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April 2000

First Exposure: Nikon D1
By John Rettie

It’s not often that a new camera comes along that generates so much interest. The Nikon D1, which was first disclosed one year ago, is just such a camera. Although Nikon showed a wooden mockup of the camera at the PMA show in February 1999 it did not reveal any details except to say that it would be a significantly cheaper than the closest cameras already on the mar-ket. At the time the closest compa-rable camera was the Kodak DCS 620, which cost around $16,000. Industry pundits reckoned Nikon would probably introduce the D1 at about $7000 price point.

Finally in June Nikon unveiled pro-totypes of the D1 and announced that the retail price would be $5580 when the camera went on sale in the fall. Needless to say, this aggres-sive price was greeted with praise from digital camera fans and skepti-cism by Nikon’s competitors. All that remained now was for users to get their hands on actually produc-tion cameras.

Nikon started shipping the D1 in October although supplies were naturally constrained at first as buyers around the world grabbed the cameras as soon as they hit the dealer’s shelves. Within hours mes-sage boards on the numerous digital photography web sites around the world were full of users’ reports. Most praised the camera while a few criticized it, saying the quality of the images was not as good as those produced by the much more expen-sive Kodak cameras. Gradually though, as more and more profes-sional photojournalists and sports photographers in particular have got their hands on the cameras the praises are beginning to far out-weigh the naysayers.

Anyone who has used a Nikon F100 will immediately feel at home with the D1 as it feels much the same. The magnesium body is cov-ered in the usual black finish with the trademark red pad on the hand-grip. There are the two thumbwheel controls in front of and behind the shutter release for controlling aper-ture and shutter speeds. There’s the four-way toggle switch on the back for adjusting the focus points and for scrolling through various menu options used for camera settings. There are two small LCD screens on top and on the battery compartment for displaying information. In fact, the only significant external differ-ence on the D1 that sets it apart from the F100 is the large color LCD screen on the camera back. It’s not until you see this that there is any clue that this is not just an ordinary 35mm film camera. This screen is of course the viewing screen that al-lows one to review images after they have been captured and to view the various menu options.

It’s important to remember that a digital camera is in effect a regular camera, used to capture images, and also a film processor used to process and store the images after they have been captured. For this reason it is appropriate to look at the two as-pects of the D1 separately.

First, The Camera
The D1 has all the attributes one has come to expect in a current pro-fessional Nikon camera. It has 3D-matrix image exposure control using a 1005-pixel RGB exposure color me-tering system, which is the same as the system found in the F5. Metering can be full matrix, center-weighted or spot. The D1 has the same autofocusing sensor module as the F5 and F100 with five AF sensors, allowing for a choice of five focusing positions. Autofocusing can be achieved in single or contin-uous servo or manual. Focus track-ing is automatically activated when the subject starts to move. Of course, all these functions only work with the newest D-series Nikon lenses, but as always the camera will accept just about every F-mount Nikkor lens ever made.

One area where the D1 differs from the F100 is in its shutter. It has a charge-coupled electronic shutter which gives it a shutter speed range from 30 seconds to 1/16,000. What’s more it has a flash sync speed of 1/500. Being a digital camera it does not have a motor drive but it can shoot at 4.5 frames per second for up to 21 shots. Its shutter lag time is 0.058 seconds. The unique-to-the-D1 NiMH battery pack fits in the bottom of the cam-era and powers all functions on the camera.

The evaluation camera we tried included the new 17–35mm f/2.8 zoom lens and the SB-28DX flash-gun. Both of these items have been introduced in conjunction with the D1’s release as they work well to-gether. The flash is an upgraded version of the popular SB-28 and has different circuitry to provide cor-rect exposures with a digital camera as the TTL reading is taken off a gray curtain behind the mirror just in front of the CCD instead of from the film in a regular camera. The flash stills works correctly with a regular film camera. Because the ef-fective length of a lens is different in the D1 compared to a 35mm cam-era, the 17–35mm zoom becomes a 25.5–52.5mm zoom lens, making it an ideal everyday lens for photo-journalists and many others.

Overall this combination of cam-era, lens and flash worked well. At no time did we feel the camera was any different in operation from a regular film camera. In fact, the ma-jor difference was that we did not have to worry about changing film. On one occasion we shot 400 pic-tures without having to add a stor-age card or even change batteries. It was like shooting a camera with a continuous roll of film.

Next, The Processing Side Of The Camera
When you analyze the differences between various film cameras there is not a lot to choose between the end results—a good camera with a good lens will produce a good pic-ture. The more important variables are the film and lens. Sure there are differences between the ease of use, speed of operation, the robustness of the camera body and the ability to operate in adverse conditions. With a digital camera though the most important part of the final re-sult—the image—is a function of the camera. The critical part of the camera is the CCD chip and the electronics built into the camera. It’s this that differentiates the good from the barely adequate.

