I used my new D1H seriously for the first time last weekend at a sailing local regatta and I'm blown away by what it can do.
As I mentioned on my first post, I'm new to digital working, but have been keeping up with all the info on the D1 saga, etc. The new H seems to address all of the apparent problems of the D1 and more.
The shooting speed is fast, 5fps does not seem like much compared to the max. of 8fps with the F5, but the H fairly rattles along. The shutter does not appear to have any of the buzz that I've heard reported of the D1X and sounds even smoother than the F5 to my ear. Writing to the CF card (Lexar USB 160MB 8X in this case)was very fast and I did not miss a shot in that respect. I shot a mixture of NEF and JPEG Fine and even shooting the NEFs, the writing kept pace, even with the shutter going at full tilt.
I noticed that setting the white balance to the appropriate setting for the conditions gave better colour results than using Auto WB, but the weather was changing so rapidly from full sun to cloudy, that I stuck it on Auto for most of the time. The difference was only marginal though.
The autofocus is very impressive (similar to F5). Shooting a radio controlled model speedboat going very fast on a boating pond, the AF kept up very well, considering the subject was small and moving very fast between the focussing points. I shot this in continuous AF with dynamic AF switched on. It was only my failing to keep up with tracking the subject that caused a few frames to slip by unsharp.
I have one or two niggles about the camera though. I think that some of the buttons have been re-assigned from the original D1, meaning that the FUNC button on that back can be assigned to different operations using the Shooting Menu. These are Quality, CSM, Dynamic AF and Lock. This is great in itself, but there are times when one would like to have quick access to more than one of these operations at a time, e.g. being able to select Dynamic AF and maybe quickly change image quality or a CSM without having to go through the menus. I think I'm right in saying that the Dynamic AF [+] selector used to be on the top of the D1 body, this seems to make more sense.
I left a fully conditioned (i.e. three refresh/charge cycles), fully charged battery in the camera for a week. The camera was off except when I was getting to know the settings, etc., though didn't really shoot many frames. When I came to shoot at the regatta, the battery level indicator dropped to one bar and the viewfinder display entered its power saving mode, switching off instantly after pressing the shutter button half way. This makes the camera difficult to use in manual exposure mode as the meter is not on long enough to assess the exposure and make alterations. Having said that, I switched to A-priority and managed to squeeze off 60 or 70 shots and still the battery kept going. I know its a simple matter to change to a fresh battery, but I thought I'd mention it.
I will post some shots on my website
http://www.shawphoto.co.uk next week. I'm shooting some moto-cross action this coming weekend, so hopefully will have some images with a bit more cred to show you (compared to model powerboats).
Sorry for the long post, but I thought everyone would be anxious to hear about the new camera's performance.
Linear Mode
