Old Nikon digi's.. get a D1H NOT a D1!

[Joe]

After a short time with the D1H I saw another 'bargain' on the net for £40....a VERY battered looking D1. I've not long unwrapped the parcel that arrived and can whole heartly say that I am nothing but a little dissapointed in my £40 purchase, compared to the D1H. (although the D1 was significantly less money)
I'd read the reviews, all pretty much stating the same improvements.
Apart from speed and controls layout, the main mention was it's performance at high ISO's.....
All I can do is confirm that the D1H is MILES better in this respect.

I've included a couple of test shots from the D1 at ISO 400 and ISO 1600. a little blurry and soft but you get the idea (an old tamron 28mm mf lens used)
Is it my eyes or does the ISO 1600 shot look like it's a mosaic!.....noticed some 'tramlines' in the same shot......the same sort of thing I used to get with bad film scans.
I should add that the shots have been very heavily cropped to show the differences more clearly.
Surely this is not normal?...or maybe it is with the older digi bodies??

Bah Humbug...pass me a roll of Velvia!... lol

[Joe]

I should also add.....
The whole justification for the D1 was to have a second digi body, and have the F90x buried even deeper in the kit bag.

[Canis Vulpes]

It should be remembered that the D1 was the first popular DSLR launched in 1999. Two years passed when the D1H was launched in 2001 and probably fixed a number of issues with Nikon's first real offering to the market.

Those tramlines you refer maybe the way the information is transferred from the sensor to the main image processing engine. 10 years ago data transfer was much slower than it is today and could have employed a scanning type of image take off but only guessing.

[Joe]

The method of data transfer would make sense. It's not massively bad at the ISO1600 setting, but if I go through the custom functions to boost ISO 2 stops to 3200 it gets a bit nasty.
I am probably being over critical of the D1. I'd read the reviews and seen the ads back then.....only now comparing the two cameras directly can I really appreciate what a major step that was made going to the D1H variant. The list of improvements made in the D1H is quite long...
Having said all this of course, the D1 still blows away many of the results I've experienced with some of the more modern current compacts on the market boasting 10 megapixel sensors (but obviously by the looks of the results, very primitive basic processing). Maybe I'm just being a little harsh on the D1.
I had thought of going for the D1x variant...and very nearly did (10mp through NX can't be bad for an old 'un). But thinking again about the slower 3fps drive, longer process times/ smaller buffer, and seeing the real life results differences side by side on test pages compared to the lower res' D1H, then thinking of the sort of photos I like to take, and how many heavy crops and/or large prints I actually do, helped the decision.
The D1H I plumped for was at a superb price, I'm pleasantly suprised at the quality from the RAW files, the camera has been well looked after (unlike my D1, which I suspect from the seller ID is ex' MOD).
The majority of film has come out of the kit bag. In it's place there's spare batteries and a charger. Interestingly, they take up the same space as the film did, and are heavier!...maybe I've gone overboard in having six spares for two bodies.....but the nikon EN4 batteries are quite large too!

I'm thoroughly chuffed to bits at entering the 21st century and being dragged kicking and screaming into the digital world.
I'm just a little miffed I can't be out and about more often using it at the mo'!

...and I have a few rolls of film and a few gallons of E6 and C41 chemicals I suspect wont be used for a while....maybe!