Basically another sharpness test....this time the D1X doesn't fare so well, but the softness may be a focus problem on my part, and I will repeat the test.

The D1X was placed on a tripod at an observation point on the Connecticut river, looking at cabins further up around a bend in the river. It was late afternoon, so strong sunlight was shining in on the cabins. Each body took a minimum of three shots. If their were differences, the sharpest was chosen for comparison.

The lens used was the Nikkor 300mm f/4 ED-IF AF, along with a Kenko Pro 300 1.4x telexender. The shots were done in NEF, and adjusted for optimum dynamic range using curves, with 10-5-0 edge definition added using NX2. Masters were saved as 16 bit TIFFs, and then converted to web-sized files by PhotoMechanic applying its own conversion sharpening. Crops were applied to the TIFFs by PhotoMechanic and again saved at web size. The crops represent approximately 1/5 of raw file size.

Settings used were iso200, f8, single-area focus, autofocus, sunshine WB, in-camera sharpening and contrast at normal or midpoint, noise-reduction turned off, Active-D turned off (in the D300). The D50 iso was accidentally set to iso1600 by a young lady observer, which I did not catch until after the shoot was over...which is actually to the D50's detriment although it is hard to tell from these shots.

Finally, there are two shots here for the D1X...one upsized by NX to 10mp (4016 x 2624) and one at the Nikons original 6MP upsizing (3012 x 1986).