Nikon D3x -Impending Announcement?

We had a lot of fun with our Nikon vs. Canon piece last December. In fact, over 400,000 pageviews ensued, so that means there was a lot of interest!

So many of my colleagues are blown away by the D3's noise handling, and for that I gave the D3 a "win" over the EOS 1Ds Mark III, despite the filesize/megapixel disparity. In fact, I'd say that that was the unmentioned elephant in the room when I did that piece. While I did mention the D3x back then (Nikon vs Canon - The Future), and it's tech specs had been floating around the rumor mill and I had caught wind of them, I didn't want to get into great detail.

Then Nikon releases new firmware, listing, in the firmware, resolutions that are selectable by the photographer, and it's maximum listing is 24.4 megapixels!

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Don't take my word for this - check out the posting at Engadget! Those guys rarely get things wrong, and they got it from here at dpreview!

So, the next question is - when? I expect that the camera's already camouflaged on the street now, probably in a D3 body, being tested. I'll expect an announcement before the end of May. I had heard through the ubiquitous rumor mill March/April, and it's surely potentially announceable in the next two weeks. Surely, it will be on the street in time for the Olympics.

Don't let this beast of a chip convince you to wait. Buy the D3 - it's amazing. Let the D3x work for you as a separate and complimentary tool. I'll speculate a smaller buffer, and probably a max ISO of either 3200 or 6400, but with comparable characteristics of the D3. These are, however, obvious speculative points, and are consistent with how the previous camera variations looked.

Oh, and to you Canon shooters thinking of switching back to Nikon, this should seal the deal!

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