. I like modern conveniences.

VR is excellent. Modern autofocus is extraordinary. Eye detection borders on witchcraft compared with what we used years ago.

I’ll use any technology that helps me make the photograph. What I won’t accept is the idea that because newer technology exists, older equipment somehow stops working.

It doesn’t.

A lens doesn’t know what year it is.

The 35–135mm was capable of making good photographs thirty years ago. It’s capable of making them now.

And today it has another enormous advantage. Nobody wants the thing. Well, almost nobody.

(I picked up my perfect copy from Japan for $38 US plus postage)

The photographic world constantly chases the latest lenses, which means older AF Nikkors can sometimes be bought for remarkably little money.

That makes lenses like the 35–135 fascinating.

You’re getting a genuine Nikon full-frame zoom covering some of the most useful focal lengths in photography for the sort of money that barely buys a modern camera accessory.

It isn’t fashionable. Good. Fashion has never taken a decent photograph.

For me, the real appeal remains simplicity.

Imagine an ordinary day walking through Phnom Penh.

At 35mm I photograph a tuk-tuk driver sitting beside his machine, but I want enough of the street around him to explain where he is.

A little later I see two people talking across the road.

Maybe 85mm.

Further along, somebody is sitting alone in beautiful light.

135mm.

Then I turn a corner and suddenly the whole street opens in front of me.

Back to 35mm.

I haven’t changed lenses once. I haven’t opened a camera bag. I haven’t exposed the sensor to dust. More importantly, I haven’t interrupted the process of looking.

That matters enormously.

The older I get, the more I think good photographic equipment is equipment that gets out of the way.

Not necessarily physically.

A D700 or D810 with a 35–135 attached isn’t exactly invisible.

I mean mentally.

When I don’t have to think about which lens to use, I can think about what I’m photographing.

Light. Faces. Gesture. Distance. Background. Timing.

The little moment when somebody’s expression changes.

The second when two unrelated elements suddenly line up.

That’s photography.

Not the lens.

The lens merely needs to let me get there.

And 35–135mm gets me there surprisingly often.

Would I recommend it to somebody who wants the fastest autofocus available?

No.

Would I recommend it to somebody photographing professional sport?

Probably not.

Would I choose it for architecture where I desperately need 24mm?

Obviously not.

Would I tell somebody that it is technically better than Nikon’s best modern zooms?

Of course not.

But as an inexpensive everyday autofocus lens on a full-frame Nikon DSLR?

Now we’re talking. It covers the heart of the focal lengths I actually use.

Thirty-five for context. Fifty for normality. Eighty-five for people. One hundred and five for a little distance. One hundred and thirty-five for observation.

That’s a remarkably useful toolbox inside one old lens.

There was a period when I thought having the right equipment meant being prepared for absolutely everything.

I’ve gradually reached the opposite conclusion. Being prepared for everything often means carrying too much. Too many lenses create too many decisions.

And every decision about equipment is a few seconds when I’m not watching what’s happening in front of me.

So give me one full-frame Nikon. Put the old 35–135mm AF on the front. Maybe one spare battery in my pocket. And leave the rest at home.

If I miss a photograph because I didn’t have a 20mm lens, so be it.

If something is too far away for 135mm, I’ll walk towards it.

There will always be another photograph.

That’s perhaps one of the great advantages of becoming an old photographer. Eventually you realise you don’t have to photograph everything. You just have to be ready for the things that interest you. The AF Nikkor 35–135mm f/3.5–4.5 gives me enough.

Enough width. Enough reach. Enough speed. Enough sharpness. Enough autofocus. Enough versatility. And enough character.

Put it on a full-frame Nikon, sling the camera over your shoulder and walk out of the door.

No lens charts. No internet arguments. No wondering whether you should upgrade.

Just walk.

Look.

Wait.

And take photographs.

Sometimes the best everyday lens isn’t the newest, sharpest or most expensive one.

Sometimes it’s simply the lens you can leave on the camera all day.

And after all these years, that’s increasingly what I want.

One camera. One lens. One walk.

Everything else is photography.

