Spending a week actively photographing with some of Nikon's best products has reinforced something I've felt since the D700 came out: we're in a sweet spot with DSLRs right now. If we get a D300s and D700x later this year as I expect, I'm not sure what I'd ask for in terms of pixels and basic camera choices in future generations: the choice of 12 or 24mp in small or large bodies coupled with the current metering and AF system is, well, pretty darned close to nirvana. I've been photographing sports (swimming, wrestling, judo, bicycling, and a few other sports in addition to what you've seen on the site recently), and most of my complaints about my Nikon gear would be small things, essentially nits.
Let's start with 12mp. The D3 and D700 just excel in available low light situations, at least if you're optimizing things while photographing (missing a white balance and exposure is a no-no in indoor lighting conditions). Working at ISO 6400 in some of the poorly lit Olympic Training Center gyms I was still getting exteremely usable results with the D3. Dialed down to ISO 1600 in some of the brighter venues, the D3 is simply amazing. A D700 really only suffers a tiny bit in frame rate compared to the D3 in these situations, and makes for a more affordable approach if you don't absolutely need the 9 fps and bulletproof body of the D3. Even the D300 was handling ISO 3200 well in some of the strange light sources I was working with, but you have to be even more careful to nail white balance and exposure
So here's the one question you need to ask yourself these days: is 12mp enough? I'll hazard a guess that it is for most of you reading this. You should be able to easily get to a 13x19" print (largest size the desktop inkjets support) at ISO 1600 on a D300 and ISO 3200 on a D3/D700. You can push a little bigger at lower ISOs, and even push the ISO up at those sizes if you're very, very careful about camera settings and post processing. Do you really need more? I'd be surprised if you did. Certainly many of the sports photographers I met this past week don't.
Okay, how about the 24mp D3x? I used that some, too, even in low-light gyms. With the D3x high ISO work is a little more risky, but certainly still possible up to about ISO 3200 if you're willing to use a little noise reduction. The D3x raw files still impress me every time I pull one up: that's one heck of a lot of pixels done very well. Could I imagine going to a camera with even more pixels? Not really. I suppose there are some landscape situations where I want to go huge (48" prints or larger), but I'm already tackling those with stitching, so all more pixels are giving me is fewer stitches. Not to be sneezed at, but also not exactly worth spending an extra US$5000 for, either.
Meanwhile, the D5000 and D90 actually are JPEG savants, producing slightly better out-of-camera images than the D300 using the same basic sensor technology. Again, that's 12mp that can go to ISO 1600 easily and another stop in a pinch. And 12mp is enough pixels for most anything you're going to do outside of the very occasional poster-sized image.
So I think we're in an era where the cameras are more than good enough. This doesn't mean I wouldn't turn down future sensor improvements. But those future image quality improvements are likely to be small in nature and not worth spending large bucks chasing. There are very few folk I'd suggest getting a D3x over a D700, for instance. VERY few. Thus, future, smaller improvements aren't exactly going to generate a stampede towards new cameras, IMHO.
That's not to say that Nikon shouldn't take a long, hard look at camera features and ergonomics. Next week I'll be updating the User Suggestions page with many more requests, and it just goes to point out how many small things are escaping the Nikon engineering team. Do we really need video in almost every new camera, or would still photographers be better served by embracing true HDR (both in camera and out)? My answer is the latter. And there are many, many more small things like that need to be brought to our DSLRs. I'll have more to say about this soon.
In the meantime, consider where we are: 12mp is plenty of pixels for most people. Every current Nikon DSLR from the D5000 up produces very good images at that resolution or better. A D5000 user is not at a severe disadvantage to a D3 user in terms of image quality--yes, there's perhaps a stop or a bit more of difference at the highest ISO values--so the real difference is in the build quality and features of the cameras. And you've got plenty of choice there: D5000, D90, D300, D700, and D3 form a pretty nice little ramp up the feature and camera build mountain. Beyond that we've only got one camera right now, the ultra expensive D3x. By the end of the year we'll have a lower cost version of that, but is that really what you need? I'll hazard that most users would be better off served by buying one of the 12mp cameras and a better lens than by spending more bucks on a 24mp body.
As the title indicates, we're in a sweet spot with DSLRs. While I can imagine better cameras with better quality and features, I've been extraordinarily happy taking thousands of images this past week with what I've got. Do I really need more? No. I'd rather spend my money on getting to places where the photos I like to take are, and perhaps on some additional lenses. For awhile now, some of you writing me about "should I upgrade to Latest-and-Greatest-DSLR-X" have gotten the answer "no, you'd be better off putting that same money into instruction or trips or lenses. None of the things I'm predicting coming down the pike from Nikon are going to change that.
So get out there and photograph this summer. Spend a little time getting better with what you've got and you might be surprised. Put another way: if someone had handed me a D700 back in 1990 to use, I would have blown away quite a few of those folk I was competing with using Velvia, and I wouldn't have needed another new camera, even today. Think about THAT and digest it for a moment. Truly we are in a wonderful time when it comes to equipment: we've got plenty of quality and plenty of features. Let's go out and take photos, folks.