Nikon D1x

		Outdoor portrait: (2478 k) The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why we set it up this way. The object is to hold highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and the Nikon D1X handles the challenge quite well. We shot samples of this image with the automatic (2480 k) and daylight (2478 k) white balance settings, choosing the daylight setting for our main series. Color balance is slightly warm, but we preferred the warmer skin tones over the cooler cast produced by the automatic setting. We shot virtually all our images with the D1x using the default sRGB setting, as that's what will look best on the 'web, but we'll be filling in with some Adobe RGB shots for the pros who are interested in that broader, more accurate color space. Color looks quite good, with only a few purplish tints in the blue flowers. (These blues are hard for many digicams to reproduce correctly.) The red flowers are a little bright, with just a faint halo around their outside edges. Resolution looks very good, with a large amount of fine detail visible throughout the image, particularly in the flower bouquet and model's face. Nikon's approach in the D1x's images can best be described as "do no harm", meaning that they're very conservative in what processing is done in-camera. One result is that in-camera sharpening is very understated, giving a slightly soft look to the images. This is a good thing though, as you can always sharpen after the fact in Photoshop(tm) or other imaging programs. Once too much sharpening has been applied though, there's no way to get rid of it. Thus, this image shows exceptional detail, albeit with a little softer look to it. We were particularly impressed by the D1x's low noise in all our shooting. This is evident here in the incredibly "clean" shadow areas. Our main image was taken with a +1.0 EV exposure adjustment to get a good exposure in the shadow areas without overexposing the bright highlight areas too much. (These are slightly blown out - A pro using this camera would expose to hold detail in the highlights and adjust the images in the computer afterward to get the overall tonal balance he/she wanted. We generally expose more for the midtones, since most of our web visitors judge the exposure by how bright/dark the midtones are, and we want to show images directly as they come from the camera.) The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings from zero to +2.0 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings: 0 EV (2383 k) 0.3 EV (2416 k) 0.7 EV (2450 k) 1.0 EV (2478 k) 1.3 EV (2484 k) 1.7 EV (2499 k) 2.0 EV (2461 k)
		Closer portrait: (2740 k) The D1X also does a great job with this closer, portrait shot. This time, we chose the automatic white balance setting, as the skin tones became too warm with the daylight white balance. Overall color again looks great, with accurate skin tones. Resolution is much higher in this close-up shot, with excellent detail in the model's face and hair. (You can almost count the strands of hair around the model's face, and even the fine peach fuzz on her cheeks is plainly visible.) Details also appear a little more crisp than in the wider shot. Shadow detail is again exceptional, judging by the visible detail in the model's shadowed eyes and on the shirt collar. Noise is very low in the shadow areas, with a tight grain pattern. Our main shot was taken with a +0.3 EV exposure adjustment. The table below shows the results of a range of exposure settings from zero to +2.0 EV. Exposure Compensation Settings: 0 EV (2353 k) 0.3 EV (2740 k) 0.7 EV (2745 k) 1.0 EV (2722 k) 1.3 EV (2461 k) 1.7 EV (2228 k) 2.0 EV (1877 k)
		Indoor Portrait, Flash: (2410 k) Though the D1X does not feature a built-in flash unit, it does offer a hot shoe and sync terminal for connecting external flash units. Nikon shipped one of their excellent SB-28DX speedlights with the camera, and we has a lot of fun playing with it. (A piece of advice for D1x buyers: Buy an SB-28DX! It's really a wonderfully flexible strobe unit, and seems to integrate very well with the D1x.) First, we shot with the flash pointed directly at the model, with no exposure compensation, which resulted in this (2425 k) slightly dim shot. The background incandescent lighting of the house causes an orange-magenta cast on the back wall, which also shows up on parts of the model's white shirt. (Again, a difference between what we did and how a pro would set up this shot: We just used the speedlight as-is and left the room lights up high. A pro would first "gel" the