Full review of production-level Nikon D1H posted!
By
Dave Etchells
(Wednesday, November 21, 2001 - 23:53 EST)
Finally, a full review of the D1H, with all our standard test shots available for detailed comparison!
Choose your cliche: "Broke new ground," "Raised the Bar," take your pick. However you describe it, Nikon really wowed the camera world earlier this year when they introduced their D1X professional SLR. People tended to focus on its nearly 6 megapixel resolution as being the biggest news about it, but Nikon's advances in color rendition and noise reduction were arguably more significant in terms of real impact on workflow and the immediate usability of its image files. The one limitation relative to the original D1 model was that the higher resolution dictated slower shot to shot cycle times. Announced at the same time as the D1X, the D1H represents the other fork of the resolution/speed tradeoff, with the same 2.7 megapixel resolution as the original D1, but an improved maximum frame rate of 5 frames per second. While not quite up to the 8 frames per second achieved by Canon's EOS-1D speed demon, many argue that the D1H is actually more useful for sports and photojournalism shooting, thanks to its huge 40 frame buffer memory.(That's fully 8 seconds of maximum-speed, 5 fps shooting.) While the speed boost relative to the original D1 is relatively modest, I expect that a not inconsiderable number of D1 owners will upgrade to the D1H, because Nikon's improvements in color and noise levels have been so dramatic. Certainly, in terms of color and image noise, the D1H is at the top of its class, in every way on par with the superlative D1X. Read the review for all the details! (A quiet day tomorrow, for Thanksgiving, perhaps one more review on Friday, then a whole 'passle of them next week. Stay tuned, don't eat too much turkey!)
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