Nikon D4: specs, release date, price, and our in-depth preview

At 11 full-resolution frames per second, the Nikon D4 is a pretty fast camera by most people's standards. It's not quite a match for the Phantom HD Gold, however, which was recently used in a gorgeous amateur promo video to capture slow motion footage of the D4's shutter at 1,000 frames per second. The video was created by a couple of employees from the Scheimpflug photography equipment service, who gave the D4 the lavish attention to detail normally reserved for Formula One cars or military hardware in Jerry Bruckheimer movies, with the mirror crashing up and down like a concrete guillotine. Make sure to watch the video below — the shutter-slapping action begins at around the 0:55 mark.

Nikon has announced a 10 percent price rise in the UK on its forthcoming D4, D800, and D800E cameras, with the originally published (and now retracted) MSRPs being blamed on a "local internal systems error." Prospective British buyers can now expect to pay a hefty £5,289.99 for the D4, £2,599.99 for the D800, and £2,899.99 for the D800E. Nikon also says that the Irish pricing is similarly affected, but hasn't given a figure in Euros. While $300 might seem a steep difference between the D800 and D800E, £300 feels even sharper.

It's been a long wait for Nikon's newest full-frame cameras, however the company does give one piece of good news for those who have been holding patiently. Customers who have pre-ordered the camera at the original price shouldn't be affected by the hike — Nikon says that it will honor the original prices to retailers on any pre-orders placed prior to March 24th.

Can't wait out the remaining days until your Nikon D4 ships? You could always make yourself as prepared as possible for the full-frame shooter's arrival by perusing the manual, which has been made available through Nikon's EU support site. It doesn't appear to contain much in the way of truly new information following our in-depth preview of the camera, but at nearly 500 pages long there's certainly a lot to digest. After all, the better you know your camera's button layout, the less you'll have to think about it before taking the picture.

In other D4 news, there are reports that the camera may come bundled with a 16GB Sony XQD card and reader. Australian sports photographer Sydney Low and Czech stock imaging agency Candybox have been lucky enough to receive their D4 packages already, and both found Sony's latest flash memory technology inside. The card would be the perfect partner, with Sony's claims that it can keep up with 100 RAW files in continuous shooting mode — considering the D4's ability to shoot 11 RAW files a second, you may well need it. While the manual does state that memory cards are sold separately, Nikon Rumors has heard the first shipment may be different. In any case, we have less than a week to find out if Nikon will be extending the same service to its non-professional customers.

We previously heard that the Nikon D4 was set to come out in "mid-March" with the D800 following a week or two later, but if Amazon's listings are anything to go by it looks like both cameras will be available on March 20th. The retailer has placed both full-frame shooters back up for preorder, and we'd definitely advise anyone interested to go that direction — pro-level Nikon cameras are often sold out for several months after release. You'll even save 95 cents on Nikon's list price, with the 16-megapixel D4 going for $5999.00 and the D800 at $2999.00 (both in body-only form). The D800E doesn't have a release date listed, but is also available to preorder for anyone interested in paying a $300 premium to remove the anti-aliasing filter.

$5,999.95 is a mighty large chunk of change to plunk down on a camera. That's how much Nikon's brand new flagship camera, the D4, will cost you, but for those who truly need the kind of power this monster brings to the table, money really isn't an object. In fact, while the D4 hasn't been released yet — it's slated for a mid-March debut — professionals are already committing to buying it without ever touching the camera. That might not make sense to most, but after spending just a bit of time with the D4, I don't think those buyers are going to be disappointed.

We've heard all about the D4's specs, and we even got to spend a few minutes playing with the hardware, but this time we got to shoot on our own terms and keep the photos and video we took. This preview is about what the D4 is like to shoot with and what kind of results it produces, so read on to see what you'll be getting if you're one of the lucky photographers to purchase a D4 in the coming weeks.

Earlier today, as part of a Q&A on Nikon France's Facebook page, the company said the D4 would be launching on March 15th, with the D800 launching a week later on March 22nd and the D800E coming on April 12th. Naturally, we wondered if those dates were for France only or if the US could expect to see Nikon's latest around the same time — Nikon let us know that the D4 will indeed be launching in the US in "mid-March," rather than in February as we heard initially. Nikon also confirmed that the D800 will follow in "late March," and the D800E in "mid-April" — this timeframe matches up with what we heard for the D800 when the camera was announced last week. While we can't say for certain that these new DSLRs will be launching in the US on the same date as they are in France, it wouldn't surprise us at all to see them hit stores within the same week. Mark your calendars — the D4 is only a month away.