Ideally a digital camera should be no different to use than a film cam-era. Its operation should be trans-parent during the picture taking stage. After the picture is taken the fun begins. The information cap-tured in a traditional camera is stored on the film and it is not available for viewing until the film is processed. The film also acts as the storage mechanism, processing and storage are fulfilled at the same time.

On a digital camera the informa-tion is captured instantly on the CCD. It then needs to be stored immediately. The processing can be done straight away or it can be done later. In effect, the process works in the opposite way from a film cam-era. Storage is the critical issue im-mediately after the picture is cap-tured.

This has been the Achilles heel of most digital cameras. Studio cam-eras tethered to a powerful com-puter offload the information to the computer for storing and processing. But obviously out in the field this is impossible so the “computer” has to be part of the camera.

On all these fronts the D1 sets new standards. For starters, as men-tioned before, it can capture up to 4.5 frames per second on continu-ous mode for a burst of 21 frames. It then takes several seconds for the camera to transfer those from the internal memory buffer onto the storage card but as they are loaded, more pictures can be captured at a slower rate. Obviously, in most cases it is unlikely that one would need to shoot much faster. After all even a film camera’s “buffer” fills up after 36 exposures!

The D1 has one Compact Flash (CF) Type I/II slot for holding a Compact Flash storage card or the new IBM microdrive. During the short time we had the camera we got to try a 96MB CF card and a 340 MB microdrive. Although Nikon has not yet officially approved the usage of the microdrive because of con-cerns about heat and usage in areas with high humidity, the reality is that the drive works very well in al-most all circumstances—it certainly worked well for us. We shot 400 pic-tures at Fine and Normal settings and only filled about 300 MB of the 340 MB on the card. It was great not having to load film 11 times during the shoot! And not once was the camera not ready for the all-impor-tant shot.

It should be noted that at the highest “Raw” level image quality, the camera can only shoot 10 im-ages in one burst as each image is about 5Mb in size. These images also have to be processed by the Nikon software on a computer whereas the images saved at the other settings are standard JPEG files that can be read by any soft-ware immediately.

Although the D1 comes with a Firewire cable connection, we never actually connected it during our re-view period as it is so much easier to just take the storage card out and place it in a card reader connected to the computer. The transfer is easier and faster and avoids having to turn the camera on. In a studio however the camera can be tethered via the Firewire cable and operated remotely with the optional Nikon Capture software.

An important part of image cap-turing on a digital camera is adjust-ing the white balance. Most digital cameras read the information at the camera body using an external white balance sensor. In the D1 the white balance is captured by the me-tering sensor, which means it is measuring the white balance of the subject as seen through the lens. This is significant as it allows a more accurate reading as the cam-era and subject can be in two differ-ent lighting conditions such as shade and sunlight. In addition the white balance can also be adjusted to variety of conditions such as flu-orescent, flash, cloud, sunlight or shade. One can also manually ad-just the color balance to make an image warmer or cooler in the same way the EV value is adjusted in steps. This proved useful, just like having a built in set of warming fil-ters.

There are numerous other features on the D1 that help it produce excel-lent images including a low-pass fil-ter just in front of the CCD to pre-vent color aliasing. An infrared ray reduction filter is also included to eliminate the effects of infrared rays.

Because the camera is a SLR it is not possible to preview an image be-fore the picture is taken. However it can be reviewed immediately after capture on the 2-inch color LCD screen on the back of the camera. Each image captured can be re-played rapidly and it is possible to see a histogram of an image along with pertinent detail such as shutter speed, aperture settings along with the JPEG compression level. Once one has experienced this instant feedback capability of digital cam-eras it is very disconcerting to have to go back to using a film camera and have to wait until the film has been processed to see exactly what images have been captured.

You’ll notice that we have not yet mentioned the CCD. This is of course the most important part of the D1. It’s a 23.7x15.6mm 2.74-megapixel chip that produces a 2012x1324-pixel image. Although it only has slightly more pixels than the Nikon Coolpix 950 (1600x1200) its physical size is about 15 times greater because each pixel is about nine times larger in area. According to Nikon, this allows each pixel to capture more light with a wider dy-namic range. The camera’s com-puter processes the image to pro-duce a less grainy image than that ob-tained by high-speed film according to Nikon. At the normal setting the “speed” of the CCD is equivalent to 200 ISO. It can also be adjusted up to 1600 ISO with a matching gain in noise.

What’s the quality of the image like? That’s the whole crux of the matter, of course. Pretty impressive at first. It is very difficult to show what the images look like in a mag-azine. In reality it would be almost impossible to differentiate an image captured on the D1 from one cap-tured on a F100. We printed up an image of a model taken on slide film and compared it to a similar image shot at the same time on the D1. An 8x10 and an 11x14 were printed on an Epson Photo EX ink jet printer which is actually a two-year old printer so is not even the best that can be done. The digital 8x10 is sharper than the photographic 8x10 (machine) print and there is definitely more detail in the model’s hair. On the 11x14 print one can begin to see clumping in areas if one holds the print about six inches from one’s eyes. At normal viewing distances the 11x14 digital image looks just fine. In big enlargements there is still a slight problem of pix-elization along angled hard edges such as on a car body or patterns on clothing. However, at smaller sizes there is no discernible difference from a traditional photographic print. Color reproduction was accu-rate in our tests. The tone of images as well as the white balance can be changed on the camera so that color balance can be adjusted in different ways. Then in most cases colors can be adjusted easily after images have been transferred to a computer.

