Nikon D3S Performance

Generally excellent speed for a pro SLR these days, though autofocus is somewhat sluggish for its class.

Startup time is average for a professional SLR, but shut-down is quite slow, likely due to sensor cleaning. Buffer clearing time depends on the image size and quality, burst length and the speed of memory card used, but is generally very fast.

Mode switching is quite fast, difficult to measure, except Record to play, which is a bit sluggish for its class.

In terms of the D3S's ability to determine that it's properly focused when shooting the same target multiple times (with no change of focus setting between iteration, to remove the impact of lens AF speed), its speed is a little slow for professional model. The D3S required 0.197 second using single-area center AF mode, and 51-point Auto Area AF lag measured 0.361 second, much slower than the 0.085-0.088 second we measured with the D3. As you would expect, switching to Release Priority did improve shutter response dramatically (to 0.043 second), but that also means the camera may not achieve focus before capturing the image. 

We had similarly slow fulll AF results with the D3X (0.161 and 0.435 second respectively), so it's unlikely to be an issue with our sample of the D3S. To make sure it wasn't some sort of compatibility issue with the D3S and the Sigma lens we use at as our reference lens, we repeated the test with a Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 (the same lens we tested the D3 with), and a Nikkor AF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro. However, we got very similar numbers with the Nikkors so the Sigma lens was not the issue. (SLRs normally determine focus with the Sigma 70mm very quickly; in fact the D3S, D3X and D300 were all slightly faster with it than the Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 lens.) We'll see if we can get another body from Nikon to test just to make sure we didn't have issues with the particular sample we had of the D3S , but we don't know if we'll be able to obtain a second sample or not.

When prefocused or manually focused, the D3S's shutter lag was extremely fast, at only 43 milliseconds. In continuous autofocus mode with release priority, shutter lag was also extremely fast, at only 44 milliseconds.

As expected, the D3S's two Live View modes add considerable delay, but the "Hand-Held" mode is faster than some other implementations we've tested recently. The "Hand-Held" mode which uses the same "mirror-down" phase difference AF method employed when using the optical viewfinder has full AF shutter lag of 0.511 second, which is pretty good for the mode.

The "Tripod" Live View mode lag was much slower, at 2.66 seconds, but focusing is performed separately using the AF-On button, so measuring the total lag is difficult. It's easy to see why Nikon chose to call this "Tripod" mode: It's really only going to be useful for still-life subjects, with the camera pretty immobile. The time it takes to achieve focus depends heavily on how far the lens elements have to travel. When a slower lens has to rack from infinity to close focus, the AF time in Tripod mode can easily stretch to 3 seconds or more. Nikon did say that they've tweaked the algorithm to improve contrast-detect AF speed over the D3, but we didn't test that on the D3.

Once prefocused, Tripod mode shutter lag is a reasonable 0.423 second. There's little point to shooting prefocused in Hand-Held mode, as the viewfinder is blacked out as long as the shutter button is held down in readiness.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance. We also use the same Sigma 70mm f/2.8 macro with every camera (on all platforms except Four Thirds/Micro Four Thirds and Nikon consumer models lacking an in-body focus motor), to further reduce variation, and because our tests showed that focus-determination time with this lens was close to the fastest, across multiple camera bodies from different manufacturers. Being an older design with a non-ultrasonic motor, it wouldn't be the fastest at slewing from one focus setting to another, but that's exactly the reason we measure focus determination speed, which is primarily a function of the camera body, vs focus adjustment speed, which is primarily a function of the lens.

Single-shot cycle time performance is very good for a pro SLR model, at about 0.34 second between JPEG or RAW shots, though slightly slower than the D3's 0.28 - 0.32 second range.

Continuous mode speeds are very similar to the D3's, which is to say very fast, in any mode including 14-bit uncompressed RAW, at just over 9 frames per second. Unlike the D300/D300S and D3X, the D3S did not slow down at all when shooting 14-bit vs 12-bit RAW files. Buffer depths have dramatically improved over the D3, more than doubling, though some of the increase may be due to using a newer, faster CompactFlash card with the D3S. In large/fine JPEG mode, the D3S's buffer depth was a whopping 90 frames, and varied between 36 and 41 frames in RAW mode, depending on the bit depth of the NEF files.

JPEG buffer depth shooting "normal" subjects is likely to be even greater than we measure with our deliberately difficult-to-compress test target, so your mileage (buffer capacity) may vary, but should generally be better than our measurements.

Like the D3, for really blazing speed with the D3S, you can shoot in "DX" mode, where the sensor area is cropped to match the "DX" size sensors in Nikon's sub-frame DSLRs. In this mode, the D3S met the 11 frame/second spec that Nikon gives it. This drops the resolution down to 2,784 x 1,848 (5.1 megapixels), but that's still a very usable resolution level, and the speed in this mode is unparalleled.

Like other recent pro-level SLRs, the Nikon D3S makes good use of very fast memory cards.

Download speeds were fast (but not as fast as some), though fast enough that you probably won't feel the need for a separate card reader.


Bottom line, the Nikon D3S is extremely fast in most respects, with very fast frame rates, deep buffers for long bursts, and very low shutter lag, but full autofocus speed was slower than average for a professional model. Keep in mind however that our AF tests are on static subjects, and we have no way of objectively testing the D3S's autofocus acquisition and tracking performance with real-world subjects. Despite the slower-than-average full AF test results, we strongly suspect the D3S performs very well shooting active subjects and sports in the field, being competitive with anything else out there in its class.

Battery

Outstanding battery life for an SLR lithium-ion design.

The Nikon D3S uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with both a single battery and charger. The rated 4,200 shots per charge using the optical viewfinder is well above average for a pro SLR, (but keep in mind the D3S does not have a built-in flash, so that's one reason why the number is so high). Unfortunately, Nikon does not seem to publish battery life results for when Live View mode is used, but it's a safe bet that it's considerably shorter. (Again, we don't have specific measurements, but did notice that the battery seemed to use up its charge much more rapidly when we were shooting in Live View mode. - And the remaining-capacity indicator would often dip noticeably when we switched Live View mode.)

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of on fully-charged battery, based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))

Storage

The Nikon D3S stores its photos on CompactFlash memory cards (dual slots are provided), and no card is included with the camera. The chart below shows how many images can be stored on a 2GB card at each size/quality setting. JPEGs with default Size Priority and RAW with lossless compression.

We strongly recommend buying a large capacity CompactFlash. You should probably consider at least a 2GB card, if not a 4GB or 8GB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings, especially if you plan on doing a lot of RAW or Movie shooting. (Check the shopping link above, cards are cheap these days, so there's no reason to skimp -- But do consider faster cards for this camera, to reduce buffer clearing times.)