Time Continues to Fly Like an Arrow...

When I first got into DSLRs over a dozen years ago, the D4 was still the king of Nikon Hill. It was still a year or so away from getting supplanted by the D4S (which, as the name implies, was a fairly modest improvement not worth incrementing the model designation over) and stickered for something like six grand.

Now you can pick up nice used ones in the $5-700 range, less if you're willing to go with a cosmetic beater or high shutter count.

This was Nikon's second generation of full-frame pro body and featured a 16MP CMOS sensor and a continuous frame rate of up to 10fps for action shooting. This one has one SD slot and one XQD slot, although other configurations were available.

These beasts were built for pros whose work would wind up on the pages of National Geographic or Sports Illustrated. (In fact, Nikon and Canon pro bodies tend to iterate on cycles that roughly coincide with the Summer or Winter Olympics.)

It's a bit of overkill for casual photography around the neighborhood, but hey, there's no kill like overkill, amirite?

Most of my shooting with this one's been done with the supremely versatile 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR superzoom.