I’m not a Nikon shooter, but the inevitable Nikon envy always is fun. Never mind from a cool technology point of view keeping tabs on the latest and greatest is just plain fun as well. With that said, this isn’t a hands on review of the D4, or anything of the sort, but I did want to throw my 2¢ out there since it was just released.
The era of really expensive pro cameras
Whether it’s the sagging US economy, a stronger Japanese one, or the camera companies simply got the idea in their head that photographers are made out of gold, the prices on pro bodies, and lenses, have been going up each generation, not down.
Canon’s pro line previously was split between the $4000 1D and the $8000 1Ds, now they’ve been unified into a single $7000 1Dx. Likewise Nikon’s pro sports bodies have been marking upwards from the ~$4000 D3, to the $5000 D3s, to the new $6000 D4.
The question in my mind is do the cameras warrant these steadily growing prices?
As electronic devices, the costs of the electrical components should be coming down. CPUs, RAM, and integrated circuits in general, have gotten smaller and as a side effect of that cheaper. Even the sensors themselves, should be getting slightly less expensive—though they don’t obey Moore’s law the way most electronics do.
Even then, it’s clear that a FX sized sensor can be manufactured at a cost that makes a $2000 camera profitable.
I loath to admit it, for a product I’ve championed for quite sometime, I’ve been doing so largely without any field experience. In fact, the truth is, I just got my ThinkTank Camera strap and camera support straps. And I’ve only just begun to get them squared away. So far, I’m pretty confident that I was right.
My first thoughts on the system is that it’s everything it’s cracked up to be. With the limited shoulder time I’ve given it, the strap, while narrow (1in.), is pretty comfortable on it’s own. More importantly though, it has grippy rubber on both sides; regardless of which way it ends up landing on your shoulder, it’s not going to slide easily. The grippy rubber seems to work fairly well, at least on the few cotton shirts I’ve tried it with, though time will tell with that. Grippyness wise, it seems to hold better than my Lowepro straps did but not quite as good as the wider grippier Canon OEM straps.
However, the real win is when paired with the camera support straps. Clip the metal rings (at the right of the above picture) into the hooks (left in the above picture) and no more sore necks/shoulders from heavy cameras and unpadded straps
I’ve got a couple of long days of shooting coming up, where I’ll be putting the straps and support straps though their paces, but from what I’ve been able to tell so far, I think they’re the winner I thought they’d be. I think at that point I’ll be able to put up a more detailed review. The real test will be this bird season and with a bigger (100-400 f/4) lens to see how they really stand up to carrying weight comfortably.
Image: Nikon USA 
