Nikon D1: 23 YEARS later! RETRO review of Nikon's FIRST DSLR 

I shot on the D1 for 7 years as a newspaper photojournalist back in 2000-2007. I had approximately 8,000 images published using this camera. I also had photos featured in magazines and on billboards during this time. The biggest annoyance of this camera was the battery life. If I remember correctly, I was lucky to get 50 photos out of a single charge. I always had to carry the huge battery charger with me everywhere. But it sure beat shooting film.

As a teenager this was my dream camera, but way out of my price range. I was shooting an older F100 at photography school and loved that body. So last year I got myself a D1 off ebay for 80 euros :))

As a camera collector, I have a mint condition D1X which I still use for special projects. I still believe it’s a great camera, as long as you work within its limitations.

I got my D1 in December 1999 after being on the waiting list for a few months. It was amazing then how much it felt like a digital F5 and took very little learning curve to get used to it. What's amazing now is how well Nikon did in both making it usable at the time but in how close it was in basic layout to even the Z 9. It was a beautifully thought out design that has stood the test of time amazingly well for a first try product in a new market.

I bought a D1 that had been used by a photojournalist in 2001 and it’s what I used to launch my photography career to the next level. As a budding photographer who was 23 at the time. Being a wedding “photojournalist” with that camera made me a bit of a hot commodity to photography studios that were still shooting medium format or 35mm film. I adored that camera and I hated to sell it, but the D2HS promised many improvements and I sold it and moved on. Then went into have. Number of D70’s!! The build quality was a huge step backwards, but the color science was much better than previous cameras especially when it came to skin tones in mixed lighting. That was the biggest nightmare for the early generation of digital cameras!! Still shooting Nikon to this very day and these videos make me nostalgic for the early cameras I had!!

Oh, the nostalgia hit from this video..! I remember being terrified of having such an expensive camera hanging off my shoulder! I remember my newspaper only got us 32mb cards, so I spent my own money buying a 128mb card, at the Focus On Imaging show, for the show special price of £120. I still have it, still by far the most expensive card I've bought! But the D1 was a great tool for the job, so much easier than using film, but you needed 2-3 spare batteries. Also 'high ISO' in those days was really only 1600iso, either push processed or Fujifilm Neopan 1600, so the D1 wasn't far off. The D2h was better but not hugely, the D3 was brilliant. But my, how this D1 video takes me back...23 years eh? Blimey!

I have used Nikon since my first Nikon F (yes I am older). I currently shoot jobs with a D850 and am amazed at how similar it looks to the D1. I began my own digital journey with a Leaf DCBII then a Fuji S3 (Nikon body) Then a Nikon D700. I love Nikon because I can still shoot my jobs with my 1968 Micro Nikor 55mm.

The photos look way better than I expected.. I cannot believe they came out of that camera! those photos could be used today in a magazine and I would not be able to tell!

Thank you, Gordon, once more, for the great videos and experience you're bringing to it!

Thanks again Gordon - wow that`s a Mint one !! tidier than the one I had which was only 4 years old !! and the D3 I still have is now hanging LOL - the D1H was really a D1 which was fully sorted and refined , great camera without casts , banding etc..

I love this channel way too much, already binge watched almost every video. there is just something relaxing and fun about vintage cameras (and lenses) :)

Great video! Love it how the ergonomics of these cameras are still the same. In the mid 2000s I used a Fuji S2. It had a Nikon mount and also a special sensor with pixels in pairs (one for brightness and one for color). Later I switched to a D200.

Finally RU-vid recommended something normal! What an awesome channel!!!

Love the channel, love the video, love the camera! A perfectly viable killer looking pro camera today and still taking amazing photos.. even the AF is great! Amazing 😘😘😘

You made my day with this video!

Fascinating Retro, how amazing you could pick up this camera and it would feel so familiar today. I remember the photo- journalists(UK) along the south coast scrambling to get used to the new technology when they were forced to use one of these. Remember the Olympus E10 2001 4MP from this era, futuristic design? The first camera I could use for simple pack shots and more , I still have one that works, half an hour battery life, great lens. Then moved to the Nikon/ Fuji S pro cameras could be used for tethered capture. Keep on taking us down memory lane Gordon, digital is becoming vintage!