speedlight, to bring its color temperature down to that of the room lighting, and then use a tungsten white balance in the camera. - If you haven't experimented with this technique, you should try it, it produces beautiful results!) Next, we boosted the exposure compensation to +1.0 EV (2470 k), which produced a much brighter shot, with better lighting on the model. Though the exposure is brighter, the orange-magenta cast persists on the back wall. To even out the light from the flash, we bounced the light off of the ceiling in our next shot, and boosted the exposure compensation to +1.0 EV, which produced this (2369 k) very nice image. The bounced light is very even, and the orange cast is greatly diminished. Color balance is still a little on the warm side, but the overall image looks good, if slightly dim. Next, we bounced the flash off of the ceiling again, but this time placed a piece of white paper behind the flash head to reflect more of the light directly toward the subject. First, we shot with the flash in the normal shooting mode, with an exposure adjustment of +0.3 EV (2410 k) (exposure taken at f/5 with a shutter speed of 1/60 second). This placed more light on the subject than in the previous shot, and decreased the warm cast slightly. The model's shirt has a more accurate white value, and the overall exposure looks good (we chose this for our main image). Finally, we used the same bounce method, but simulated a Slow Synchro (2416 k) mode to allow more ambient light into the picture, again shooting with a +0.3 EV adjustment (exposure shot at f/5 with shutter speed of 1/20 second). The longer exposure allowed more ambient light into the image, which also increased the orange cast, but made the overall lighting much softer and more even, with just the slightest reflection on the model's hair giving away the flash exposure.
		Indoor portrait, no flash: (2349 k) This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting, and the D1X's automatic white balance system has a little trouble with this light source. We shot samples of this image with the automatic (1229 k), incandescent (1132 k), and manual (1183 k) white balance settings, finding interesting results at all three settings. The automatic setting produced a very strong orange cast, while the incandescent setting resulted in a noticeable magenta cast. One unusual feature of the D1x is its ability to "fine tune" the white balance presets. To show this, we took variations of this shot with the fine-tuning set to -3 (1195 k) and +3 (1178 k) (the limits of this adjustment). The magenta cast increased to an orange coloration with the -3 setting, while the +3 setting produced much better results. The magenta cast is still present, though not nearly as strong. The manual white balance setting produced by far the most accurate results overall, without any strong color casts. Color balance is a little reddish overall, but still looks very good, and in fact is more to our liking than a perfectly neutral treatment would have been. - The slight warmth preserves more of the "mood" of the original lighting. Skin tones are slightly pink, but color in the flower bouquet looks pretty good. The blue flowers have some purple tints from the reddish cast, a common problem with this shot among digicams we've tested. Resolution is excellent, with an incredible amount of detail visible on the model's face, in the flower bouquet, and in the details of the white shirt. In lieu of our standard exposure series, we snapped images at the +0.0 (2198 k) and +2.0 EV (2349k) exposure settings, choosing the +2.0 EV exposure for our main image. (For some reason, the D1x's exposure system *really* wanted to underexpose this shot. We're puzzled as to why, since there was no strong highlight that it would have been trying to hold detail in.) We also shot with the 125 (2102 k), 200 (2164 k), 400 (2508 k), and 800 (2683 k) ISO settings, noticing that exposure darkened slightly as the sensitivity increased. Noise is minimal at the 125 ISO setting, increasing to a moderately high level with the 800 ISO setting. Alert viewers will notice the shallower depth of field of the D1x's photos of this shot, when compared to consumer-level digicams we've tested. This is because the D1x's larger sensor area leads to longer focal lengths being used for shots at the same distance. The longer focal lengths produce depth of field results much closer to those of a 35mm film-based camera. (The D1x does still have somewhat greater DOF than a 35mm though, given the 1.5x effective focal length multiplier.)