You know you're in for a treat when Nikon decides to upgrade the very top of its camera range, the single-digit DSLR flagship. Taking over from the D3s is the D4, a $6,000 camera that gleefully upgrades just about every spec from its predecessor while also weighing less and lasting longer on a smaller battery.

Handling of the new camera isn't all that dramatically different from the D3s. A few of the keys have played a game of musical chairs, but you're still looking at more or less the same layout. Nikon has added a pair of joysticks for manipulating your focus point while shooting or moving around an image when reviewing, plus there's now a movie mode toggle framing the Live View button. The biggest change in the D4 is in the way Nikon has duplicated right-hand controls for shooting in portrait orientation — that is to say, the buttons available to you in landscape mode are in exactly the same position when you flip the camera into portrait. I only spent a short time with Nikon's new DSLR, but it's quite obvious how that would benefit those who switch orientation often.

On the inside, the DSLR is a much larger upgrade. There's a 16.2-megapixel FX format CMOS sensor inside, measuring 36.0 x 23.9mm. It has a native ISO of up to 12,800, higher than was originally rumored, and is expandable to 204,800. The camera is faster than ever, too, thanks to Nikon's new Expeed 3 processor — reps said the D4 will boot in .012 seconds, has .042-second shutter lag, and will shoot at 11 frames per second, one faster than the D3s. The Expeed 3 processor also improves autofocus performance, which still has 51 points but can use phase detection in even worse lighting conditions. (The autofocus system upgrade also now supports any Nikon lens up to f/8, which is pretty much all of them.) The RGB metering sensor has been bumped up to 91,005 pixels, which makes metering far better, particularly on small subjects. Live View and Movie mode autofocus have both been improved as well — which any D3s user knows is not a moment too soon — though it's still contrast-detect autofocus.

Video performance in general was clearly high on Nikon's list for the D4's functionality. The new shooter captures 1080p30, 1080p24, and 720p60 video, and Nikon has added smooth aperture adjustment as well as three different crops for video, up to 2.7x — that means you can shoot 1080p video, and give it the appearance of being zoomed a long way without any special optics. There's a new 20-level audio metering system, plus a headphone jack with 30-level adjustment so you can monitor straight from the camera. Apparently Nikon had some processing power to spare, too, because you can stream a full, uncompressed 720p signal out of the camera through its HDMI port, and view it on the camera simultaneously.

We're still not completely sure what Nikon's D4 will look like, but we can tell you its specs: it seems a wire report has been inadvertently published confirming that the hotly-anticipated DSLR will arrive in February, bringing a full-frame 16.2 megapixel sensor with a 100-102,400 native ISO range for $6,000.

Many major specs detailed in the International Press Telecommunications Council report were already leaked, including the camera's 51-point AF system (with 9 cross-type points), 50-204,800 expanded ISO range, ethernet jack and Compact Flash XQD memory card slot, but we're now learning that the camera will have 100 percent coverage in its full pentaprism optical viewfinder, and do contrast-detect autofocus and smoothly adjust aperture while recording 1080p30, 1080p24 and 720p60 HD video. According to the report, the max continuous shooting speed will actually be 10fps, not the 11fps rumored, but the D4 will do face detection, has a 91,000-pixel RGB metering sensor, and will feature illuminated function keys and a dedicated video recording button. Nikon's also introducing a new AF-S 85mm f/1.8G FX format lens, with an MSRP of around $500. The wire report's dated January 10th, so expect an official announcement from Nikon around then. We've also reached out to Nikon for comment and will let you know what we hear.

Rumors are starting to fly fast around the Nikon D4, the long-rumored successor to the excellent D3 and D3s. A detailed (though unconfirmed) spec sheet made the rounds a few weeks ago, and now the often-reliable Nikon Rumors has posted a photo of a Nikon camera that could be the D4, though the grey box covering up the camera's name badge sets off a few alarms. Overall, the purported D4 (pictured above, on the left) looks like it tightens up the D3s design ever so slightly while still retaining all of the camera's myriad ports, buttons, and dials (from the front, at least). It's been over four years since the D3 was announced, and Nikon definitely needs a response to Canon's monstrous 1D X coming this spring. We're expecting to see more of a camera presence in general at this year's CES, and the D4 would certainly turn a lot of heads.