[VikingPhotography]

Had it confirmed by a senior rep at Nikon UK today: the D3 and D300 bodies will be available at retail on 21st November in the UK... I'd imagine that the same date is true for the rest of the world as well.

So: just 35 days left until these cameras get pressed into some very real world service.

[Dave]

Cheers VP. Do you have your name down for a D3 then ??

[VikingPhotography]

I'm looking to pick up 2 D3 bodies and a 24-70mm lens from Calumet; I'm going to see if I can organise leasing for them instead of buying them outright... works out at £279/month over three years instead of £8K as one lump sum. There are practical tax and VAT benefits to leasing as well, so it seems to be the right road for me to go down.

For the work that I do the D3 is absolutley ideal; I put one through its paces at the NPS Glasgow event on the 11th and came away very impressed. I'm covering the BAFTA Scotland awards on the 22nd so it would be very useful if I could get my mits on the cameras before that job... otherwise I could probably hold out till the new year.

[Dave]

So 2 D2X's coming up for sale soon then

[VikingPhotography]

Hehe, not just yet, Dave; I'm still hell-bent on getting my studio premises up and running (went to view another potential location today) and the D2X bodies are more than up to par for studio work.

On a D3 body my 17-55DX lens would be redundant, so that also goes off to the studio. There'd be little resale value on it... I'd be lucky to bag around £500 for it, which is less than half of what I paid originally... and I'm not going to do that when the lens is still usable.

The only bit of kit I might sell is my 12-24DX, since I will be eventually picking up a 14-24 f/2.8... I can live with the 2mm difference at the wide end if I ever need to use that lens in the studio.

The only time that I'll sell on any of my D2X bodies is when I replace them with the next high-resoluton camera from Nikon which, according to the same rep, is about 9 - 12 months away... by which time the D2X will be very obsolete and not really worth selling imo.