		House shot: (1248 k) Wow, that's resolution! - See our main review for further discussion of this shot, with cropped details comparing it to the original D1 and the recently announced Minolta Dimage 7, an excellent consumer-level camera with a 5.1 megapixel CCD.) This is clearly the highest resolution we've seen to date on this shot. The ultimate test of natural-subject resolution will be our "Far Field" test, where an essentially infinite range of detail is available, but this shot shows that the D1X found much more detail in our "House" poster than any other camera to date. We shot this image with the automatic (2968 k), daylight (2928 k), and manual (2924 k) white balance settings, choosing the automatic setting as the most accurate overall. For some reason, we found that we needed to boost exposure slightly on this shot to avoid underexposed images. This was quite unusual for the D1X, which generally benefits from Nikon's well-known metering accuracy. (We boosted the exposure by +0.7 EV units.) Color looks very nice, but the real story here is the incredible detail the D1X brought out throughout the image, particularly evident in the fine tree branches above the house. As we observed in other tests we shot, we found that the D1's in-camera sharpening is very conservative: Post-capture unsharp masking in Photoshop(tm) brings out even more detail. Noise here is quite low: The texture you see in the shingles is from the shingles themselves, not the result of image noise. We used our razor-sharp 105mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor lens for this shot (and most of our other shots as well), stopped down to f/7.1 to insure that we'd be seeing the limits of the CCD, not the lens we were using. (The 105mm Micro Nikkor is legendary for its sharpness.) As you'd expect from such a lens, the image is tack-sharp corner to corner, with no sign of chromatic or geometric distortion. Overall, a *very* impressive performance! Resolution Series Large/Fine (2898 k) Large/Normal (1476 k) Large/Economy (726 k) Medium/Fine (1233 k) Medium/Normal (666 k) Medium/Normal (302 k) Sharpness Series We also shot with the D1X's adjustable Sharpness setting, which produced fairly minor adjustments to the overall image sharpness. One thing we noticed throughout our testing is that details have been slightly soft at the D1X's default Normal sharpness setting. The High setting increases sharpness a reasonable amount, which affects contrast just slightly and brightens the lighter values in the image. Alternatively, the Low setting smoothes out edges even more, decreasing contrast and brightness minimally. None (2977 k) Low (3127 k) Normal (2959 k) High (2908 k)
		Far-Field Test (2911 k) This image is shot at infinity to test far-field lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio. The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles and window detail, and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks, or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows. We shot this image with the automatic white balance setting, which produced fairly accurate color and saturation, although there was a bit of a warm cast overall. This shot is a strong test of detail, given the practically infinite range of fine detail in a natural scene like this, viewed from a distance. Resolution is outstanding, with exceptional detail visible in the pine branches above the house, and in the foliage in front of it. As noted earlier, the D1x's understated approach to in-camera sharpening results in photos that are just a hair soft, but which take post-exposure sharpening very well. We also judge a camera's dynamic range in this shot, comparing how well the camera holds detail in both the shadow and highlight areas. As we noted earlier, the D1x takes a very conservative approach to exposure also, tending to work hard to avoid overexposing highlights. (A wise practice in digital photography: Digital is a lot like slide film, in that overexposed highlights lose detail entirely. If you need to preserve maximum picture information in your shots, you'll want to expose for the highlights. The D1x does this, but the result is that photos with strong highlights tend to be rather dark in the midtones.) While the D1x's exposure approach is exactly right for professional shooters who'll be adjusting the tonal balance of their images post-exposure, we opted to go with a slight exposure boost here (+0.7EV), to brighten up the midtones at some cost of detail in the highlights. The D1X still picks up the stronger details in the trim of the bright white bay