Nikon D4 and Canon 1Dx – Blessing or Curse?

Last week I was invited at the launch event for the Nikon D4 at Nikon Belgium’s HQ. It’s great to see that Nikon Belgium is making an effort to get in touch with their customer base and photographers in general. Reaching out to the world of bloggers isn’t easy if you are used to dealing with the traditional media. But they coped well with the sometimes tough questions and general disrespect of age old media conventions by us bloggers.

Am I in the market for a Nikon? I’m sure they make great stuff but so does Canon, so … not really. But I always try to look at new releases from the point of someone who’s looking for the best tools to perform his craft within a reasonable budget. My 5D2 is nearing the end of it’s lifecycle, it’s actually outlasting my best expectations. As long as it works fine, I’m not looking to replace it but chances are high, that I’ll have to invest in a new camera body this year. I was pretty exited when I had some brief quality time with the Canon 1Dx, and I still am. But I’ve also been thinking about the cost of such an upgrade. The D4 seems to be developed from the same strategy as the 1Dx: making the best possible all-round camera.

I don’t have enough hands-on experience with Nikon cameras to judge all the the practical improvements of the D4 over it’s predecessors. But my buddy (despite the fact he’s a Nikon user) Rob, wrote an interesting blog post about his first impressions.

What I see is that Nikon has clearly listened to the needs of today’s professional photographers. Lots of photography and marketing gurus advocate to specialize in one niche but the reality is that most professional photographers would return to being amateur photographers if they weren’t decent all-rounders. With their new flagship cameras Nikon and Canon seem to acknowledge this and focus on:

- Having enough pixels for most uses
- Not having too much pixels so they avoid excessive noise at high iso’s, compromise on speed and keep files small enough to manage
- good video options
- sturdy construction
- easy to operate
- fast and reliable autofocus
- building a camera that feels at home in a studio as well as in the desert of Iraq

This is all great news, except for one thing … price. At around 5.000 EUR these cameras are bloody expensive. Certainly now that many professionals are using 5D mark 2′s or D700′s that are only slightly less powerful than their big brothers but cost less than half. I’m pretty sure that the 5D mark 3 and the D800 will be announced soon. I’m damned sure they will be amazing but I’m not so sure they will be amazing for me and lots of photographers in a similar position. Rumors make us believe that there will be lots of megapixels (30+) which I don’t really need very often but will compromise high iso’s (which are way more important to me).

One side of me wants to pre-order a 1Dx because I’m pretty sure it will be the best all-round camera for me. But the other side of me just wrote “spending less money on gear” high on the list of goals for 2012. We’ll have to wait until we know more about the successors of the 5D mk2 and the D700.