Nikon D800 Review: A Classic Camera Still Shines

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The Nikon D800 is one of those cameras that refuses to become obsolete. Released in 2012, it is now well over a decade old, yet in many respects it still competes surprisingly well with much newer cameras. If someone handed me a clean D800 today, I wouldn’t hesitate to take it out for a day’s street photography, portrait work, or landscape photography.

Image quality ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is where the D800 still shines.

Its 36.3-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor produces files that remain exceptional by modern standards.

  • Excellent detail.
  • Wide dynamic range.
  • Natural colour.
  • Plenty of room to crop.

At low ISO, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a D800 file and one from many current cameras costing several times more.

For landscape photographers especially, the D800 remains outstanding.

Dynamic range ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Even today, the D800’s dynamic range is among its greatest strengths.

You can recover:

  • shadows remarkably well
  • highlights with confidence
  • subtle tonal transitions

For photographers who like to edit RAW files, it remains an incredibly capable sensor.

High ISO ⭐⭐⭐☆

This is where age begins to show.

ISO 100–1600 is excellent.

ISO 3200 is perfectly usable.

ISO 6400 starts becoming noticeably noisy compared with today’s sensors.

Modern Nikon Z-series cameras have roughly a stop to two stops advantage here.

Autofocus ⭐⭐⭐☆

The 51-point Multi-CAM 3500FX system was superb in 2012.

Today it feels…

  • reliable
  • predictable
  • but not especially clever.

It lacks:

  • Eye AF
  • subject recognition
  • AI tracking
  • advanced face detection

For wildlife or fast sport it is clearly behind today’s mirrorless cameras.

For portraits, documentary and street photography it still performs very well.

Speed ⭐⭐⭐

4 fps full-frame

5 fps in DX crop

It isn’t a sports camera.

But unless you’re photographing birds or Formula One, it rarely feels limiting.

Build quality ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is classic Nikon.

Magnesium alloy body.

Weather sealing.

Excellent ergonomics.

Buttons exactly where your fingers expect them.

Many photographers still prefer its handling over modern mirrorless cameras.

Battery life ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Outstanding.

Around 900 shots is entirely realistic.

Many users comfortably exceed that.

Mirrorless cameras still struggle to match this.

Viewfinder ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

One of Nikon’s best optical viewfinders.

Bright.

Large.

100% coverage.

If you enjoy actually looking through a camera rather than at a screen, the D800 remains deeply satisfying.

Video ⭐⭐

Video is where it shows its age.

1080p only.

No 4K.

No modern autofocus.

No stabilisation.

For serious video work there are much better options.

Street photography

Interestingly, despite its size, the D800 is still an excellent street camera.

Pair it with:

  • Nikon 35mm f/2D
  • Nikon 50mm f/1.8G
  • Nikon 85mm f/1.8G

and you’ll have image quality that is genuinely world-class.

The downside?

The shutter is louder than modern mirrorless cameras, and the body is considerably heavier.

Compared with modern cameras

The D800 loses on:

  • autofocus intelligence
  • video
  • silent shooting
  • high ISO
  • live view performance
  • weight

It still wins on:

  • image quality
  • dynamic range
  • colour
  • ergonomics
  • optical viewfinder
  • battery life
  • value for money

Value in 2026

This is perhaps its biggest strength.

Used prices have become extremely attractive, making it one of the best bargains in full-frame photography. If your priority is making photographs rather than owning the latest technology, it delivers extraordinary performance for relatively little money.

Is it still worth buying?

Absolutely—provided it matches the way you shoot.

Choose the D800 if you photograph:

  • Landscapes
  • Portraits
  • Street photography
  • Documentary work
  • Architecture
  • Studio photography
  • Fine-art photography

Look elsewhere if your main interests are:

  • Fast wildlife
  • Professional sports
  • Heavy video production
  • Frequent shooting in very dark conditions

Final thoughts

The Nikon D800 has become something of a modern classic. It was revolutionary when it launched, and unlike many cameras of its era, its strengths haven’t faded. The sensor remains superb, the build quality is exceptional, and the photographs it produces still look contemporary.

Why Some Cameras Never Really Leave Us

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Old Cameras, New Eyes

Every photographer has owned a camera they should probably have sold years ago.

Mine are still sitting on the shelf.

A Nikon D1H. A D2Hs. A D300S. A D3.