Great video. I bought a secondhand D1 from a colleague for £2000 in 2001 when I was made redundant from a newspaper. For me the two biggest drawbacks were the battery technology and the colours out of the camera. I remember having a photoshop action to change the colours and try to correct the odd cyan/magenta skin tones. At one point I was carrying around six batteries for the D1 as in the winter the cold weather hastened their discharging and it was always a bit nerve wracking to know if they would see the day out when freelancing for a paper and covering rugby or football on a damp, cold afternoon. In 2003 I bought a Nikon D100 (which I still have and still works) as a second body and ended up preferring its larger file size, better battery technology and colours.

Yes ...I have a wonderful mint condition D1 that I bought around 10 years ago while living in the USA. Buffering was a nightmare - waiting for it to write to the card! Battery life was shocking bad. But, I loved it - still do. Took it for a spin for fun just the other day.

Awesome as always. This channel deserves all my likes 🙏🙏🙏

Always watch Your videos . Never disappointing . Thank You .

thanks for the video explanation, now I know why Nikon is a legend in the world of photography.

Great video. Although not quite as old, I was able to buy a Nikon D3 quite cheap, mainly due to its high shutter count. Love trying out these old cameras.

Great video Gordon, wish I found it sooner. Btw, I just bought your book “in Camera”, Good work!

Just bought the D1X. CAN'T WAIT TO GET STARTED

35 000+! Wow!? Still have my d50, 70 & 100. Great cams. Love this stuff. Lovely pics from such an oldie but goodie.

Excellent information, thanks so much !

cool! Nikon knew it's stuff with the f5 and f100 and it made the d1 recognizable for its users! keep up the good work!

I used the Nikon F3HP film for Weddings, then switched over to the Nikon D100 for Wedding and Portrait Photography and it was the Best at the time! But today after having a D500 & D7500; I traded them off for the D300s as my Primary Camera! Great Video on the Cameras of Yesteryear! Thank You!

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing👍

Honestly very impressive for a camera this old!

🤩 wow! The legend of the D1

Those late Nikon SLRs are huge, lol. I do somewhat remember seeing Fujifilm working with Nikon. Nice history overview of the D1.

Great presentation thank you

The image quality is not too bad. My first attempt of a DSLR was a 3 Megapixel Canon D30, which I bought used (cheap) in about 2005. I considered the results I got out of it being pretty awful. I moved on rather quickly to a 10D, which was quite a bit better.

My, how technology changes! 23 years ago the D1 was a state-of-the-art DSLR, but today it's almost laughably quaint. Hard to think but 23 years from now the Z9 will be considered quaint too.

What’s so wild is how similar the Z9 is with this camera, how it’s built and looks. Classic Nikon.

This was wonderful! Now I've gotta go out and find one...

Great looking camera. Clean straight lines, upright tall pentaprism, proportionally place grips. This camera perfectly combines classic and new design.

I thought the photos have that video look to them. Maybe because of the NTSC profile? Nice to see this camera reviewed. I recently picked up a Fuji S1 Pro with the Super CCD sensor, also from around Y2K. I quite like the Fujichrome look of the files. It's a super slow camera for sure compared to what's available today.

Thanks for the video, Gordon. I picked up a cheap D1 a few years ago. I really enjoyed your retrospective. One thing I read elsewhere is that it was developed so quickly by Nikon that if you open it up it apparently still has the film spool slot in the back (I've not been brave enough to open mine up to find out).

Nice one Gordon and great fun. I still have a Canon D30 which I take out and use from time to time :)

i own a D1 and the 1/16000th shutter speed while connected to the power block make it a formidable high speed camera for macro work to this day.

Still waiting for a Canon 1D retro review Gordon. :D

Such nostalgic colors. In fact all my memories from early 00ties are colored in a way of early digital sensors.

