The highlight was the display by the swift team towing a glider with a tug and then solo displaying. It was a brilliant idea with sparkling flares burning on the wingtips. With me I had the Nikon D700 and 200-400F4 lens. It was quite overcast and after sunset the light levels fell very low to what most of us would say was darkness. I kept shooting selectively with the D700 which was using ISO 6400, even wide open at F4.
I was really impressed by the image quality when I loaded the images onto the Imac. With a little sharpening smoothing and the very competent noise reduction tool in Lightroom 3, the shots were very usable and retained decent colour and detail.
Full-frame cameras especially are truly amazing now and give us opportunities to shoot we never had even a few years ago. It always amazes me what is now possible, even though I have had the D700 for not far off 2 years now, I can't take it for granted.
Crop frame cameras are also great, but conditions like this would push them too far. I have both full and crop and there is simply no comparison in image quality when things get really tough.
I mustn't forget the focus system either, which nailed the focus spot-on on a moving subject in near darkness.
And the auto ISO feature, which has been excellently implemented. For action work I set manual exposure mode, set the shutter and aperture I want and let the ISO sort itself out. I can then be assured that the shutter will never fall too low and can control depth of field.
The D700 may "only" have 12MP, but this is plenty for almost everyone. The awesome sensor, great autofocus and huge customisation options make it one of the most well-rounded cameras available.
