Some people would think I’m crazy to lug the D3 and full frame Nikon pro lenses around for travel photography. Unfortunately there is no alternative, smaller lighter camera if you want the Nikon FX sensor, and the D3 body has some significant advantages that mitigate against its weight as well.

I’ve used the smallest DSLR (the Olympus E400) so I know the advantages of this, but I choose to take one of the largest DSLRs, why? Its all about the sensor, and here, bigger is definitely better. I’m not going to go into great technical detail, but a digital sensor is divided up into ‘photosites’, small silicon wells that capture photons and convert the energy into a small electrical charge that is later ‘digitized’. One photosite is needed per pixel, so it stands to reason that for a given resolution (12.1 MP in the case of the D3), a bigger ‘full frame’ sensor will have bigger photosites than a smaller one. The bigger photosites can capture more photons in low light and will produce more charge, giving a better ‘signal’ above the noise for digital conversion. So what does this mean in practice? Better high ISO performance, less shadow noise and more ability to recover both highlight and shadow detail. We can ignore ‘Digicams’ with very small sensors as they are so noisy as to be unusable.

In a perfectly lit scene this would not matter, and we could use small sensors with perfect exposure and have no need for high ISO or shadow recovery, but the essence of street, travel and documentary photography is that we don’t have much control over that environment. Sure, we can choose NOT to bother, but the D3 is a camera that allows me to shoot at night, in the evening and in some high contrast situations where I would have given up with any other digital camera I’ve owned.

1. 1.Set it and forget it. The D3 has a setting for auto ISO. I set this for a maximum ISO of 1600, and a minimum shutter speed of 1/250. With the camera in aperture priority I can simply use the aperture to control creative depth of field and allow the camera to adjust speed and ISO, using the lowest ISO it can. No need to fiddle with the ISO if you suddenly see something interesting in the shadows.
   

2. 2.Shallow depth of field. This is the key to isolating a subject from a cluttered background. Depth of field decreases with bigger apertures, closer distances to the camera, longer focal length lenses and bigger sensors. f2.8 on a 4:3 sensor is equivalent to f5.6 on FX, so you’ll end up buying expensive ‘top pro’ f2 Olympus lenses and lugging them round and still not have ‘really shallow’ DOF.
   

3. 3.High ISO. This is indispensable in low light, dull UK days, or evenings in Greece. ISO 1600 on the D3 is ‘almost noise free’. At night, couple this with an f1.4 lens and you can shoot by streetlights at 1/125 sec quite happily. Even ISO 6400 is usable if you don’t need to push the files around.
   

4. 4.‘The Zone system’. Ansel Adams described this for B&W darkroom print work, with iconic images of Yosemite National Park. Zones I-X describe purest white to darkest black, values 255 to 0 in digital terms. In B&W a film was exposed to pitch the deep shadow areas into Zone III by metering the shadows and dropping the exposure two stops (to drop from zone V- mid grey to zone III). The film was then developed to put the faintest highlight detail into zone VIII, thus enabling the full dynamic range of the scene to be portrayed on B&W paper. Similarly digital images need to be compressed when faced with a DR that exceeds paper reproduction (most). In digital we expose to place the highlight detail in zone VIII by ‘exposing to the right’ without clipping highlights. The deepest shadow then needs to be placed in zone III at the black point of the histogram. If the dynamic range of the scene is high, the shadows will need to be ‘dragged’ up to zone III by adjusting the tone curve (or shadow/highlight in photoshop). The problem is that if these deeper shadows have a lot of noise, that will be dragged up too, creating a vile speckled effect. The D3 creates raw files that can be pushed and pulled by quite a few stops more than smaller sensor cameras. This means - less fill flash, faces can be pulled to zone V if they are in shadow and highlights on skin can usually be pulled down. I can concentrate more on the image and less on worrying about its capture.
   

5. 5.Autofocus and speed. The D3’s CAM3500 AF system is very very fast and accurate enabling ‘lift to eye and grab’ shots on the street. I find the handgrip really useful as I can hold the camera by my waist just lifting for the shot. I use AF-S, focus priority, centre sensor and lock with a half shutter press, as I have learnt to use this at speed.
   

6. 6.Handling and weight. The ‘heft’ of the D3 with the 70-200 in particular makes a very well balanced and stable platform, far easier to hold still than a small light camera. The DOF check button is at my middle finger and the ‘Fn’ button (set for an instant spot meter) at my ring finger.
   

7. 7.The D3, 24-70 f2.8, 70-200 f2.8 and SB800 fit unobtrusively in a small Crumpler bag that doesn’t say ‘camera’ all over it.