I have the d1 from 1999. Used it along with my F4s , F6 and Hasselblad , depending on market needs .the d1 was replaced by the d3s

I would love to have one even if it didn't work. Just for the historical value. Same with the first Canon DSLR too. I first discovered your channel here just now Gordon. Subbed and the usual things. Cheers.

Optical viewfinder curtain! Where was that on my Canon when I wanted it. I used to put a hat over my camera for long exposures! Haha.

I owned the D! and bought it new in 1999. It was a great camera. I used for some product ads that went into national magazines and it printed well. great camera, but I own the D850 now, another great camera. I started photography with the Nikon F, had the F2 and F#, F4. all good cameras except for the F4. I was using a view camera for most of my work and I took a picture with the D! instead of the 4x5 camera for an ad in Cigar Aficionado. I continued using the 4x5 for most of my work for a few years and then began using DSLR's for most of my work a few years later. I switched to the Canon because needed a full frame camera for architecture. I just switched back to Nikon last year with the D850. Thank you for the video, interesting since I haven't had this camera for years.

Cool vid! and I am going to try to resurrect my Nikon 995 this weekend. Its been in hibernation for about 20 years.

Great shots Gordon

Pictures still usable for social media

Feels like 9/11 was just yesterday and this camera was only released 18 months or so before. Absolutely crazy where time goes. Just wish humanity could sort itself out to make our short time here a little easier to bear. But yeah, vintage digital cameras really are becoming a thing.

I remember renting this camera for a few jobs in 2000. We knew so little back then about color management or at least I did. I do still have a D2h and a D2x plus a D3 but pretty much always use my D850 or D500.

It would be nice to see a review following on from this on the original EOS 1D MK1. I had one back in the day and still have one now for old times sake. It has an amazing sensor for its time, just so long as you didn’t push the iso too far..!

Hi Gordon, nice retro review. I know about the big buzz, 1999 when the D1 came out. Read it on DPR and various other websites.

I would have loved to own this DSLR back in 1999/2000, but I could not afford it back, while they were still relevant. Although, a few years ago I did pick up a D1 still in good working order for a single Ben Franklin, as you said. That was very impressive to still be working 2 decades later. There are not many electronics that last this long. I put my smallest 32G CF card in it, but it would not work. I mentioned this on-line and someone mailed me an old 128M CF card to use, and it worked. I wanted it just as a collector's piece, since it is not very usable today. Especially compared to my D850 with 16X more pixels to work with.

I’ve been looking for a good copy of this camera!!

I shot a lot of sports and photojournalism with a pair of D1h bodies, albeit several years after they had been discontinued and were much more affordable. It was a responsive and enjoyable camera to use. I still own a D1x that I used most for portraits and other non-fast moving situations. My first DSLR was a Kodak/AP NC2000e, which I bought in the early 2000's for $500. It was already a relic and not a great experience, but it made images in an era when film was no longer an option for news work. I still own that camera, plus a Kodak DCS 420. My father was a commercial photographer and he used it in the 90's for studio work.

*The trick with 1\16000s shutter speed is* ... the lowest ISO of only 200 in Nikon D1 and Canon 1D (bigger APS-H sensor, but also has 1\16000s). So it is exactly the same amount of light as 1\8000 at ISO 100, which the companies later went on with. Sure, 1\16000s can freeze motion a bit more, but is it really so needed? They preferred to proceed with lower ISO...

I was searching for a D1 or D1X but couldn't find any at a reasonable price and in working condition. I finally decided to spend about 100€ on a D2H that was in a bit of a rough shape, and it's wonderful ! The color science is really special, I don't know if that's because we had different standards at the time or is it because of the pretty special JFET sensor

I still have D90 and use it from time to time...

