If ever there were a place to carry a workhorse, full-frame SLR, it’s the Arctic Islands, whether on expedition, a polar cruise or assignment hunting the perfect polar bear shots. The D4S has earned its reputation for split-second, on-the-move accurate autofocus — perhaps the best option on the market for wildlife and action photographers. This particular trip across Baffin was more about collecting Arctic landscapes, communities and people (all still well within the camera’s wheelhouse), but the D4S’s agility and responsiveness became evident when shooting icebergs, landforms and communities from, for example, bouncing motorboats in Pond Inlet and truck beds on Igloolik Island.

This is not a compact, lightweight kit — nor should it be. The camera body’s heft (1.36 kilograms!) is easily justified by its extreme ruggedness and build quality, a long-lasting battery and both horizontal and vertical grips. Nobody packs light for the Arctic, anyway.

Professional photographers will no doubt tap into the supreme flexibility and customizability of the D4S’s external controls and settings (such as the staggering 20-plus autofocus settings). Luckily for magazine editors and any other intermediate-to-advanced amateur photographers out there, the virtually unlimited opportunities for personalization don’t interfere with the camera’s intuitive controls and menus — or, most importantly, with quick-and-dirty use in the field.

The D4S is loaded with a powerful processor (the “EXPEED 4”), the aforementioned wealth of autofocus settings, a huge native sensitivity range from ISO 100 to 25,600, and the ability to shoot at a blistering 11 frames per second.

Small gripes: gratuitous modern luxuries, perhaps, but as neither Wi-Fi nor GPS are built into the D4S, enabling these functions requires purchasing and connecting a transmitter and GPS unit. Meanwhile, some wildlife photographers will prefer a sensor resolution of more than 16.2 megapixels (such as the 36.3 megapixels packed into the Nikon D810A) to allow for more aggressive zooming and cropping in post-production. Even so, the D4S’s superb lack of noise (including at ISO settings of 6,400 and 12,800) can make up for this, as noise tends to become more evident the closer you crop.

AF-S NIKKOR 24-85mm
f/3.5-4.5G ED VR FX-format lens

This is a carry-everywhere, sturdy lens that mercifully doesn’t add a ton of weight to an already bulky camera. Landscapes and portraits produced by the Nikon 24-85mm VR are high-contrast and popping with colour, and sharpness is excellent throughout the range (with some loss toward the corners of the frame and a tendency to vignette at the full 24 mm, but then some photographers are into that). In low- and failing-light scenarios, the upgraded vibration reduction system (“VR II”) was tremendously effective — crucial when maximum aperture is f/3.5 (trust us … we’ve used lenses with variations of anti-vibration technology that have not been so effective). This is an all-around handy lens, dead-sharp in the middle and a bargain for the image quality it can produce.

AF-S NIKKOR 200-500mm
f/5.6E ED VR FX-format lens