Nikon D800 first impressions

Well its arrived obviously and apart from charging up the battery in between clients ringing or coming in I have only had a quick chance to check out the nikon D800.

Before going into what I havn't done yet thought I would say something about the camera first. Size wise its a bit bigger than the D300 but the layout is very similar, holding it I have found even with my relatively small hands the little finger has nothing to grip onto, maybe because I am used to having a grip on the D300 .So first of all now ordered a grip as its my personal choice.

Have to break in here about third party grips, yes I have read reviews on all of them and rejected them for one reason or another and now Nikon Grips are down considerable in price paying the little extra to me was worth it.

Ok back to the camera the layout at the back is slightly different but coming from the D300 I found it easy to use, same as the menu as I said apart from things like movie mode, which I havn't even tried yet.

This camera is definately a top professional one and doesn't take to those who are used to point and shoot compact cameras, so don't even try.

As I said I have only just tried it out and wow what a difference, one certainly has to improve their technique to get the best out of it. So why do I say this?

First of all keeping the camera steady really requires a tripod and a decent lens ,as everyone says, the detail it brings out shows every little flaw. I even used a remote wired control unit to keep it steady and would recommend using one.

Even though mine is brand new out the box I fitted a nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens onto it and my Nikon SB900 flash for some kitchen shots ( its raining really heavy outside), and it showed up a tiny dust mite on the sensor, something my D300 would not have done, I found so far that manual focus seemed to to be the best option, at least where I was shooting may be different when I get a chance to use it outside.

I can already see why its recommended for studio and photographing building and landscapes but no one has said why that I have found. Well the reason being is getting all the settings right and a firm base ,ie tripod, for the best results.

Ok first impressions do I like it? has to be yes subject to trying out auto fucus on a moving subject that will be done another day same as trying out the movie side of it.

What I havn't discovered and I don't thing the camera does is use one memory card for stills and the other for video work. Both cards are for still photos in what can be used in different formats ie tiff-raw -jpeg etc. It seems the same card can and is used for video as well. Maybe someone with a duel purpose camera can enlighten me on this

Will post more later if I remember, but the main thing is I will know have to work hard on my technique and really concentrate on what I am doing

Bazza

Hi Bazza

Not sure about Nikon but with my dual cards it automatically writes to one if you only have 1 inserted.

With 2 cards inserted you can either fill one up and then have it write to the other or...

Write to both at the same time MAIN and BACKUP that way you have a back up should one fail or get lost. In theory, the BACKUP card need never come out of the camera.

Sometimes I write different formats of the same shot to each at the same time. This is quite handy when you want to shoot RAW+JPEG as you can quickly upload the JPEGS to the PC, whizz through and have a quick look before selecting which RAW files you want off the other card.

Here you go....

For storage, the D800 has dual card slots, one for CF and the other for SD cards. The camera lets you use two cards at a time for backup, overflow, Raw/JPEG separation, and the option of shooting stills to one and video to the other.

The general theme that seems to keep cropping up is that the Nikon D800 has the advantage for resolution at lower ISO settings whilst the lower pixel density of the Canon 5D3 gives it the edge when it comes to noise at higher ISO settings.

Stationary subjects tend not to require you to shoot at higher ISO therefore the Nikon D800 is often tipped as the camera for studio, building, landscapes etc

As per cameralabs...

They're different sorts of cameras. The D800 is preferable for tripod-shooting at lower ISOs, whereas the Mark III feels like a more rounded camera with its faster shooting, superior video and high ISO performance. I would however be delighted with either and I'm pretty sure you would too. Think carefully about what kind of photos you take and which system has the most appropriate lenses, then start enjoying the superb results each of these cameras will deliver.

Phil

As I said I only hand my hands on in for a few minutes yesterday as its our peak time in the kennels with about 60 animal to look after. Your suggestion of using different formats for each slot seems a sensible idea. Going through 36 mp frames is time consuming.

One thing I have had to upgrade is my Photoshop Elements 10 editing suit (free download) ,it just didn't want to know and wouldn't recognise the Raw files from the D800 before. Found that out last night when I had 5 minutes spare. What I would say is how glad I am I decided on a new computer for this purpose with 16 gb of RAM and an intel i7 processor it makes light work of downloading large files on windows7 professional.
Goes to show just getting a high MP camera is only half the story,bit like a shiny new car, useless without a decent engine to power it.

Reading the manual I see the camera can be connected diret to a printer and print out screen camera photo, not only that the photo can be downloaded to an edit suit then back to the camera to print as well. Seems it will only do this in Jpeg format for direct connection to the printer
Bazza