Alternative YouTube link

Well, D700s are now out there in the wild - I have mine sitting right here, and it’s everything you would expect… updates soon.

Any questions? Post them in the comments, and I’ll try to answer them here.

I’ve had a call from my dealer (Park Cameras, a well-known Nikon Professional dealer here in the UK) saying that my D700 will be in my hands on Monday. They’ll be receiving it and shipping it on Friday.

So, those of you with pre-orders in - it won’t be long!

Nikon have published the English User Manual online, along with the Quick Start Guide. Both are in PDF format. Do you have a D700 on order, or are interested in reading up on all the nitty gritty?

Well, here are the links:

D700 English User Manual

D700 Quick Start Guide

Also, for the new SB-900 speedlight:

SB-900 User Manual

SB-900 flash shooting techniques guide

UPDATED: Links above removed by Nikon. Please find the user guides linked from Nikon HQ - DSLR Manuals and User Guides

Plenty of other sites have detailed previews of the D700 - mine is still in progress. Here’s a quick list of the best D700 previews on the web, in no particular order.

• DPReview
• The Imaging Resource
• Stille Photographie
• Photo.net
• ePhotoZine.com
• Camera Labs
• DigitalReview.ca
• Nikonians
• Ken Rockwell

Any more? Please leave a link in the comments… thanks!

In brief: Mark P just posted a comment on our review, saying that his D700 is en route from Nikon to his dealer. It remains to be seen when delivery will actually take place - I hope it’s not on a slow boat from Sendai - but it’s looking like those of you with pre-orders (myself included) will be getting them fulfilled shortly…

Xitek have been lucky enough to test out a D700 and compare it to a 5D, with interesting results.

The images they posted have come under fire from some quarters as they appear to show the D700 producing somewhat soft images - so we decided to do our own test. As no RAW converters support the D700 yet, I modified the D700 RAW file to identify it as a D3 RAW. In that way, I could open both with ACR default settings. Crops below…

We see a slight advantage in per-pixel sharpness, and a very slight resolution advantage, to the 5D here - but certainly nothing that can’t be dealt with by adding some sharpening and it won’t be seen in any prints. It remains to be seen how lens choice may affect this - probably more so than any inherent sensor difference in real world use.

I’d put this down to the more aggressive anti-aliasing filter in the D700; you get slightly sharper images at the pixel level on the 5D, but less chance of moire with the D700.

It’s certainly a lot less worrying than a lot of threads on the internet have said it is
Full-sized JPGS: 5D D700

Lucky shooter “CK-II” was able to make some test shots using the D700 and Nikkor 24-70/2.8 at the “Nikon Digital Live 2008″ event in Tokyo.

Touching and playing with a D700 weren’t the only things that visitors could do during the event. We were actually given the chance to do model shooting in a studio setup with a Nikon D700 and a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G! What more could you ask from Nikon?! Yes, there were more that we could asked for! We could use our own CF card and bring the pictures back! What more could you ask for??!! Yes, I could print one of the pictures at 4R size from an Epson Stylus Printer! The best part was, everything was free-of-charge!!!

Read his entire post here.

We’ve started our preview article on the D700, and are busy filling it with all the juicy info we can gather. Our D700 is on order, and we’ll be turning the preview into a proper review when it arrives. This is a work in progress, and will be expanded daily - so please do keep checking back and post comments with your suggestions!

The D700 is often said to be a “D3 in a D300 body”, as it has the D3’s FX sensor in a smaller, more compact format. So, just how close is the D700 in size to the D300? The animated image below should show you - it will switch between the D700 and the D300 every 2 seconds.

If that doesn’t work for you, here’s an outline comparison: