7. Ergonomics, Construction And Handling

Nestled in your hand, the DCS Pro SLR/n both attracts and frightens. Its film/digital duality is clear in the Nikon body, comparable to the F80's, with a kind of grip/motor entirely dedicated to digital. In the final analysis, the unit is quite unbalanced, with a width that breaks records and handling that's fairly good horizontally but frankly questionable (or downright bad, depending on opinions) vertically. For example, there's a secondary vertical shutter release that's totally unusable by normal hands. In practice, access to the "film" menus (ISO, P, A, S and M modes, etc.) is as simple as on a traditional SLR, with a general jog dial and two additional ones for adjustments. The unit reacts exactly like a normal SLR, without latency.

The camera is fairly light in weight, but its body seems a little too "lightweight." This is only a minor fault, except for those who are looking for solidity above all (who will find what they're looking for in the Canon EOS 1Ds, not the Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n). The viewfinder is fairly comfortable, with a good "eyepoint," but your nose does systematically bang against the rear housing of the LCD display. A stupid detail, agreed; but it's the kind of thing that eventually becomes annoying.

The rear surface has two LCD displays. One is for the image itself, and the other is simpler and provides basic information such as quality, type of file, white balance and other data.

But it's the digital parts that are a little hard to understand, and in particular navigation and access to the various menus via the LCD display and its dedicated joypad. It's impossible to grasp the range of what's possible, what's easily possible and what's difficult without studying the user manual. To put it clearly, the DCS Pro SLR/n severely lacks intuitiveness. This fault rules the camera out as far as the general public is concerned, reserving it for professionals (but then, that's its target market, which only makes sense). Still, even professionals will tire of the camera's apparent reluctance to do their bidding. The example of sensitivity is striking. Normally calibrated from 160 to 800 ISO, it's possible to push it to 1000 to 1600 in RAW, and also to reduce it to 6 to in 50 in "longer exposure" mode. In practice, moving from longer exposure mode to normal mode is not immediate, and clearly the photographer won't have the time to study the LCD display to figure it all out before the scene to be captured has ended. In the end, one settles for the standard - ISO 160-800 - not without cursing the absence of shortcuts. This is the kind of shortcoming that makes the DCS Pro a studio camera and not a reporter's tool.

As you can see, the unit gets on your nerves, but fortunately you quickly get used to it and get your bearings. Despite this relative ease of use, which comes at a high cost, it's hard to shake the idea that the camera is simply too complicated. A shame.

We'll end with the finish, which overall is beyond reproach, even though you feel that corners had to be cut somewhere to get the price down to $5,000. The buttons, for example, recall the ones you find on a basic compact - a tiny fault that more exacting users may well find disturbing.