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

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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.