Nikon loses Military account...nearly

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Arkady

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Just heard from the bosses that Nikon may lose the contract to supply the second-tier account with the military.
We currently run two tiers - Professional Stream (that's me), that concerns itself with General PR and hard-news work, and the Operational Stream, that concerns itself with sneaky surveillance stuff, infra-red capture, etc. In the past, Op Stream have used D100 and D200...but...
After extensive testing of various models, the best bodies for the Operational Stream came out as being the new Fuji Pro bodies - very little noise at ultra-high ISO settings and a very, very good auto white balance under awkward lighting (blue cars actually appearing blue under orange street light and that sort of thing).
Naturally Nikon went ballistic as the cachet of supplying the military hugely outweighs the monetary considerations (we're 'only' talking about 2,000 camera bodies here...), plus the fact that we tend to lead the way with these things - most other armed forces worldwide follow our lead.
We'll be buying D3 to replace the D2x bodies we currently use for Professional Stream, and because of a mammoth (and I mean mammoth) whinge by Nikon we'll be re-testing next year...watch this space.
 
Interesting news there Arkady. Have to say though, those Fuji DSLRs do look very nice. The extended dynamic range is very tempting, especially in contrast situations. On what grounds did Nikon want the retest?

Edit;

And while im at it.. how do you find the D2X? Its very likely to be my next body and wondered if you had any comments, criticisms etc. Ie, how do you find the weight of it?
 
I love the D2x and am a little upset that it's being replaced so soon by the Army - I should have the D3 by mid-'08.
Build quality is utterly superb, image colour and rendition is very good; white balance is pretty good (but as i shoot RAW this is less of a factor for me). I will say that it does suffer from noise at higher ISO settings even with noise reduction on (and all that really means is that a highly sophisticated 'blurring' takes place to reduce the appearance of noise).
Weight is good - though it feels 'heavy', the weight contributes to a very stable shooting platform - I can hand-hold shots down to 1/8sec quite easily as long as the subject cooperates...lol ergonomics are very, very good...best ever, in fact.

The D3 ISO range starts at 200ISO so it appears to be aimed at Sports 'togs and Press users, rather than fine-art 'togs.
Maybe wait to see if Nikon release a counterpart D3x with lower (ie higher-quality) ISO range, aimed at the fine-art market? I would.

Nikon wanted the re-test on the grounds that it wasn't done under lab conditions (but as the Boss pointed out we don't use them under lab conditions...lol) anyway it may be that Nikon have finally taken heed of what we've been saying since the D1x - they now make their own CCDs rather than buying them in.
 
Interesting news Arkady, along with your mini review of the D2X and info on the D3.
There goes my excuse that I use Nikon so I can pretend to be a spy for MI6 :p

MK you don't need a D2X. Your photo's are already superb, you know the old adage; wait until you reach the limits of your current kit before replacing it!

I'm only saying it because I'm jealous. ;) Does the full frame D3 not tempt you to save up a bit longer and get that?

Panzer
 
Arkady, if they're just going to dispose of those D200s i'll gladly buy a one or two :)
 
They get trashed...beleive me you wouldn't want one after the clowns on the Op Stream get finished with them. When I was teaching the North-Face Ninjas at Hereford, we'd get through about 12 bodies with each intake of 30 students in a 6 month period. All kinds of drama from broken lenses and cards inserted back-to-front (who says it won't fit backwards?), right through to bodies and lenses crushed under vehicles and drowned in mud. In one case we had a D100 hit by a burst of 9mm from a H&K MP-9. Not much left of that one...lol He claimed it was an accident, but we all 'knew' it was done on purpose...'just because we can...' bloody SF...Special Needs maybe...
 
Oh, right :) -- Darn! There go my hopes for a cheap D200 :)

That's crazy though, i'd love to see more of your photos, if you're allowed to post them?
 
Thanks for that Arkady. :)

Panzerbjorn said:
MK you don't need a D2X. Your photo's are already superb, you know the old adage; wait until you reach the limits of your current kit before replacing it!

I'm only saying it because I'm jealous. ;) Does the full frame D3 not tempt you to save up a bit longer and get that?

Panzer
Click to expand...

Hehe, cheers Panzerbjorn. Im mainly wanting the D2X/D2Xs for the inbuilt vertical grip and shutter, MF/AF switch on the body and autoexposure bracketing. I know its a bit overkill for those needs, but the inbuilt grip is what is really tempting me. If they made as D70s in a pro body, I would probably get that.

I am tempted by the D3, but its not saving up a BIT more, its like over 3X more. Looking on the bay, I can probably get a D2X for £1200, and hopefully even less by the time ive saved up the money and the D3 has been released, whereas I would have to get the D3 new for about £3800. And anyway, if I got the D3, I would need to replace half my lenses to see the full benefit.

The bodies in the running at the moment are D300+Grip, D2X and the D2Xs.
 
Fair enough MK, I guess the price difference is pretty substantial. I Didn't realise it was that bad!

Arkady there are some awesome shots in that devart gallery!

Panzer
 
Arkady said:
and the Operational Stream, that concerns itself with sneaky surveillance stuff, infra-red capture, etc. In the past, Op Stream have used D100 and D200...but...
Click to expand...

That's the lot my mate used to work for! He's just moved back from Northern Ireland to set up the Red Cap TA Centre in Manchester.

Carl.
 
Interesting that you're finding the Fuji sensor give less noise and better colour- one of the reasons I upgraded from S2 Pro to the S5 Pro was that I was quite impressed with the earlier CCD- the newer one is even better.

Also interesting is the 'Nikon wrecking spree' you allude to- from time to time on E-bay I see one seller with large lots of damaged Nikon gear. Last time he had a box of 25 battered 'ex-Government' 50mm AF lenses for sale- non of which worked!
 
ah that'll be Jimmy...we had nearly 300 FM-2 kits to dispose of - we kept all the good stuff for ourselves.
 
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