I’ve shot about 500 pictures with my Nikon D700 now. And I have to say, with all due respect to legumes everywhere, Holy Garbanzo Beans! Yes it’s a HGB moment (whatever that is). What an amazing piece of equipment. I’d compare this experience to getting behind the wheel of a BMW M5 after you’ve been driving a BMW 535 for a year. The BMW 535 is a great car, nice leather, decent power, corners nicely. Has all the gadgets like Navigation and Bluetooth. But the BMW M5 has five hundred horsepower, gigantic brakes, and a sick suspension. You get in the car, hit the gas and I guarantee you’ll have an HGB moment. You want to stay in the car and drive it because it feels incredible. You’ll drive right past your exit on purpose.

There is something about shooting with the Nikon D700 that is like driving a BMW M5. It responds so quickly – in fact you really have to be careful to not shoot too many pictures when on continuous low or high mode. I had to turn down the shooting speed because I kept shoot seventy three frames of the same thing. I didn’t have this issue with my Nikon D300 and in fact left it on the fastest continuous mode all the time. Can’t do that with the D700. There’s a couple of other things – the sound of the shutter is so satisfying. It’s so much more substantial than the D300 for some reason. And the eyepiece is so much better as well, it’s so much larger. Wow. I love that I can press the button in the center of the navigation control and get a histogram. That’s a killer feature.

I put the optional Nikon MB-D10 battery pack on my D700 and it makes a giant improvement in the feel of holding the camera, especially when you rotate the camera for portrait mode. I already had the battery pack for use with my D300, but for some reason I really can’t explain, it feels so much better on the D700. The battery grip is especially helpful when shooting with a big lens.

Right now I only have two full frame compatible lenses, the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Zoom and the Nikon 50mm f/1.4D AF. The 24-70mm is an amazing amazing amazing lens. It’s so responsive and crisp – it focuses virtually instantly. Using it on the full frame D700 is a real joy. I never knew what I was missing in DX mode on the D300. It’s a hefty lens though. I busted it out at a friends house a few weeks ago and I got a lot of “paging Dr. Frued” jokes. Laugh it up fuzzball. Click.

The 50mm on the other hand, I can’t quite get to work for me. It doesn’t seem to focus very quickly, and boy it’s loud when it’s focusing. Loud enough that it seemed like there was sand in or something (which there isn’t). But I suppose you get what you pay for. I keep trying this lens and having the experience of it not giving me what I want.

I’ve seen rumors the Nikon may release some new prime lenses. I hope they do. I’m going to miss my Sigma 30mm lens (it’s a DX lens). I hope Nikon updates the 50mm 1.4 lens because it’s small and fast, which is great for being a bit more stealthy with the camera, like at a party or something. The D700 with the battery pack and the 24-70 lens on it is fricking ginourmous. Gargantuan even. Lose the battery pack and use a small lens like this, and you don’t people commenting on the camera or telling you to take a picture of something.

My next lens is the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Nikkor Wide Angle Zoom Lens. I need to sell off some of my old stuff first and save up some cash. Anyone want to buy a Nikon D300? I have three other DX lenses I’m going to sell too, the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM (which is one of my favorite DX lenses of all time), the Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8G ED AF DX Fisheye (awesome lens), and the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom . I may have someone on the hook for the Sigma already, but let me know if you’re interested in any of the other gear. Oh, I also have a Nikon D70s gathering dust. It has the Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED IF AF-S DX lens on it. I put together a little beginners package of stuff if you want to get your feet wet with using a digital SLR, check this link out for what you would get.

My excitement about the D700 is a bit tempered by the fact I can’t go through my usual post processing happy dance on the pictures because Adobe and Apple don’t support the file format yet. Incidently, according to all the flapping gums on interwebs the file format is the same as the D300/D3 – there’s just a field that says what model the camera is which is kerbusting the software. Must be true, cause it’s on the internet. I hope they release an update soon. Both Adobe and Apple got my hopes up in the last couple of days when both companies updated their software. I guess they updated other stuff. Sigh.

I’ll post more when I have some post processed files to share.

Edit: if you want to email me about the stuff I have for sale, you can contact me here.