Through a very fortunate chance connection to somebody who got lucky enough to pick up a copy the first day it was released, I was able to secure a Nikon D800 the day before I left the United States to travel to Qatar for a month. Due to the craziness of packing and then flying half way around the globe, my time with the camera so far has been far from the normal getting acquainted process. There’s been no careful testing. No easing into things. From shooting through three layers of airliner window to wandering the streets of Doha scouting for locations for my project here, it’s pretty much been trial by fire and the camera has handled everything admirably. It more than lives up to its promise and potential and I’m pretty much blown away. It handles very nicely and feels great in hand. While I’m not in a position to give a full review yet—much less a final recommendation—what I can do is give you a set of my impressions about the camera so far.
Clik here to view.
First and foremost, the files from this camera are huge, detailed, and amazing. If you’ve got a sharp shot using a sharp lens, there’s detail in the image all the way down. Rich, beautiful, gorgeous detail that’s better than anything I’ve ever seen come out of a 35mm camera body. It changes your entire relationship with the image and what you can do with it. But, you also have to unlearn that tendency to reject images because they’re not sharp at 1:1. In some cases, your lenses may limit detail. In others, it might be your technique. With 36 megapixels, however, you have to change the question of “Is this image detailed enough?” to “Is this image detailed enough for the use I have in mind?”
Speaking of lenses, all the extra resolution really lets you see the differences between your lenses in fantastic ways. More of the individual characteristics of the way each lens renders a scene ends up in the final image. That also is going to take some time to get used to, and I don’t yet have a better explanation for the effect, but I’m pleased to no end to see it.
Clik here to view.
The downside to the resolution is the impact to your workflow. The Core i5-based 13" MacBook Air I use on the road is seriously strained by working with these files in Aperture and Lightroom. Judicious use of previews is de rigueur. I anticipate that working with these files over the course of my trip to the Middle East will be the final straw in upgrading to the 15" MacBook Pro replacement whenever it is released. I’m sure I’ll keep the 13" Air for café computing and the like, but the files that the D800 produces need more horsepower for comfortable processing.
What else falls into the downside list? Honestly, I didn’t think I’d be a fan of the mixed CF/SD card configuration. In practice, I can confirm that I actively dislike it. Dual cards are awesome. I love the two CF card slots in my D3S bodies. But having a mixed slot setup means that you can’t just carry one set of cards with you if you want to take advantage of using dual slots—such as shooting video to one card and stills to another. Plus, I’ve already dropped an SD card into the CF slot a couple of times by accident—not a good thing when you think of those CF card pins sticking out down in there. Really, I’d have preferred dual SD card slots, like the D7000 has. Besides, the latest SD cards are really fast and cheaper than equivalent CF cards.
Clik here to view.
In the pleasantly awesome surprise department—and I wasn’t aware of this from reading through the announcements—the Live View feature keeps track of a different set of exposure settings for Movie mode when you are shooting in Manual program mode. In other words, you can be shooting stills at 1/250@f/8 ISO 200 and then click the Live View button to drop into shooting a video at 1/50@f/2.8 ISO 100. Shoot your clip, exit Live View mode, and you’re back to your still shot settings. Handy that.
Clik here to view.
So, what about the camera’s high ISO capabilities? I’m still getting a handle on that. It’s easy to pop up a comparison at 1:1, but as I’ve said many a time, that doesn’t matter—especially when you get into stratospheric resolutions like the D800 gives you. What matters is what the photos look like at display or print sizes. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that I’m pretty comfortable with using ISO 1600—which is what the photo of the amphitheater above was made at—but really, that’s the point at which I’d switch over to one of my Nikon D3S bodies. Certainly, at ISO 3200, I’d rather have the D3S in hand. Not that the D800 is poor at ISO 3200, but super high ISO performance where the D3S shines. Right tool for the job, and all that.
More thoughts, and many more photos from Qatar, to come…
Posted by James Duncan Davidson.