window though (judging by the lower right corner of the window front), losing some of the fainter details in the bright sunlight. The camera holds great detail in the darker parts of the image, such as the brick pattern beneath the porch, and the shaded details of the wooden fence on the right side of the house. We shot with the 125 (2901 k), 200 (2925 k), 400 (2931 k), 800 (2874 k), 1,600 (2806 k), and 3,200 (2764 k) ISO settings, noticing that exposure dimmed very slightly with the higher ISO settings (800 and up). At the highest ISO settings (1,600 and 3,200) more detail is visible in the bright paint of the bay window. Noise is very low at the 125 and 200 ISO settings, increasing to moderate at the 400 and 800 ISO settings, and finally becoming quite pronounced at the 1,600 and 3,200 ISO settings. (Which is why Nikon left these exposure settings for the "ISO Boost" custom settings menu, rather than including them The table below shows our standard resolution and quality series. As with the House poster, we also shot with the D1X's compressed (4410 k) and uncompressed (7710 k) RAW format for those interested in playing with the RAW files in Bibble or Qimage. Resolution Series Large/Uncompressed Note: Download and view in imaging program. (16,900 k) Large/Fine (2911 k) Large/Normal (1474 k) Large/Economy (706 k) Medium/Fine (1250 k) Medium/Normal (648 k) Medium/Normal (288 k) Sharpness Series We again shot with the D1X's adjustable Sharpness setting, which produced nice results. Contrast altered slightly with the High and Low sharpness settings, but overall brightness stayed fairly constant. None (2887 k) Low (2916 k) Normal (2933 k) High (2881 k) Tone Compensation Series The D1X also offers a series of Tone Compensation adjustments. The Less and More adjustments did a good job of altering the overall contrast without producing too strong of an effect. With the Auto setting, the camera automatically assesses the scene and determines the tone curve most appropriate to the image. The Normal setting applies the standard tone curve, which we felt could be "tweaked" a little more. Auto (1238 k) Less (1251 k) Normal (1246 k) More (1250 k)
		Lens Zoom Range For cameras with noninterchangeable lenses, we normally include a set of shots showing the range of the camera's zoom lens. Since the D1x can take virtually *any* lens Nikon makes (or has made in the past), there's no point to showing the range of any particular lens' zoom. As a passing note though, we found the 24-85mm Nikkor that we shot the Far Field test to be a very nice piece of optics, and the focal length range is nicely suited to the D1x's 1.5x focal length multiplier ratio, resulting in an equivalent zoom range of 36 - 128mm.
		Musicians Poster (1315 k) Coming Soon!
		Macro Shot As with the Lens Zoom Range test, we did not test the D1X's macro capabilities, because any results would pertain only to the lens in use.
		"Davebox" Test Target Excellent color! We shot samples of this target using the automatic (1808 k), daylight (1885 k), and manual (1865 k) white balance settings, again selecting the manual setting as the most accurate. (Auto and daylight both produced slightly warm color casts.) There's still a slight magenta cast in the manual sample, but a quick "auto levels" in Photoshop cleans it right up. Hue and saturation are excellent, and overall we'd rate the D1X a big step forward in color accuracy relative to the original D1. The D1X handles all the usual problem areas in this image effortlessly, easily separating the red and magenta blocks on the small horizontal color chart, preserving the delicate pastels of row "B" of the Q60 chart perfectly, resolving even the darkest steps of the grayscale wedges cleanly (!), showing incredible shadow detail in the charcoal bricks, and effortlessly preserving highlight detail as well. As if all that weren't enough, the image is just buttery-smooth, showing virtually no image noise anywhere. Blue and red channel noise are all but invisible, in all the color swatches, and even the darkest steps of the grayscale wedges are remarkably clean. Absolutely a stellar performance in every respect. One notable addition to the D1X is two separate color space settings, the default one producing finished files adapted to the sRGB color space, the other taking advantage of the expanded gamut of "Adobe RGB." For those interested, here are medium-sized files, captured with the sRGB and Adobe RGB color settings. (Note that the Adobe RGB setting will look duller on most monitors. This is a consequence of mapping a broader color gamut into the same 