A Canon 1D Mark II, Mark III and Mark IV.

An original Fujifilm X100.

According to the internet, most of them are obsolete. Their sensors are too old, their rear screens too small, their autofocus too slow and their specifications hopelessly outclassed by almost anything you can buy today.

They’re probably right.

I still wouldn’t part with them.

People sometimes ask me why I keep using cameras that have long since disappeared from shop windows.

The answer has very little to do with photography.

I love my old cameras because they have character, personality and soul. They’re not just tools. They’re old friends. Like old friends, each one has its own personality.

The Nikon D2Hs is calm, dependable and quietly confident. It never shouts about what it can do. It simply turns up every morning and gets on with the job.

The D300S is the reliable companion that never lets me down. It doesn’t demand attention or admiration. It simply asks where we’re walking today.

The Nikon D3 feels like that friend who’s seen everything, survived everything and somehow still remains unflappable.

Then there are the Canons.

The 1D series always felt as though they had been built with one purpose in mind: work. No fuss. No drama. Just absolute confidence that whatever happened next, they’d cope with it.

The original Fujifilm X100 was different again.

It was the quiet one.

The camera that persuaded me to slow down, stop fiddling with settings and simply watch the world unfold.

None of these cameras are perfect. Thank goodness.

Perfection has never interested me very much.

Character has.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve never understood the obsession with constantly replacing cameras. Every new model promises to be faster, sharper and cleverer than the one before.

Some of those promises are true.

But none of them explain why I still smile when I wrap my hand around a camera that’s twenty years old.

These cameras have travelled with me through different chapters of my life.

They’ve wandered streets with me.

They’ve waited patiently while I stood watching people.

They’ve shared quiet mornings and long afternoons.

They’ve been there on days when everything seemed to come together and on days when nothing worked at all.

Strange as it may sound, they have become companions.

The best part? They’ve never judged me. Not once.

They’ve never complained about a bad hair day.

They’ve never mentioned my increasingly questionable fashion sense.

They’ve never laughed at mismatched socks or criticised an idea before I’d even tried it.

They’ve simply waited by the door, ready for another walk.

There is something wonderfully reassuring about that kind of friendship.

Over the years I’ve come to realise that the cameras themselves are only part of the story.

The real story is what happens to the photographer.

When we’re young, we chase equipment.

When we’re older, we chase light.

When we’re beginning, we collect cameras.

When we’ve been doing it for decades, we collect moments.

That’s why these old cameras still matter to me.

Not because they’re technically remarkable by today’s standards.

But because every scratch tells a story.

Every polished edge reminds me of somewhere I’ve been.

Every shutter release carries memories that no specification sheet could ever record.

Photography has given me many things over the years.

Pictures. Friendships. Conversations. A reason to wander. An excuse to be curious.

These cameras have quietly accompanied me through all of it.

Perhaps that’s why I still reach for them.

Not because I believe old cameras are better than new ones.

They’re not.

I reach for them because they remind me of something the photographic industry rarely talks about.

The finest camera you’ll ever own isn’t necessarily the newest one.

It’s the one that makes you want to leave the house.

The one that disappears in your hands.

The one that quietly whispers, “Come on… let’s go and see what’s happening today.”

Mine just happen to have a few more wrinkles than they used to.

Then again…

So do I.

The Nikon D3: The Last Camera I Never Had to Think About

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Nikon D3 香港價錢、評測報告、相機規格及相關報道 - DCFever.com

There are cameras that impress you the day you buy them.

Then there are cameras that quietly earn your respect over the years.

The Nikon D3 belonged firmly in the second category.

When Nikon introduced it in 2007 it wasn’t simply another camera body. It was a statement. For years photographers had accepted that full-frame digital cameras came with compromises. Then along came the D3 and quietly swept many of those compromises away.

For the first time I found myself holding a camera that seemed capable of disappearing completely from my thoughts.

That may sound like an odd compliment.

Most reviews talk about autofocus, dynamic range, high ISO performance or frames per second. Those things matter, and the D3 excelled at every one of them. Its autofocus was astonishingly dependable, its files were beautifully clean at ISO settings that previously seemed unusable, and it possessed the sort of build quality that suggested it would probably survive events that its owner might not.

