The King of noise

As part of our ISO special, Steve Davey sees how the mighty Nikon D5 copes with low light and more on two demanding trips

It felt good to get a pro-body Nikon DSLR back into my hands. Apart from my first camera – a fully manual Pentax MX film SLR – I have only ever shot Nikon. I started with a Nikon F-801 as a student, but soon moved on to a couple of second-hand F4s and arguably my favourite cameras of all time, a brace of rock-solid F5s that I still have.

My first foray into digital photography was with the Nikon D2X. I had two of them, later replaced with the fantastic D3X. The resolution of the 24.6-million-pixel D3X far exceeds that of scanned film, but the camera also offered fantastic tonality and dynamic range in an ergonomic and robust pro-body.

As well as the ergonomics, I have always found Nikon pro bodies to be solid and resilient. They seem to put up with a lot of punishment before needing repair. That said, an inevitable part of being a travel and location photographer is that I flog my kit. In the past, I have had the entire shutter block of an F4 replaced in Bangkok, managed to drown a D2X in French Polynesia and fell on to a D3X and 70-200mm lens while fending off a rabid Laotian dog, cracking two ribs and literally tearing the face off the camera.

I moved from the D3X to the D800 for its astonishing resolution – a camera that became even sharper and gained a stop of ISO with the D810. Even with the MB-D12 battery pack it has much of the usability, but not the ergonomics, of the pro-bodies. The D800 has survived fairly unscathed, but the D810 did have a bit of a tripod incident. Combine these repairs with routine camera and lens servicing, and it is safe to say that I am no stranger at the Nikon Professional Services (NPS) Service Centre at Kingston in Greater London.