24-bit RGB coordinate space. Because sRGB stretches a smaller gamut across the same 24 bits of color values, colors toward the edge of the gamut are pushed toward higher saturation when viewed on a monitor. Because of its more conservative use of the available color coordinates, Adobe RGB looks duller, but can actually encode much more color information. Thus, people not using color-managed workflows will likely prefer the sRGB color option, while those using color management systems (particularly for prepress work, where the color gamuts of printing presses can considerably exceed that of sRGB devices) will likely prefer the Adobe RGB option. (Kudos to Nikon for providing a choice of color spaces! - This is a huge step in the right direction, in our humble opinion.). White Balance Adjustment Series The D1X is unusual in the degree to which it lets you customize its color behavior. All of its preset white balance options (auto, incandescent, fluorescent, direct sunlight, flash, cloudy, shade) let you adjust the color temperature of the lighting up or down across a range of 7 units. (nominal, three up, three down) Positive settings increase the color temperature of the resulting images, negative settings decrease it. The range of adjustment varies with the white balance setting (see the main body of our review for a table showing the white balance adjustment ranges), with the incandescent option offerig a range of only 550K, while the fluorescent option provides a range of 4,500K. The images below were shot with the automatic white balance option, and show the result of values of -3, 0, and +3 for the fine-tuning adjustment. The cropped images below make it a little hard to see the full impact of the adjustments, click on each image to view the full size images of the Davebox. (The neutral gray blocks at the right hand side of the cropped images are the easiest place to see the effect of the color shift.) Auto White Balance Minus 3 fine-tuning (514 k) Auto White Balance Nominal Setting (491 k) Auto White Balance Plus 3 fine-tuning (467 k) Hue Adjustment Series Besides the adjustments provided for the individual white balance settings, the D1X also has a custom settings option that lets you adjust the overall hue balance of the camera along the yellow/blue axis. The effect of this is fairly subtle, and appears to affect only colored areas, not neutral tones. in the series below, the effect is most obvious in the yellow and orange squares, or the lime green square in the second row. (Click on the images to see medium-resolution versions of the complete Davebox shots these were cropped from.) Hue=0 (1212 k) Hue=3 (Normal) (1224 k) Hue=6 (1208 k) Tone Compensation Series The D1X also provides adjustments to tweak the tonal values of the files it captures. Options include low/high contrast, and a unique "custom" option (which we didn't get to play with), that lets you develop a custom tone curve in the Nikon Capture software, and download it into the camera. (Just try that with your film-based SLR!) The series of images below show the results of the D1X's tonal adjustments on the Davebox target. Low Contract (1220 k) Normal (1220 k) High Contrast (1224 k) ISO Series We commented above on the remarkable smoothness of the D1X's images, and their almost complete lack of noise. This was while shooting at ISO 125. As the ISO setting increases, the noise naturally increases, but we were quite impressed overall with how low the D1X's noise levels were. The crops below are 1:1 samples from a gray swatch of the MacBeth target, at ISOs ranging from 125 to 3200. (The 1600 and 3200 settings are accessed via the Custom Settings Menu. Nikon didn't feel that the image quality with such high ISOs was good enough to officially certify as endorsed operating modes, but nonetheless wanted to make them available for photographers willing to accept the tradeoffs.) We didn't bother showing swatches from the ISO 125 - 400 samples because frankly, there wasn't anything to see: The noise really just wasn't visible in this small a swatch, and perhaps not at all, regardless of the size of the image area. The D1X's noise performance is really extraordinary. Despite Nikon's cautious rating, we felt the ISO 1600 noise levels were less than we've seen on many cameras at ISO 400. Overall, a very impressive performance! ISO 125 (2440K) ISO 160 (2424K) ISO 200 (2592K) ISO 320 (2664K) ISO 400 (2672K) ISO 500 (2344K) ISO 640 (2452K) ISO 800 (2488K) ISO 1600 (3044K) ISO 3200 (2784K)
