“Can I capture an image I wouldn’t be able to make with another piece of equipment?”…. That’s generally the question I ask myself when I think about a new piece of gear. There are certain things in my bag that I’ll rely upon- right until there may be something better- with the exception of my Nikkor 28 1.4D… that’s never leaving my bag, but I digress…. One of the benefits of shooting so many frames during the year- I estimate that number to be roughly around 250,000 frames per year or so- I get a good feel for what my gear is capable of. Each flagship body from Nikon does a little something different, and the Nikon D4S simply allows me to make pictures I have never been able to make before.
Yeah, I know, many will say that since I’m a Nikon Ambassador United States, and that I wouldn’t say anything else. If you know me personally, you know that I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. The responsiveness- specifically the decisive focus system, the sharpness of the files and the high ISO performance make this camera the absolute perfect wedding photography camera. I presently use one Nikon D4S along side Nikon D4 bodies, and I feel like I have the ideal tools. Within the next few months, I’ll be doing a Kelby One video on what’s in my bag and how I use everything.
I want to be clear that I’m not going to do any type of review of theD4S , for obvious reasons, but every once in a while I’d like to share some things that I observe about this new beast. Below is an image I captured at a recent wedding. It was at the Westin Philadelphia , and they were serving dinner to all of the guests. I noticed the bride was in some nice back light, and she and her new husband were whispering to one another. While I knew the light level was quite low, the quality of the light wasn’t too bad. I was really just playing around, but I set the ISO on the D4S to 20,000 and fired off a few frames. Yes, I said 20,000. Now, heard this camera could go up to some silly high ISO’s, but I never dreamed that I’d make quality wedding images at 20,000. The proof is in the pudding. My mind was blown.
Below, you’ll see the image shot at 20,000 with Lightroom at default settings and slight adjustments- but no further noise reduction was used. The 100% crop is included below. The image was shot at 1/160th @ F2.8 at ISO 20,000.
