D1X: "The White Pelicans are back"

A review by Uwe Steinmueller @Digital Outback Photo

Also photos by Bettina Steinmueller

Last Updated (06/24/2001)

This portfolio is part of the "D1X Experience Report"

AF-S 300mm f/4 + TC-14E

The White Pelicans are back to Baylands in Palo Alto and it makes us smile. We had last year more than 300 of these great birds. Pelicans in flight are just amazing.

We have set the EV (using Matrix Metering) to -0.7 to avoid burned out whites. Even if Pelicans are dirty from the mud they have a lot of white. We rather except underexposure than burned out white. The new auto display feature of the D1x helps to get very fast and automatic access to the histogram. We rarely watch the content on the LCD but the histogram all the time. Even as we used the LCD a lot the battery hold up well for more than 110 photos and we could have taken more.

But there is also an other lesson learned today: The D1X high resolution shows easily the limits of your lenses and also any motion blur (hard to say what is what, we used mostly exposure times of 1/800 sec). In fact I think the lens we used (AF-S 300 f/4) is pretty good but the degradation of a TC-20E can be seen. It looks as if we have to save for a AF-S 500 f/4 and make friends with someone willing to carry it.

Even if the Pelicans took center stage the other birds (Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Killdeer, Terns, Canada Geese, Ducks, ...) were as plentiful as ever.

AF-S 300 f/4 + TC-20E

A special fun is to see the Pelicans land. Not really very artistic but funny.

"Ready to land!"

D1X experience today:

Better write speed eliminates a full buffer situation for this kind of photography
Colors were better than we got from the D1 (last year we took about 300-400 photos and close to no real useful ones)
Better resolution helps
Auto WB( white balance) works
Auto preview displays fast
Selecting ISO in 1/3 f-stops is a great plus.
We would like to have a lossless NEF format like with the Kodak 760 which takes less disk space and writes even faster. You have to worry with every photo about your harddisk.
Use top of the line lenses (you see the difference)
Yes and we had our share of dust but some work in Photoshop solves the issue.

Overall we are very happy with this new camera.

Some might argue the D1X just solved the flaws of the D1. To be very honest we think the D1 is a pretty good camera only a Kodak 760 and the D1X show clearly limits of the D1.