		Low-Light Tests As we've mentioned elsewhere (multiple times), the aspect of the D1x's performance that most surprised us was its very low levels of image noise. The reason we were so surprised by this was that the smaller pixels of the D1x's sensor (relative to those of the original D1) should theoretically produce *more* noise than the D1 did. Nikon told us 'way back when the D1x was first announced, that they'd taken a "total systems" approach to noise reduction, and that we'd be "pleasantly surprised" by what we saw in the production units. We'd have to say that this was an understatement: The D1x's noise performance is among the best we've seen, remarkable in a camera that's packed so many pixels into such a relatively small area. In our low-light tests, the D1x easily produced excellent, well-saturated, and color-correct images even at the very lowest light levels we test at. (1/16 of a foot-candle, or 0.625 lux) Not only that, but image noise was amazingly low, even with 30 second exposures! Noise levels naturally increased as the ISO was boosted, but overall were much lower than we're accustomed to seeing for any particular ISO level that we tested at. Using the custom settings menu "ISO Boost" option to jump the ISO to 1600 and 3200 finally did produce objectionable levels of noise, but we were still surprised that the levels weren't higher than they were. Overall, an absolutely stellar low-light performance. (In fact ,the low light performance was so good, we saw no point in extending our test all the way up to 8 foot-candles, as we normally do. We stopped testing when we reached 1 foot-candle (about what you'd find on a well-lit city street), since the brightness and noise level there was about what we're used to seeing from cameras shooting in daylight. 1fc 7EV 11lux 1/2fc 6EV 5.5lux 1/4fc 5EV 2.7lux 1/8fc 4EV 1.3lux 1/16fc 3EV 0.67lx ISO 125 2,403.0 KB 2,390.8 KB 2,274.5 KB 2,561.9 KB 2,790.1 KB ISO 200 2,493.1 KB 2,425.9 KB 2,417.8 KB 2,693.6 KB 2,317.3 KB ISO 400 2,686.2 KB 2,680.5 KB 2,665.7 KB 2,795.1 KB 2,473.0 KB ISO 800 2,387.9 KB 2,311.7 KB 2,319.5 KB 2,488.8 KB 2,639.7 KB ISO 1600 2,926.0 KB 2,855.1 KB 2,892.2 KB 2,996.3 KB 3,111.6 KB ISO 3200 2,790.5 KB 2,900.9 KB 2,826.5 KB 2,807.8 KB 2,774.1 KB   Love high ISO photography? Hate noise? Check out Fred Miranda's ISO-R noise-reducing actions for Photoshop. Incredible noise reduction, with *no* loss of subject detail. (Pretty amazing, IMHO.) Check it out!
		Flash Range Test The D1X does not have a built-in flash, and the range of the SB-28DX we used with our evaluation unit goes *way* beyond the 15 foot limit of our studio test setup!
		ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test (2504 k) As we expected, the D1X's resolution-chart performance was very interesting. Because it has rectangular pixels, its resolution is quite a bit higher horizontally than vertically. See the Test Results section of the main review for a comparison of vertical and horizontal resolution between the D1X, the Minolta Dimage 7 (a high-end consumer camera with a 5.1 megapixel sensor), and the original D1. Vertically, the D1X did well, although it produced some odd wavy-line artifacts between about 900 and 1100 lines per picture height. We called its vertical resolution as 610 lines per picture height with no artifacts, 1100 lines with "strong detail", and 1230 lines at extinction. Horizontally, the D1X showed dramatically higher resolution than any camera we've yet tested. (June, 2001) It resolved 750 lines with no artifacts, 1270 lines with "strong detail", and 1600 lines at extinction. (Although there was really at least some response by the camera all the way out to 2000 lines horizontally.) Resolution Series Large/Uncompressed Note: Download and view in imaging program. (16,900 k) Large/Fine (2504 k) Large/Normal (1477 k) Large/Economy (691 k) Medium/Fine (1240 k) Medium/Normal (648 k) Medium/Normal (308 k) Sharpness Series None (2364 k) Low (2427 k) Normal (2505 k) High (2881 k)
		Viewfinder Accuracy/Flash Uniformity The D1X's viewfinder provides 95% frame coverage, matching most Nikon film-based SLR cameras. We personally prefer a 100% viewfinder, but most pros switching back and forth between the D1X and Nikon film-based SLRs will appreciate the matching viewfinder coverage. We noticed a slight vertical offset, with the final image shifted upward slightly, perhaps by 5% of the picture height. Not enough to be a problem in most situations, but something to remember for critical framing. Since viewfinder accuracy on the D1X is purely a function of the camera and not the lens (it being a true SLR), we shot only one viewfinder accuracy shot, as seen here. (1556 k)