Stuff had the opportunity yesterday to get a first look and a sneaky hands on with the brand new Nikon D4S. Initial verdict: all we can say is wow! This is a great piece of machinery. The body styling is the same as the D4, but under the hood they have revamped a few things that make shooting with this beast an absolute pleasure.
The D4S is primarily a photojourn and sports camera. If you looking for a camera for your documentary or fine art work, then this isn’t the body for you, rather look at the D800 / D800E offering from Nikon. But if you need speed and true accuracy in your focus then this is the body for you.
Coupled with a Lexar 1066X card (writes at 160MB/s), counting the number of continuous frames was not actually possible. Shooting on RAW you are looking at maybe 10-15 seconds on continuous high before the camera needs to wait for the card to catch up writing. But in the time it takes to switch the file type to JPEG Fine the RAW files will have been written to the CF card. Now get ready to have a cup of coffee while you wait for the JPEG Fine continuous mode to get through its maximum number of shots. It really did feel like an age, but definitely more than 30 seconds of the shutter going at 11 fps.
The second major feature that impressed us is the group focus option. The speed and accuracy that it can maintain on a very fast moving object is seriously impressive. An F-Type Jaguar moving at over 120km/h coming head on whilst on a bend is no match for this tracking mode. In the past when cameras tracked a moving object, it was done on one focus point. Nikon have upped the ante and this titan uses 5 focus points to dynamically track the object. There is never a dip or stutter in your focus, no matter the speed the object is moving. Even shooting at 11 fps.
All in all, we cannot wait to get our hands on this body to put it properly through its paces.