Less controls for vital functions? Naah.
I have to admit - I have no idea of what those "vital functions" are.
I use my D700 with MF lenses only, in A or M mode only, from 200 to 1600 ISO only, in Auto WB 99% of the time. I shoot uncompressed NEF files only (which fool wouldn't given the huge IQ difference between the uncompressed NEF properly post-processed in Capture NX and the in-camera Jpegs), and I never connected it to a computer using the USB wire (I have an old computer yet it has an integrated multi-format cards hub). 95% of my shots are made in center-weighted metering mode (for A mode I have customized the camera so that I lock the metering value by half-depressing the shutter release so I never use the AE lock button) although I sometimes switch to matrix (without perceiving any actual difference at all, because I am an experienced photog. enough so that I know how/where to meter, thanks). I never used the built-in flash, I never bracket and I for G*d's sake do not need that darn AF-collimators joystick. The EC setting is always on -1/3, a basic safety tip to avoid clipping the highlights occasionally.
I grew up with a Nikon FE then was given a F3 then bought a FM2 then offered myself a F2SB, an F Eyelevel and an F2 DE-1, just before taking the plunge to the wonderful world of the Nikon RFs. Last year I purchased a mint Nikkor-O 35/2 which came with an equally mint Nikkormat FTn as a rear lens cap, and this simpliest body is a joy to use.
So - I haven't turned 50 yet and I'm by far not a retiring baby-boomer nor a dilettante poseur
😛 but I think that I know the Nikon tools quite a bit.
The D700 was a "reason purchase" (second hand yet mint with 2,341 shutter actuations only and for under $1,000 with two genuine Nikon batteries and lots of bonus - a bucks bang deal no doubt, I was lucky there) so that I was able to use my great MF Nikkors on an excellent FF DSLR for color photography (for B&W, film may still rule, but for color
ita missa est) ; but, as many other folks, I had been waiting for the "FM3D" we all hoped Nikon would make eventually.
Not this time it seems.
My point of view is that I am definitely not the only folk out there to have hoped that the Df would be
what we were waiting for, to be quite disappointed onwards.
It definitely is a nice camera. But it is NOT what the teasing campaign was saying it would be.
The marketing campaign was broadcasted as if its main assumed target was the Nikon long-term users and lovers crowd who had been crying for a back-to-the basics camera for long, and which Uncle Nikon had listened to at last (the "It's in my hands again" of the teaser #1 now sounds quite tricky-pathetic if you consider what the Df is actually). But the reality is that this is another lambda DSLR camera aimed to gather new customers thanks to an unachieved half-half retro design, not a camera made accordingly to what many Nikon users were waiting for as for a really
different photographic tool of the mature digital age.
This is what is wrong with the Df release. This is even not the camera itself which is wrong.
