The Nikon D3x is the company’s latest high-end SLR, designed for studio use. This model costs $7999 without lens, and weighs a massive 43 oz (1.2kg), as it’s meant to spend most of its life on a tripod rather than carried around your neck. The D3x is 6.3 inches wide by 6.2 inches high and 3.4 inches deep (159.5 x 157 x 87.5mm), and is distinguishable at a glance from most other SLRs by the additional controls that allow the camera to be held sidewise for easy shooting in portrait orientation. The substantial weight of the body is partly due to its large size, but also the internal magnesium frame, which helps give the D3x its extreme toughness.

The D3x viewfinder offers 100% field of view, a rarity among SLR cameras, which means that what you see through it is exactly what will be recorded in the image. It also has three LCD screens, one monochrome on the top, another monochrome on the back and a handsome color LCD with a high 920,000-dot resolution. The color screen is used mostly for navigating menus and playing back images, while the black and white screens display shooting information.

The D3x takes advantage of its extra size to make almost every button have only one function, which means you won’t be fumbling over different controls with different dials in different camera modes. The D3x can take two CompactFlash cards at a time, which provides a huge shooting capacity. There’s also the option to have photos instantly backed up from one card to the other, a great peace-of-mind feature for mission-critical jobs like wedding photography. And speaking of peace of mind, the  battery is rated at an impressive 4400 shots, so you’re unlikely to run out of juice in mid-shoot.

This camera is designed to provide an extraordinary level of control over settings. The idea being, if you’re in a studio environment, you can set the camera up to ideally suit that situation and not have to tweak settings on the fly, but rather focus solely on taking photographs. The settings for both shooting options and custom options can be stored in five memory banks each, making it easy to load all your favorite settings for particular shooting situations in an instant. The meticulous fine-tuning options provided here are truly impressive, from bracketing settings to autofocus modes, button functions, color modes -- it feels like every possible feature of the camera can be customized.

Performance (read in-depth lab performance coverage at DigitalCameraInfo.com)

Given the high price of the D3x, you can be forgiven for expecting out of this world performance, but this was not exactly the case.  The camera performed extremely well on our sharpness tests, and above average in most others (barring slightly low scores for white balance and dynamic range). While overall, these were good results, they weren’t much different from most other SLRs, and in general slightly worse than the Nikon D700. The extra price you pay for the D3x manifests itself in greater control and customization, rather than any exceptional image quality boost.

Comparisons (read in-depth comparisons at DigitalCameraInfo.com)

We compared the D3x to four other cameras: The Nikon D700 and D90, the Canon 5D Mark II and Sony A900. All but the D90 are full-frame cameras, which generally means better noise performance due to the larger sensor size.

Compared to the D700, the D3x scored marginally lower in every image testing category with the exception of its stellar resolution result. The D3x squeezes 24.5-megapixels into the same size sensor as the 12-megapixel D700, which may account for the more expensive camera’s lower scores  in dynamic range and image noise.

Canon’s 5D Mark II is a $2700 full-frame camera, that is markedly smaller and lighter than the $8000 D3x, as it’s designed for greater portability than the studio-based Nikon powerhouse. In terms of performance, the 5D Mark II scored higher in dynamic range and white balance, but lower in resolution and long exposure.

Pitted against Sony’s entry into the field of full-frame cameras, the A900, the Nikon D3x generally scored a bit better. Most noticeably, the Nikon outperformed the Sony  in color accuracy and resolution testing, though the Sony was superior in dynamic range. Another  area where D3x holds a clear advantage over the A900 is the autofocus system, where the Sony uses nine points and the Nikon has 51, plus a highly sophisticated algorithm for making autofocus adjustments.

Comparing the Nikon D90 to the D3x is an interesting proposition, because the D90 sells for 1/8 the price of the larger camera. Even given this massive price difference, the D90 outscored the D3x in color accuracy and dynamic range, though it lagged in the other tests we ran. Even when one model outperformed the other, the difference was often only a point or two. While the cameras are designed for very different markets, this demonstrates the level of image quality built into today’s consumer-priced SLRs, and reinforces the idea that the extra price paid for pro-level gear is mainly an investment in superior build quality and customization options.