Good memories. I knew that digital was fast becoming the way to go and had been following the Kodak converted Nikons but certainly couldn't afford one. Finally, the D1x came out and I bought one, new, for $4200.00. More than I'd ever paid for a camera by about 4x. I couldn't afford this one either but I had to have it. What a beautiful camera that took amazing shots. Memory cards weren't cheap (I bought micro-drives just to get some capacity) and the battery life was dismal, but I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, I sold my D1x outfit fairly cheap just as the aftermarket batteries were just starting to appear. I probably would have kept it just because it was such a nice camera, but new technology beckoned.

Great, eagerly awaited another retro camera video 😁I remember that I bought a used D1H in 2007 and played a while around with it, but sold it again. It was nice to use, but the condition of my sample was rather bad, scruffed and smelled badly as the previous owner seemed to be a chain smoker 😅 What bugged me was the fact that it didn´t save the images from a continuous burst when powered off and they were still in the process of being written to the card. On a side note, have you tried scaling such old-school pictures up with a program like Topaz Gigapixel? I found it gives rather good results with higher quality low-resolution images. Should be worth a try.

Nikon didn't make dedicated APS-C DX lenses until 4 years after the D1 was released. So I guess the line-up was lacking at the wide end. My first Nikon DLSR was the brilliant D70 with its 18-70 kit lens. Only later I got curious and bought a D1 for around 150 pounds. Still works after some fixing. But I don't remember what lenses Nikon had in it's AF line-up in 1999 as I skipped that era from th FA to the D70. Have to research.

About time!! I thought this channel was closed lol

Funny you mention the IBM Microdrive as I bought one for my D1H and it was $800 for a 1GB, the largest card at the time. It not soon after started making a horrible noise and it failed. Couldn’t even recover the images from a professional job. I was extremely upset and luckily I got my money back. To cover the shoot, I refunded them. Never again bought anything like that piece of garbage, it was a CF Type 2! So it was fatter and this caused the heat seal to not have room to breathe. The spinning round internal disk was also very fragile and broke easily, scary card. Could’ve caused fires or injuries lol. Thank goodness it didn’t!

Making me want to dig up my old D1H out of storage, Gordo. Recently printed some of my old sports & photojournalism Raw files (TIF) as 11x14’s for a laugh after some finessing in Photoshop. They actually look quite alright!

You have the brain, you can still take good picture with it.

finally

Just picked up a D2x with 18-200 DX lens, 4 cards, 2 batteries and SB900 flash for $150 CDN. It isn’t near mint like your D1, but the first day shooting in bright sunlight turned out swimmingly. I love these old cameras.

My first digital camera was a Nikon D70 which I still have, the images off the D1 still look respectable today, unlike early mobile phone images😂

Gordon, what I would like to see are: old CCD sensor DSLRs, Nikon's film SLR series, F100/F5 etc. Thanks!

I've replaced my nikon d850 with a old nikon d2xs and i love it not as fast or good as the d850 but in my eyes its far better might buy a f4

Great video. Can you review more Sony cybershot cameras?

Amazingly the first digital camera I ever got my hands on was a Nikon-converted Kodak DCS in 1995… not entirely sure which model but it cost AU$12,000 for a measly 1.5mpix image. That was more than enough for department store catalogues back then though! Not surprisingly when I got to use an Apple QuickTake in 1998, I was less than impressed. 😅

I used to 'flip' the D1 to buyers back in 1999. Photographers would literally spend anything to get a D1. My first true Nikon digital was the D2X but the partial frame was disappointing. Next was a D3 and then D3S. Recently I found a running Kodak (F5) DCS-620 that produces a whopping 2…1 MB image! But with an image count of only 8743, it was nearly new!

Thing still takes some nice shots! Does it shoot in jpeg only and what post processing options were there/ if any? I was in HS when this came out and not hardcore into photography at the time. For some reason, i had it in my mind that the first DSLR available to public wasn't until 04 or something like that. Great video!!!

So not only the button for memory card door is hidden even the card release mechanism was designed for intentional release.

You gotta do the Leica M9, released 09.09.09, as the first fullframe Leica, 13 years ago in 10 days from now.

Hey Gordon, I have a Kodak DC25. I would like to get a CF card for it so I can transfer the pictures. The smallest CF I found is 256 MB. Do you think that will work?

