Re: VR Photography Review of Nikon D3 now online

Robert,

You have the option of turning this long exposure NR on or off with the D3, but if it's on, it does prevent the camera from taking further exposures until after it has finished processing.  It has to be this way, because the camera is actually doing a "dark" exposure on the sensor for the same length of time as your real exposure, in order to get accurate data on the amounts and location of the sensor noise at the time and for that particular exposure duration in order to be able to subtract this from your real exposure.  The sensor is already occupied doing a second exposure, so it can be made available to do another one at the same time.  So an 8-sec. exposure will require another 8-sec. of NR before you can trigger the shutter again -- if you have this NR feature turned on.

I'm not aware of how the Canon noise reduction system works, so I can't really comment on which one might be better.  But I do know that the Nikon D3 system is very effective.  I make sure this menu option is always set to "on" on my D3.

The other factor that plays into this so well with the D3 is that its high ISO capability (with such good quality) allows you to do these dusk types of shots ("blue hour, as you call them) at much faster shutter speeds.  At ISO 3200 or 6400, your shutter speeds are likely to still be less than a second, and very easily less than several seconds.  That's probably as much time as it takes to pan the camera to the next pan increment.  The post exposure NR doesn't really slow you down all that much.

Where it *does* slow you down is on the much longer exposures... 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and more.  But you probably won't be doing much of this unless you are intentionally shooting at lower ISO's at night.  If you spend a lot of time doing this kind of work, film is still an excellent option (of course, you WILL need to deal with reciprocity shifts and exposure adjustments... and there's that nasty delay while you wait for the results to come back from the lab...).

For me, the tradeoff for the higher quality imagery of the D3 at high ISOs is well worth it.  I ordered my own D3 within a couple of days after having to return the one loaned from Nikon.  It's been a long time since I've really been "wowed" by the capabilities of a camera.  However, with the latest crop of Nikon and Canon pro D-SLRs, we're starting to see the benefits of all those years of sensor and processing R&D that we all funded when we bought so many overpriced and underperforming digital cameras early in the game (grin).

Regards,

Scott Highton

Author, Virtual Reality Photography

Web: http://www.vrphotography.com