Perhaps the best demonstration of the D1’s capability is that one was used to capture the impressive dou-ble page picture of the defining mo-ment in Super Bowl XXXIV, which was published in Sports Illustrated. This illustrates that the D1 is a camera that can absolutely compete with a high performance 35mm film camera—in fact it is more efficient as one does not have to change film after every 36 exposures. For sports photographers shooting a burst of 21 shots is a no brainier and there is less worry about missing a shot while changing a roll of film or even of having to be concerned about using up too much film.

There’s no doubt that the Nikon D1 is the shape of things to come. It is the first SLR-type digital camera built from the ground up as a digital camera, rather than being a modi-fied film camera, that is fully com-parable in operation to a high-end 35mm camera. Because of this it will undoubtedly earn it’s place in the photography hall of fame just as the Nikon F did some four decades ago.

Brief Specification Overview
Type: 2.74 Megapixel CCD Imaging Sensor with 2,000 x 1,312 pixel high definition picture features original Nikon algorithms and ASIC for ul-tra-high speed processing; large 11µm Pixels feature excellent sig-nal/noise ratio; Lithium Niobate Low Pass filter for enhanced per-formance; film-like smoothness and extended dynamic range
Shooting Speed: up to 4.5 per second in bursts up to 21 pictures
Image Storage: accepts Compact Flash™ Card (Types I and II); IEEE1394 camera-to-computer in-terface cable; video cable (CF card and IEEE1394 cable sold separately)
Impressions: size, weight, balance, handling, and controls feel like pro-fessional Nikon F5 and F100 35mm SLR models. Compact and light weight design built on Magnesium Metal chassis; features high resis-tance to penetration by moisture and dust
LCD Quality: very high quality 2-inch diagonal LCD 114,0000-dot low temperature polysilicon TFT color monitor built-in. Thumbnail, single image, slide-show, data display and histogram operation possible
Custom Operation: thirty-One Custom Settings enable extended and very versatile operation
Lens Mount: features Nikon F Lens Mount; compatible with virtually ev-ery F Mount Nikkor lens, the same lenses used with Nikon 35mm SLR cameras (angle coverage factor com-pared to 35mm format is 1.5X)
Metering/White Balance: exclusive Nikon 3D Digital Matrix Image Control assures superior exposure control with exclusive Nikon 3D Color Matrix Meter, TTL white bal-ance and Tone Compensation—Control range from fully automatic to fully manual; also includes Variable Center-Weighted Meter and five Spot Meters
Full automation for exposure, white balance, tone compensation and automatic balanced fill-flash en-sures very high quality images with-out requirements for additional computer image processing or ma-nipulation; Custom Settings also include edge enhancement feature. Very high-quality monochrome (B&W) images directly from camera also possible
Autofocus: Nikon High Speed Dynamic Autofocus with Focus Tracking and Lock-on™ features 5 sensors with wide area coverage, in-cluding 3 cross type sensors—oper-ates with all AF, AF-I and AF-S Nikkor optics, provides Electronic Rangefinder operation with all com-patible lenses for manual focusing
ISO Range: ISO equivalency 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 plus Custom setting selections of 3,200 and 6,400
Shutter Speeds: exclusive top shut-ter speed of 1/16,000 second and long speeds up to 30 seconds
Flash: with Nikon accessory SB-28DX speedlight D1 provides exclu-sive TTL 3D Matrix Automatic Balanced Fill-flash and top flash sync speeds up to 1/500 second (SB-28DX operates with all other Nikon 35mm SLR models with ISO hot shoe)
Power Source: interchangeable NiMH Battery Pack (EN-4) and dedi-cated Quick Charger MH-16 for high capacity picture quantity (battery can also be charged using Nikon F100's MH-16charger)
Image Processing: optional Nikon Capture Software provides access to unprocessed image files and can produce RGB TIFF files up to about 15 Megabytes with 16-bit/color depth. Can also handle YcbCr file format. Also provides remote control operation of the D1 via IEEE1394 connection with either PC or Macintosh™ (trademark of Apple Corporation) computers. (IEEE1394 cable sold separately)

John Rettie is a photojournalist who re-sides in Santa Barbara, CA. He has been us-ing a camera as a professional for 27 years, a computer for 17 years, and has combined his knowledge of both for the past five years. Readers can contact him by e-mail at JohnR87@aol.com or by snail-mail c/o Rangefinder.