But those aren’t the reasons I remember it.

The reason I remember the D3 is because I stopped thinking about it.

Photography can be an odd occupation. We spend years learning cameras so that eventually we no longer have to think about cameras at all.

The controls become instinctive. The shutter becomes familiar. The viewfinder feels like an extension of your own eyesight.

The D3 reached that point faster than almost any camera I’ve ever owned.

I trusted it.

That word matters more than any technical specification.

Trust means never wondering whether the autofocus will keep up.

Trust means changing the ISO without taking your eye away from the scene unfolding in front of you.

Trust means walking into fading light knowing the camera will quietly cope while you concentrate on people rather than exposure.

That confidence changes the way you photograph.

You stop making technical decisions. You start making visual ones. There is a freedom in that.

Looking back now, I realise the D3 arrived at exactly the right point in photographic history. It was technologically advanced without becoming technologically intrusive. It offered extraordinary capability while still expecting the photographer to make the important decisions.

It wasn’t trying to think for me. It simply did what I asked.

That’s a quality I value more with every passing year.

Modern cameras are astonishing. Their ability to recognise eyes, faces, birds, animals and vehicles borders on science fiction compared with the equipment many of us learned on.

I admire that progress.

But sometimes I wonder whether, in making cameras ever more intelligent, we’ve accidentally encouraged photographers to become slightly less observant.

The D3 demanded observation.

It rewarded anticipation.

It reminded me that timing has always mattered more than technology.

Perhaps that is why I remember it with such affection.

It never once tried to become the photographer.

It remained a beautifully engineered tool.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Over the years I’ve owned cameras that exceeded it on paper.

Higher resolution.

Greater dynamic range.

Better video.

More sophisticated autofocus.

Yet very few of them left me feeling quite so relaxed.

The D3 carried itself with quiet confidence.

It never seemed eager to impress.

It simply got on with the job.

There is something deeply satisfying about equipment that behaves like that.

It encourages the same attitude in its owner.

You stop worrying.

You stop fiddling with menus.

You stop reading forums searching for mythical improvements.

You simply walk. You look. You wait. And when the moment arrives, you press the shutter almost without conscious thought.

That, surely, is what every camera should aspire to become.

Invisible.

The older I become, the more I appreciate that invisibility.

Photography has never been about the camera in my hands.

It has always been about the people standing in front of it.

The expressions that vanish in a heartbeat.

The brief exchange of glances between strangers.

The light that appears for only a few seconds before disappearing behind a cloud.

The D3 never distracted me from those moments.

It quietly helped me preserve them.

That is the highest compliment I can pay any camera.

Eventually newer models arrived.

Technology moved on.

Manufacturers promised even greater miracles.

Some of those promises were fulfilled.

Many of them genuinely improved the photographic experience.

But there remains something quietly reassuring about the Nikon D3.

Not because it is the greatest camera ever made.

History rarely deals in absolutes.

Rather, because it represents a moment when I realised I had stopped thinking about cameras altogether.

I had begun thinking only about photographs.

And looking back now, I cannot imagine a finer legacy for any camera than that.

The Little Lens That Reminded Me Why I Photograph

cameras, Lenses, nikon, photography, pictures, street, Travel

There it was, sitting quietly in the bottom of an old camera bag. A lens I hadn’t mounted on a camera in years. The Nikon 18–55mm kit lens. The sort of lens many photographers buy by accident because it comes attached to a new camera and then replace at the first opportunity with something faster, heavier and considerably more expensive.

I almost walked past it.

Instead, I clicked it onto my old Nikon D300S.

No expectations. No grand experiment. Just curiosity.

Within half an hour I found myself asking a simple question.

Why on earth had I stopped using this lens?

As photographers, we spend an extraordinary amount of time convincing ourselves that the next piece of equipment will somehow make us better. A sharper lens. A larger sensor. More megapixels. Faster autofocus. We read reviews, compare MTF charts, pixel-peep images until the joy has almost disappeared from the process.

Somewhere along the way we begin to believe that “kit lens” is another way of saying “not good enough.”

