Peace of mind

Im super excited with a recent equipment upgrade from Nikon D200 DSLR cameras to a Nikon D3.  The D3 is Nikon's $5000 top of the line professional DSLR specifically targeted to photojournalists (wedding photography tends to fall in line with equipment requirements).

Compared to the D200, this camera has HUGE advantages:

• The D3 can produce very clean images without grain or noise in darker situations (every ceremony and reception hall)
  
• The focusing system is spot on and tracks movement better such as a bride coming down the isle. 
  
• It shoots 11 shots per second compared to 5, great for the bouquet and garter toss!  
• Slightly higher resolution 12mp vs 10mp and 14bit raw files that come out of photoshop cleaner with better color and tone.  (the pictures are wonderful so far) 
  

But most important to you: It has dual memory card slots, so now I have a backup in camera to guard against a corrupt memory card losing your precious image files.  With lesser cameras, if the memory card became corrupt there was a good chance all the images on that card could be lost.  Cameras with only one card slot put all your eggs in one basket so to speak.  This was a major reason I was willing to invest $5000 into a single piece of equipment:  Peace of mind from two baskets;-)

Now I just need to books a few more weddings to pay for a second one! I like having 2 cameras with different lenses mounted ready to go, but just couldn't afford to drop 10 grand at once.


My younger son Joshua showing the focusing system at work, it is able to track forward and backward fast movement very well.

The D3 with it's larger sensor also gives less depth of field. In laymen's terms, I can get a blurrier background when I need to knock out distracting elements and make the subject "pop" more.