Nikon D2X

Test Results

As with all Imaging Resource product tests, I encourage you to let your own eyes be the judge of how well the camera performed. Explore the images on the pictures page or in our D2X Photo Gallery, to see how the D2X's images compare to other cameras you may be considering.

Not sure which camera to buy? Let your eyes be the ultimate judge! Visit our Comparometer(tm) to compare images from the D2X with those from other cameras you may be considering. The proof is in the pictures, so let your own eyes decide which you like best!

• Color: Excellent color, accurate hue and saturation. Good white balance performance. Throughout my testing, the Nikon D2X delivered excellent color, hue-accurate, and with appropriate saturation. The white balance system left a slight cyan cast on my Davebox target which shifted the colors slightly in the Imatest color-error plot. Correcting for the slight color cast led to very accurate color throughout the spectrum though. (Apart from the typical oversaturation of the bright red swatch seen in most cameras I test, likely an issue with the sRGB color gamut.) The D2X's white balance system generally did quite well under a range of lighting conditions, although the auto setting left a bit too much warm cast for my tastes in the Indoor Portrait test, with its very warm-hued household incandescent lighting. Skin tones were pleasing and natural under a variety of lighting. All in all, a very good to excellent performance in this critical area.
  
  
• Exposure: Accurate exposure, average to slightly less than average exposure compensation required. Slightly contrasty tone curve under harsh lighting, exceptional shadow detail. The D2X delivered accurate exposures in my test shots, generally requiring an average or slightly less than average amount of exposure compensation in those shots that needed it. It had a little trouble with the highlights under the deliberately harsh lighting of the "Sunlit" Portrait test, but no more than most of its competition. What was truly amazing though, was the incredible amount of detail it held onto in shadow areas, with very low image noise levels. Overall, Imatest measured a dynamic range of 8.77 f-stops, a very good figure.
  
  
• Resolution/Sharpness: Excellent resolution, 2,100 lines of "strong detail" in full resolution mode, 1,550 in "Speed Crop" mode. Excellent resolution in both modes. The full-resolution mode delivered around 2,100 lines/picture height, and Speed Crop gave about 1,550 lines of "strong detail." Some reviewers will likely argue for slightly higher resolution numbers in Speed Crop mode, but I tend to be fairly conservative in these ratings. The bottom line though, is that Speed Crop comes very close to the performance of 8-megapixel d-SLRs, making the Nikon D2X a worthy competitor in that arena.
  
  
• Image Noise: Very clean images, which contributes to the D2X's outstanding shadow detail. Results remain good to ISO 800, but 1600 is dramatically worse, and 3200 is only marginally usable. At ISO levels below 400, the D2X's images were very clean, noise just won't be an issue for 99% of users. At ISO 400, the camera started to trade away some subtle subject detail to maintain the low noise levels. At ISO 800, the noise was slightly higher, but the loss of subtle detail was a bit more noticeable. At ISO 1,600, noise jumped a fair bit, and the loss of detail was pronounced. At ISO 3,200, the image was extremely noisy, a great deal of detail was lost, and the color saturation suffered considerably. As I've been noting lately though, to really evaluate digital image noise, you need to print the photos out and look at them that way. - On-screen viewing correlates rather poorly with visual impressions obtained from prints. On that basis, even 13x19" prints from ISO 800 images made on our Canon i9900 studio printer looked quite good, and 8x10 prints from ISO 3200 images looked good enough to use for a lot of applications.
  
  
• Closeups: (Not applicable, a function of the lens.)
  
  
• Night Shots: Excellent low-light performance, though color balance was somewhat warm. Low image noise, though. Autofocus system worked to about 1/10 foot-candle (with an f/2.8 lens), a very low light level. The Nikon D2X easily handled the darkest levels of my test (1/16 foot-candle, about 0.7 lux) at all ISO levels, delivering very clean images. Its autofocus system worked down to about 1/10 foot-candle, more than 3 f-stops darker than typical city street lighting at night.
  
  
• Viewfinder Accuracy: A very accurate optical viewfinder. I measured the Nikon D2X's viewfinder accuracy at 99%, agreeing with Nikon's 100% claim to within the limit of the test.
  
  
• Optical Distortion: (Not applicable, a function of the lens.)
  
  
• Shutter Lag & Cycle Time: Very fast shutter response, very good cycle times, good buffer capacity, very good buffer clearing speed. By any measure, the Nikon D2X is a fast camera. Provided you leave its Review function off, shutter lag is only 44 msec (0.044 sec) in most any operating mode. With Review enabled, the shutter delay increases to 0.163 sec. Shot to shot cycle times are very good as well, at 0.22 - 0.23 second in single-shot mode when the review function is disabled. In continuous-high mode, cycle time is 5.3 frames/second when shooting at the camera's full 12.2 megapixel resolution, or 8.0 frames/second in its "Speed Crop" mode, which yields 6.8 megapixel files. Buffer depth is good, ranging from 16 full-res RAW+JPEG images, to 20 large/fine JPEGs in full-res mode, up to 27 RAW+JPEGs and 34 large/fine JPEGs in Speed Crop mode. Buffer clearing times are quite fast, beating most of the competition.
  
  
• Battery Life: Really excellent battery life. Because the D2X uses a custom external power connector, we couldn't conduct the direct power-consumption measurements on it that we normally do. That said though, the D2X's battery life throughout our testing was exceptionally good. In the manual, Nikon offers two different battery-life projections, based on two different scenarios, with claimed battery life ranging from 850 to 2600 shots. We didn't conduct any formal test, but easily got a thousand or more shots per charge in our own usage.
  
  
• Print Results: Excellent quality, images hold together very well, even at huge magnification. Testing hundreds of digital cameras, we've found that you can only tell just so much about a camera's image quality by viewing its images on-screen. Ultimately, there's no substitute for printing a lot of images and examining them closely. For this reason, we now routinely print sample images from the cameras we test on our Canon i9900 studio printer, and on the Canon iP5000 here in the office. (See our Canon i9900 review for details on that model.) In the case of the Nikon D2X, the 13x19 capacity of the i9900 didn't begin to tax its image quality. With judicious post-capture sharpening and scaling, its images will look good at almost any output size, assuming a reasonable viewing distance. At 13x19, you can get right up on the print and squint as much as you want, and you just won't see any artifacts or lost detail. Scaled larger, images from the D2X "hold together" exceptionally well, with no visible artifacts as you continue to stretch them. Very impressive.
  
  

Conclusion

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With a gap of nearly three years since the introduction of the D1X, we were beginning to wonder about Nikon's fate in the high-end SLR world. Adding to these concerns, the high-speed D2H struggled with image quality, particularly at high ISOs, and was overall less than what many Nikon shooters had been hoping for. With the release of the D2X though, Nikon has re-established itself as a leader at the high end of the pro SLR market. An amazingly versatile camera, the D2X is able to satisfy the needs of both studio and sports shooters, delivering excellent image quality, amazing dynamic range (particularly in the shadow end of the tonal scale), and the shooter's choice of either extreme speed at good resolution, or good speed at excellent resolution. Digital aspects aside, the Nikon D2X is also a superb shooter's camera, with an excellent "feel" in the hand and a fast and fluid user interface. Combine all this with Nikon's Advanced Wireless Lighting system for TTL metering with multiple strobe units, and the new WT-2A Wireless transmitter, and you have an array of capabilities that's all but unequalled. Kudos to Nikon on the D2X; I only hope they can build enough to meet demand.

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