Yet here I was, walking with one of the cheapest lenses Nikon ever produced, making photographs that pleased me every bit as much as images made with lenses costing many times more. It was a useful reminder.

Photography has never really cared what was engraved on the front of the lens.

Thinking back, I realised this wasn’t the first time this little zoom had surprised me. If memory serves me correctly, I originally bought it to use on my Nikon D1H many years ago. It worked beautifully then, and I enjoyed using it far more than I expected. Since then it has also found its way onto my D2Hs and now the D300S. Three cameras that most of the photographic world has long since written off as obsolete.

I still enjoy them.

Perhaps that’s because they belong to an era when cameras simply got out of the way. They didn’t try to think for you. They asked you to think instead.

The 18–55mm seems to share that same philosophy.

It isn’t glamorous.

It doesn’t announce itself.

It simply gets on with the job.

Of course, I own better lenses. There are lenses I reach for when I need beautiful background blur, faster apertures, superior edge-to-edge sharpness or weather sealing. Professional tools exist for good reasons, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

But there is an important difference between owning the best lens for a particular assignment and owning the lens that makes you want to go out and photograph.

Those are not always the same thing.

The little Nikon is wonderfully light. After an hour’s walk you barely notice it’s there. Instead of thinking about equipment, you’re watching people, waiting for expressions, noticing light falling across a face or the geometry of a street corner.

The camera almost disappears.

And that’s exactly where I like it.

Street photography has never been about carrying the largest collection of glass. It has always been about observation. Patience. Curiosity. The ability to recognise something ordinary becoming extraordinary for the briefest fraction of a second.

No expensive lens can teach you that.

The longer I photograph, the more suspicious I become of the endless pursuit of technical perfection. Cameras have become astonishingly capable. Lenses are sharper than ever. Yet I’m not convinced photographs have become more interesting because of it.

Some of the most memorable images ever made would fail today’s online obsession with corner sharpness, chromatic aberration and laboratory test charts.

Nobody stands in front of a great photograph asking what aperture was used.

They ask what happened.

They ask who that person was.

They ask why the image makes them feel something.

Those are entirely different questions.

Perhaps age has something to do with it. After decades behind a camera, I’m finding myself drawn back to simplicity. Older cameras. Smaller lenses. Equipment that encourages me to walk a little further and think a little harder rather than impress other photographers.

There is a freedom in that.

Not long ago I wondered whether I was losing my enthusiasm for photography altogether. The camera still came on my walks, but it often stayed by my side. For someone who once happily made fifty, a hundred or even two hundred photographs during a five-kilometre walk, that felt like a genuine change.

Then along came a forgotten little kit lens.

Funny how inspiration sometimes returns from the least likely places.

It reminded me that photography has never really been about owning the finest equipment. It has always been about remaining curious. About looking twice when everyone else walks on. About noticing small moments that most people never see.

Perhaps that is the real value of an inexpensive lens. It strips away the excuses. If the picture fails, it isn’t because the lens wasn’t expensive enough. If it succeeds, it succeeds because you saw something worth photographing.

That’s a comforting thought.

The Nikon 18–55mm won’t become legendary. It won’t appear on lists of the greatest lenses ever made, and it won’t cause collectors to empty their wallets.

It doesn’t need to.

For me, it has quietly become something far more valuable.

A reminder that the best camera equipment isn’t always the newest, the fastest or the most expensive.

Sometimes it’s simply the lens waiting patiently at the bottom of an old camera bag, ready to remind you why you fell in love with photography in the first place.

The Nikon D300S

cameras, Lenses, nikon, opinons, thoughts, photography, street, Travel

The Nikon D300S is one of those cameras that refuses to die. Released in 2009 as Nikon’s flagship DX-format DSLR, it was aimed at serious enthusiasts and professionals who wanted speed, durability, and reliability without moving to full-frame. Even in 2026, it remains surprisingly capable in the right hands.

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The Good

Built Like a Tank

The D300S comes from an era when Nikon built cameras to survive hard professional use. The magnesium-alloy body feels incredibly solid, with weather sealing that still puts many modern consumer cameras to shame. If you’ve handled a D700, the D300S feels very familiar.

For street photography, travel, documentary work, and rough conditions, that toughness is worth a lot.