Its absolutely incredible that a camera from 1999 still outperforms the best phone camera on the market in 2023.

Not several years until video... First Nikon with 720p video and live view was D90 in 2008

Bought two D1s today at a PhotoFair for $50 each. Can't wait to experiment. With various AI apps now we can work around some limitations.

How are ( YOU ) charging the camera battery? Firewire , front power port? or from one of the super hard to find battery chargers ( Nikon MH-16 / MH-17 /MH-15 / EH-3 )?

I once got kicked out of a music recital I was covering for the local paper because the shutter on my D1H was too loud

I believe you can print those in A4 perfectly...

Is it true that it had global shutter sensor ?

It's not the 460 but I have a Kodak DCS 420 and also a Nikon D1 although is really beated up, it's one of the last D1 built. The ISO control was the most cuestionable, placed behind a door had sense in a film camera like in the F5 but not in the D1, they changed that with the D1H/D1X. About my experience with it, shooting raw is awfully slow, it takes 2 seconds to process and you can't still shooting, this happens only in Single Drive mode, in burst the camera doesn't freeze the shutter while processing, I think Nikon didn't write code so the camera could use its built in RAM in Single Drive mode, but that's only my theory. My experience with the 420 is terrible because of the 2,3x crop factor, the F90X single focus point covers almost the entire 420 framing so AF is a little bit difficult, IQ was not great but it's a camera from 1994 with a sensor from 1992 so what do you expect. Both are really fun tho.

Actually.... Nikon D90 was the first DSLR with video in 2008.... So, its more like almost a decade for video options.... Although, D300 in the same year brought Full HD and mic jack...

If you ever get around to reviewing a D200, I'm not entirely convinced the base iso of 100 iso the base. I think it's 200 b/c I can recover -5 stops better at 200 iso than 100 iso. Also compare jpg editing vs raw editing. I find jpgs to be better than the raw files or at least exactly the same. I shoot in optimal jpg-norm.- Large The optimal setting automatically bumps up the quality if it's needed. Fine imo does look better than normal or basic. Basic actually looks nearly as good as the raw files. I also don't use NR in the camera. Nikon says if it's on, it's just a boost to the automatic NR that can't be turned off. Batteries, I use the Wasabi Power batteries now without issue. I've used other brands and they don't work or fit as well. Avoid the BONADGET batteries, they don't fit and they don't hold a charge. Also I've owned two D200 and I've never had to clean the sensor. The shutters last really long, like 1 million frames long. Also the different color modes make an actual difference to how skin tones are rendered. Use Mode III for your landscape pics and Mode I for people. For such an old camera, having the AF assist light, I can shoot in pitch black with the center AF point in S. I only wish the D200 came with ADL

The MODE button is on the RIGHT side. Sad everything released after the D5 is no longer on the RIGHT side.

To be honest, the photographs don't really look too bad. With a bit of tweaking they would probably be perfectly fine for online use. Of course it wouldn't make much sense to carry around such a large camera wit only 2 mpix nowadays, when one can get a much smaller one with better image quality for not much money.

Just bought one for a 10'er.. :)

Nikon's electronic SLRs peaked aesthetically with the F5 and F100. As such, the D1 and D1X still look better than all of the pro bodies that succeeded them. Canon hewed closer over time to their own very attractive EOS 1V design. Nikons became more and more cyberpunk looking over time.

How the hell i didnt know anything about this chanel.

This thing is older than me

I cut my digital teeth so to speak with a D50,then upped to a D80..always wanted a D1 or D2 but jumped on the Fuji bandwagon with the S3 and S5,then went back to Nikon and here I stayed 🙂

I think a magenta colour cast is more pleasant than a green colour cast. Magenta can have a natural look to many things like the sky, wood, grey tones and more. Green colour cast only can look ok in a nature setting with lots of greenery in the scene. But green in skin tones can make people look like they have an illness.

There were BOTH Canon D30 and 30D

Anyone commenting that the camera still looks great today, needs to stop looking through nostalgia glasses.