D3 crop mode

I am shopping for a full frame Nikon and ran across a used one the shop owner allowed me to demo. Evidently the owner set it to Dx

mode and all my set shots were cropped. We could not immediately figure how to reset it. That is the bad part.

 

The good part is the lack of noise in 800 to 3200 iso files is about 10 times cleaner than my D200. What looks like sand with my D200,

looks smooth in the D3.

 

Here is the question. Will a D300 look the same as a D3 in DX mode? I realize the 300 will be a 10+MB file and the D3 but 5, however it

still looks really good. Will the 300 look as good as if not better.

 

I checked the exif data and noise reduction was not enabled.

<STRIKE>If the D3 had DX type lens on it, it would not have been possible to set it to full frame.</STRIKE>

The D300 is about 1.3 stops worse as far as noise is concerned so the answer to your question is sorta no. Files from either camera will look pretty darn good though. Noise in the new NIkons is mostly luminance noise so it looks like film grain and not digital noise. I use both cameras you mention so this is first hand experience.

Disappointing. The D3 had a 85 1.8 AF D.

 

I guess I will have to pop for the D3 or D700 if i elect to upgrade.

"If the D3 had DX type lens on it, it would not have been possible to set it to full frame."

 

 

Yes and no. There is a menu option to turn off the "auto-DX" selection. On some DX lenses, you may tinker with the 5:4 image size: if you go to 40-ish mm and longer, the DX lens will work. With the FX mode and a DX lens, it may work but then again it may not work. And, for example, if you are going to go for 4x6-in. prints (soccer or youth football,) you can shoot DX mode with a FX lens and get a bit of in-camera cropping.

On either the D3 or D700, you can choose to: 1. always shoot the full FX frame, regardless of the lens is FX or DX, 2. always shoot the DX crop, regardless of the lens is FX or DX, or 3. automatically select FX or DX depending on the lens type. The D3 has the additional 5:4 mode.

 

Go to the Shooting Menu and select Image Area.

 

Several DX zoom lenses can cover the entire FX frame on the long end of their zoom ranged. I have shown some of those and their edge quality tends to be poor until you zoom all the way to the max focal length.

"Will a D300 look the same as a D3 in DX mode?" They will look pretty much the same with the D3 images having a bit less noise at higher ISOs.

The D3 in DX mode and the D300 will give identical images regarding field of view / cropping with the same lens used. However, the D3 DX image will only have 5 Mpixels but the D300 will have 12Mpixels. In principle, this is why the D300 image is more noisy, each pixel is smaller.