Fantastic Ergonomics

This is one area where the D300S still embarrasses many modern cameras.

  • Dedicated buttons everywhere
  • No menu diving for common functions
  • Large grip
  • Excellent control layout
  • Top LCD panel
  • Fast operation

You can change settings while keeping the camera to your eye. Once you learn it, it becomes almost instinctive.

Superb Autofocus

The 51-point Multi-CAM 3500DX autofocus system was legendary in its day and remains highly effective today. It tracks moving subjects well and is significantly better than many entry-level DSLRs that came years later.

For:

  • Street photography
  • Sports
  • Wildlife
  • Events

it still performs remarkably well.

Fast Shooting

  • 7 fps standard
  • 8 fps with the MB-D10 grip and larger battery

Even today that’s respectable performance.

The Viewfinder

The optical viewfinder offers:

  • 100% coverage
  • Large bright image
  • Professional feel

Many photographers miss viewfinders like this. Looking through a D300S feels connected and immediate.

Beautiful Nikon Colors

The 12.3MP CMOS sensor produces files with a very pleasing character.

Modern cameras often win on technical perfection, but many photographers still love the way older Nikons render:

  • Skin tones
  • Greens
  • Reds
  • Black-and-white conversions

The files have a slightly organic look that some newer sensors lack.

The Bad

Only 12 Megapixels

This is the biggest limitation.

In 2009, 12MP was excellent.

In 2026:

  • Heavy cropping is limited
  • Large commercial prints are harder
  • Landscape photographers may want more resolution

If you are used to a D810’s 36MP files, the D300S feels restrictive.

High ISO Performance is Showing Its Age

The D300S performs best at:

  • ISO 200
  • ISO 400
  • ISO 800

ISO 1600 is usable.

ISO 3200 becomes noticeably noisy.

Compared to modern cameras, low-light performance is well behind current standards.

Video is Primitive

The D300S introduced HD video, but by modern standards it is almost unusable:

  • 720p only
  • Limited autofocus
  • Motion JPEG format
  • Short recording times

Most owners ignore the video mode completely.

Heavy

At roughly 840g before a lens is attached, it’s not a lightweight travel camera.

Old LCD and Live View

The rear screen was excellent in 2009.

Today:

  • No touch screen
  • Slow Live View
  • Primitive compared with mirrorless systems

Why It Is Still Usable Today

This is where things get interesting.

The D300S remains useful because photography is not a megapixel competition.

For street photography especially, it still offers:

Speed

The camera reacts instantly.

  • Minimal shutter lag
  • Fast startup
  • Responsive controls

It feels like a photographic tool rather than a computer.

Access to Nikon’s Lens Legacy

The D300S includes:

  • Screw-drive autofocus motor
  • AI and AI-S lens compatibility
  • Full Nikon F-mount support

You can mount decades of Nikon glass and get excellent results.

Affordable

In 2026, good examples often sell for a fraction of their original price.

You get:

  • Pro body
  • Pro autofocus
  • Pro controls
  • Weather sealing

for less than many entry-level mirrorless cameras.

It Forces Better Technique

Many photographers discover something interesting when they return to a D300S:

They stop obsessing over equipment.

You can’t rely on:

  • Massive cropping
  • Extreme ISO
  • AI noise reduction

You have to:

  • Get closer
  • Expose properly
  • Compose carefully

In some ways it makes you a better photographer.

Final Verdict

The D300S is not a camera for pixel peepers.

It is a camera for photographers.

Its weaknesses are obvious:

  • Low resolution by modern standards
  • Aging high ISO performance
  • Outdated video

But its strengths remain compelling:

  • Tank-like construction
  • Excellent controls
  • Superb autofocus
  • Great optical viewfinder
  • Beautiful Nikon color
  • Incredible value for money

If someone handed me a clean D300S and a 35mm f/2D tomorrow, I’d happily spend a day wandering the streets of Phnom Penh making photographs. The camera may be old, but the experience of using it still feels remarkably alive. 📷

The Forgotten Sweet Spot: Using the Nikon 24-120mm f/4G on the Nikon D300S

cameras, Lenses, nikon, opinons, thoughts, photography, street, Travel

In an era where photographers obsess over the latest mirrorless bodies and razor-sharp professional lenses, there is something quietly satisfying about picking up older equipment and discovering just how capable it remains. One combination that deserves far more attention than it receives is the Nikon D300S paired with the Nikon 24-120mm f/4G VR.

