Vintage Digital? (12/05/2009): I seem to have gone a little retro.

Here's the background. In 2004, I was working on a book project in San Diego. I shot "after" images of specified locations throughout the city to be published side by side with historic photos made from the same locations of the same locations. Late in the game, I accidentally released the wrong clamp on my tripod, and when I put the tripod over my shoulder, the quick release did exactly that and I slung my Nikon D1 down a flight of concrete steps at funky Horton Plaza. I hurled it down those steps the way a jai-lai player flings a ball. It sounded like one of those comedic recordings of plates and dishes falling and clattering. It went on for days, or at least for several seconds. The lens came apart into several rings and shells and individual glass elements all of which rang and gonged with ludicrous variety as they rolled and bounced from step to step. The camera body made hideous thunking noises as it bounced down the stairwell in great, expensive leaps. When the body came to rest, it seemed to be OK. But within a few hours, it failed in various unreproducible ways, and then it shut off for good. I replaced it with the newly introduced D100, which had several advantages and virtues but never had the same "real camera" feel that was unique to the D1. I would have liked to replace my D1 with Nikon's flagship model at the time, the 5.4 megapixel D1x, but it was far too expensive to consider seriously.

A few years later, I defected to Canon because Nikons of that era just couldn't do long exposures under the stars. Also, the Nikon D100 couldn't use my shelves of old Nikon AI and AI-S glass nearly as gracefully as the Canon 20D could. I sold the D100 and whole-heartedly adopted the Canon prosumer line. I used Nikons from 1971 to 2006, from F to D100.

Understand that my perfectly competent Canons have delivered everything I have ever asked of them. But to me they still feel more like electronic scene recorders rather than cameras. Nikons feel like cameras. It's how I was raised. Some men are Ford men; some are Nikon men. My Canons are very nice Hondas; my Nikons are big-block Mustangs. Both get the job done, but with significantly different panache.

Here at the end of the oughts, cameras from the D1 era are practically given away. I still have a lot of Nikon pieces lying around, including nice lenses that I sometimes adapt to Canon bodies but that more often just gather dust. On a used equipment forum primarily devoted to astronomical equipmnet, I saw a D1x with all the right options (buffer upgrade, multiple batteries, charger, remote release, a decent CF card) for an irresistable price. I bought it for about a nickel on the dollar "back in the day."

When I dusted off some old glass and began to put the D1x through its paces, I expected it to be a museum piece, a curiosity, a nostalgia-tinged design artifact that would fit right in with the rotary dial telephone, the sextant, slide rules, 1940's-vintage medical microscope, and wind-up wristwatch that I still enjoy. I thought that every time I used it, I would want to shout, "Look how far we have come!" Quite the contrary. This is still a very capable camera. What I really want to shout is, "Who needs 20 megapixels and all that jazz?" I can hardly believe what this iron-age workhorse can do.

Some highlights:

• My old manual focus Nikkor lenses work well on the D1x, as well or better than they do on my Canons, and far better than they ever did on the D1 or D100.
• For the first time ever, my old 55mm F1.2 Nikkor actually shines. Every other time I tried to use it, it was dreadfully soft. I should have sold it fifteen years ago, but now I'm glad I didn't: it works on this body.
• The noise in the D1x at iso 800 and even iso 1600 is nothing like I remembered from the original D1. Those speeds are actually useful on the D1x, especially with modern noise reduction software to assist at the higher setting. Images at ISO 125 and 200 are as clean as any I shoot with anything (at exposures shorter than 1/4 second anyway).
• It turns out that Nikon binned the (rectangular) pixels in both the D1 and the D1x and interpolated the data from the individual wells to produce their respective "native" file sizes. In the D1x the files defaults to about 3000x2000 pixels, which is not so different from the filesize of my 20D. But if you use Adobe RAW to change the way RAW files encode the sensor data, things can get spectacular. I'm currently reading the CCD at its full physical resolution horizontally and interpolating it 2:1 vertically. This produces a 10.4MP file (4014 x 2613 pixels) at 12 bits per pixel. These images look positively modern. When there is enough light, the D1x's files are wonderful.

All is not peaches and cream:

• It is slow -- the frames-per-second rate is stately, and the passage of data from CCD to memory card is glacial.
• It is heavy. Really heavy. Beyond "pleasantly solid." It's heavy. The Nikon user's manual warns against wearing the strap around your neck (lest you risk strangulation). I don't know about strangulation, but you could slip a disk. The camera puts me in mind of cast-iron skillets in both solidity and sheer dead weight.
• It eats batteries; I get a small fraction as many frames from a single charge as any of my Canons deliver (and that from much smaller and lighter cells).
• It's electronically noisy. Exposures longer than about 1/4 second have hot pixels. Beyond 1 second, there are a lot of very hot pixels. At a guess, I'd say that I can expose 100x longer in my Canons and still have quieter data. Measurements to come, just because I'm curious. It will never have a place under the stars.
• The menus are much improved from the D1, but compared to the modern Canons they are astonishingly clumsy.

It is not the camera's fault that my old Nikkor lenses are all manual focus primes -- solid, heavy, built for the ages, and bought for Nikon F's and F2's and finally for the N90 -- but autofocus is a feature I grew dependent upon a long time ago.

After using the camera for a few days, I bought the strobe Nikon made for the D1x from the same guy who sold me the camera. Some deals are just too good to pass up. Since it turns out that I'll probably actually use this camera from time to time, a little extra light would be handy. I'm impressed with its integration with the camera, too. I've added a new, inexpensive, but very well reviewed 18-55mm Nikkor with VR (Vibration Resistance, or as Canon puts it, image stabilization) built for the modern epoch. The lens was a demo model sold through Cameta's eBay auctions; I don't think I've ever paid less for anything with the word "Nikon" on it. We'll see what happens next. It could get scary.

Concentration: Amy playing Farmville

Nikon D1x, AF-S 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 Nikkor-G VR @ 18mm
Manual exposure: 1/3 sec @ F3.5 ISO 200, RAW
Nikon SB-28DX in DTTL mode (-1/3 EB), SC-17 remote cord

I will surely still drive my Canons almost everywhere, but I am fascinated and oddly comforted using this anvil-solid not-really-a-relic. I'm still a Nikon guy, I guess.

And I'm confused. Using the D1x imakes me think very hard about switching back to the Nikon D700 and its full-frame sensor. But that, in turn, inspires me to consider sticking with Canon and looking for a bargain on an older full-frame 5D. Last year, I was hot to shift to the 5DMkII. Maybe my half-recognized Nikon leanings made me reluctant to invest that heavily in Canon. Why can't I just enjoy modern Canons and this old soldier for their respective virtues without such expensive, strategic, long-term thoughts intruding?

Vintage digital. What a concept.

:: back to the slow blog ::