Professional photographer Jim Reed was asked by Nikon to test out the new Nikon D700, and he put the camera through its paces for 105 days (April 31st to May 31st, 2008).
For me, the unique angle to this review was the kind of use the D700 was put through.
Jim chases storms, and used the D700 to take photographs of extreme weather in Kansas.
There are several sections to his review.
The main part is here.
Jim shares that he was contacted directly by the Nikon representatives in Tokyo, who asked if he’d be willing to test the durability and weather-resistance of a new digital SLR camera (we now know that it’s the D700) which was to be released in July 2008.
Jim gives the D700 an excellent rating, saying that the camera exceeded his expectations, and it managed to not only survive 18 hard-core storms chases, but perfromed with flying colors.
The most amazing part of the review was a photo of Jim running up into the disintegrating debris cloud of a landspout tornado, with the D700 in his right hand. The video footage of that is available on YouTube:
The D700 also withstood rain (it was thoroughly soaked), falling hailstone and being dropped on a concrete driveway.
Jim liked the D700’s Electronic Virtual Horizon, fast continuous shooting, very fast startup and self-cleaning sensor.
Visit Jim’s D700 gallery which contains a selection of the photographs he took during the testing period. My favorites are represented by the three thumbnails below.
(Note: Images were photographed using the Nikon 14-24mm and 24-70mm lenses).
The landscape section on the Nikon D700 mini-site features Jim’s photos — the screen capture of the lightning photo shown at the beginning of this post was taken from there — be sure to check those out.