At first glance it seems like an odd match. The 24-120mm f/4G was designed as a full-frame lens, intended for cameras such as the D700, D750, D800 and D810. The D300S, meanwhile, is a professional DX camera from another era entirely. Yet together they create a surprisingly versatile photographic tool that remains highly relevant today.

The first thing to understand is the effect of the D300S’s crop sensor. The 1.5x crop factor transforms the lens into the equivalent of a 36-180mm zoom. While the numbers on the barrel remain unchanged, the field of view narrows considerably.

Some photographers immediately view this as a disadvantage. They see the loss of true wide-angle coverage and dismiss the combination. They have a point. Twenty-four millimetres on a full-frame camera is genuinely wide. On the D300S it becomes roughly equivalent to a moderate 36mm lens. For landscape photographers or those who enjoy dramatic architectural images, this limitation can become frustrating.

But photography is always about trade-offs, and what is lost at one end is often gained elsewhere.

The D300S uses only the central portion of the lens’s image circle. This is significant because the centre of most lenses is where optical performance is strongest. Corner softness becomes largely irrelevant. Vignetting virtually disappears. Edge performance improves. Distortion is less obvious than it is on full-frame bodies.

In practical use, the lens often appears sharper on the D300S than many photographers expect.

What emerges is a remarkably useful focal range. At the short end, the equivalent 36mm view is ideal for documentary work, environmental portraits and general street photography. Around the middle of the zoom range, the lens covers the classic perspectives associated with 50mm and 85mm lenses. At the long end, the equivalent 180mm reach allows photographers to isolate subjects from a distance, compress perspective and work discreetly.

For photographers who enjoy observing rather than inserting themselves into the middle of a scene, this can be enormously valuable.

Street photography is often associated with wide-angle lenses and close physical proximity. Yet there is another tradition, one built around patience, observation and distance. The 24-120mm on the D300S fits naturally into this approach.

A photographer can move through a market, a city street or a crowded public space without changing lenses. One moment they can capture a wider scene that establishes context. Seconds later they can isolate an expression across the street or pick out a fleeting gesture that would otherwise be missed.

This flexibility is the lens’s greatest strength.

The constant f/4 aperture also deserves recognition. While it lacks the glamour of an f/2.8 professional zoom or the shallow depth of field of a fast prime, it provides consistency. Exposure remains unchanged throughout the zoom range. Combined with Nikon’s effective vibration reduction system, the lens remains practical in a wide variety of lighting conditions.

Of course, there are compromises. Low-light performance cannot compete with an 85mm f/1.8 or a 50mm f/1.4. Background separation is more modest. Photographers who crave the distinctive rendering of fast prime lenses may find the images technically excellent but emotionally restrained.

Yet that criticism misses the point.

The 24-120mm f/4G was never intended to be a specialist lens. It was designed to be a problem solver. It is the lens you mount when you do not know what the day will bring. It is the lens that allows you to leave the house carrying one camera instead of a bag full of equipment.

In many ways it reflects a more practical era of photography. An era when photographers worried less about corner sharpness at 300 percent magnification and more about whether they captured the moment.

Mounted on a Nikon D300S, the lens becomes exactly that kind of tool. Dependable. Flexible. Uncomplicated.

It may not be fashionable. It may not generate excitement on internet forums. But photography has never been about owning fashionable equipment. It has always been about making pictures.

For photographers willing to look beyond specifications and marketing hype, the Nikon 24-120mm f/4G on the Nikon D300S remains one of the most underrated combinations in the Nikon system. More than a decade after both were introduced, they still deliver what matters most: the ability to walk out the door and come back with photographs worth keeping.

📷 As someone who often prefers photographing people rather than buildings, and who already appreciates longer focal lengths such as the 85mm, this combination makes a lot of sense. The D300S turns the 24-120mm into a versatile documentary lens that lets you work both close and discreetly from a distance—particularly useful when wandering city streets where moments appear and disappear in seconds.