After getting rid of my D700 a while ago I have had that nagging pain and longing for another full frame even though I am delighted with the results from my Olympus EM1.
We were on a trip to Bath the other day and as usual I made a point of looking in both well known and long standing camera shops (Ace Optics & London Camera Exchange), Ace had a couple of used Nikon's but they were expensive and I had thought about but then ruled out the D800 series (personal choice).
I then looked in LCE window and they had a nice D800 for £1300 as well as a D700 for around £900, I then noticed they had a used D3s for £1099 so thought interesting and went in to have a look and play with it...............that was it, it had been owned by the Police and was in very good condition with just a couple of very minor "dings" in the base area where they could do no damage, no scratches or marks to screens or covering and the lens mount and internal area was nice and clean - to top it all it only had 9,700 shutter actuations all complete and boxed with a 6 month guarantee.
I was very tempted and wanted the 24-120 f4 ED lens as well so asked them for a price, they gave me a very good deal as I have bought from them a number of times before...
Well, they let me have the camera+new lens (24-120 f4 ED), genuine Nikon UV filter for the lens and Lexar high speed 16GB card (£76 full price) all for just under £1900.00 so needless to say I am delighted and on bread and water for the next 6 months.
I know it is a heavy beast and even more so when fitted with the 24-120 but the ease of operation coupled with lightning fast AF more than makes up for it - just loaded the current firmware today and AF seems a tad faster still!
I tend to shoot a lot of documentary style images as well as shots of my wife and her events and this will be the perfect workhorse as well as being versatile.
Here are a few of my first images with the kit (now need to get a flash and covet the current 80 - 400).
We were on a trip to Bath the other day and as usual I made a point of looking in both well known and long standing camera shops (Ace Optics & London Camera Exchange), Ace had a couple of used Nikon's but they were expensive and I had thought about but then ruled out the D800 series (personal choice).
I then looked in LCE window and they had a nice D800 for £1300 as well as a D700 for around £900, I then noticed they had a used D3s for £1099 so thought interesting and went in to have a look and play with it...............that was it, it had been owned by the Police and was in very good condition with just a couple of very minor "dings" in the base area where they could do no damage, no scratches or marks to screens or covering and the lens mount and internal area was nice and clean - to top it all it only had 9,700 shutter actuations all complete and boxed with a 6 month guarantee.
I was very tempted and wanted the 24-120 f4 ED lens as well so asked them for a price, they gave me a very good deal as I have bought from them a number of times before...
Well, they let me have the camera+new lens (24-120 f4 ED), genuine Nikon UV filter for the lens and Lexar high speed 16GB card (£76 full price) all for just under £1900.00 so needless to say I am delighted and on bread and water for the next 6 months.
I know it is a heavy beast and even more so when fitted with the 24-120 but the ease of operation coupled with lightning fast AF more than makes up for it - just loaded the current firmware today and AF seems a tad faster still!
I tend to shoot a lot of documentary style images as well as shots of my wife and her events and this will be the perfect workhorse as well as being versatile.
Here are a few of my first images with the kit (now need to get a flash and covet the current 80 - 400).
