After a tip-off that one of the photo chains (the one beginning with C) had got some in stock last week, I finally managed to obtain a D800E.
Now I'll admit I had some reservations about getting this - upgrading from a well used D300 which I've had getting on for 5 years now (being an early adopter of the D300).
The photography which interests me at the moment is primarily wildlife (although I seem to end up at a lot of air shows too). A lot of people seem to be saying that the D800 is aimed at studio or landscape photography, neither of which I do. The general impression is that the D4 is the wildlife camera.
Now while I'm sure the D4 is excellent at wildlife, its primary benefit over the D800 seems to be the burst rate, 10fps with autofocus on, vs 4fps on the D800. While I'm sure that keeping the shutter pressed and hammering out 30 or so frames is one way to capture the action - its just not my shooting style. I prefer to take my time and just get one or two frames - for which the D800 would be perfectly adequate.
The other benefit of the D4 is the better high-ISO performance. Having compared various online sample shots from both the D4 and D800, when the D800 resolution is downsized the difference seems fairly small to my eye. I'm quite prepared to accept that the D4 is better - but when you've got two pixels to average the noise over on the D800 shot compared to that on the D4 it seems to be the D4 doesn't have quite the advantage which people might think.
My goodness this is turning into a wall of text, lets break it up with a sample:
A penny, not sure what that's supposed to show at web-size. But at 7,360 × 4,912 pixels I can tell you, even on a 30" 2560x1600 screen its FUGE. Dare I say it - even game changing big. Whereas previously with my pixel peeping passion I would discard many images due to them not being sharp enough - now the frame is compressed so much that even average sharp shots look great at full screen, win-win!
The exif is embedded into the photo. Please disregard the Camera Model being listed as D800 - this brings me nicely onto the first problem encountered - reading the files on Linux.
Previously I've been an avid supporter of 'Bibble', a Lightroom wannabe which focused on raw speed instead of features, but most importantly for me runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. Well, thanks to Corel, Bibble got bought up and renamed to 'AfterShotPro'. And guess what, to get support for the D800/E I had to buy AfterShotPro, despite being the same application with a new skin. gggrrrr
So I paid my £60 upgrade fee (after previously testing the , pointed it at the directory where I had hastily dumped a few initial sample shots and... nothing, nada, zippo. It refused to open them.
Hasty searching the web showed others reporting the same thing - seems Corel were keen to write "supported D800E" without actually testing it and AfterShotPro will not open files off the D800E. Great! Fortunately a temporary workaround is to hack the exif in the raw files to read "Nikon D800", and hey presto it will open them. If anyone else runs into the same thing, the magic syntax foo for exiftool is:
exiftool -Exif:Model="NIKON D800" -overwrite_original <filename>
So out into the back garden on Saturday for a quick spin to test out the new autofocus with F8 lenses, or in other words 600 F4 + 2x teleconverter
A pigeon posed for a portrait:
Its ok - certainly usable even if I've left it at ISO1600 without noise reduction. A 1:1 pixel crop is:
which is far from perfect, plenty of noise and not that much detail complete with colour fringing - but keep in mind how little of that main picture you are seeing.
Comparing the noise at the pixel level, while its a least a stop better than the D300, I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying the 2 stops which Dx0 marks indicates. But always remember that we've got 3x as many pixels to average over!
So I was saying earlier - I wasn't sure if the D800 was for me given the nature of my photography. What swung is was mainly:
(1) The price of the D4 - its really just too far out of amateur range - even for one who is daft with his credit card.
(2) A full frame sensor with a resolution only marginally great than my existing D300. Which means I'm going to be losing 'virtual reach' with my lenses, and the 600 only just cuts it as it is!
The D800 on the other hand has a DX crop-format sensor pixel size of 15Mp - greater than the D300! So I'm losing nothing relatively speaking - I'm just filling in masses of area around the crop I would have got on a DX camera.
(3) There's no D400. I've given up waiting, I've looked at the D7000 and while its a solid camera it feels like a physical downgrade do the D300.
So a hasty visit to the Hawk Centre at Andover on Sunday to give it a proper run out, for a day of hand holding the 200-400 VR1 lens in the rain:
The ability to crop the picture and still get something usable is so alien to my prior experiences its still taking some getting used to. This is 4200x2800 crop, and its not doing it justice at forum friendly sizes. At ISO800, the noise level is good enough to not require any reduction software.
Pushing it up a notch to ISO1600 does benefit from noise reduction, as a 300x4500 pixel crop of Nigel the Scops owl here shows:
The autofocus is noticeably better than on the D300, with significantly less hunting with the 200-400, which while not a slow lens isn't in the same league as the primes. I was able to keep up with the faster falcons much more readily:
It appears to be especially good in lower light:
Despite being 'only' 4fps, at no point was I ever waiting for the camera to take a shot in single shot mode. The in-camera buffer seems fairly substantial (enough for 27 raw shots according to the manual if I recall correctly). I'd even go as far as to say it feels noticeably more responsive than the D300, I'm very impressed when you consider the amount of data being thrown about in its innards.
The downsides of the camera are:
(a) The ISO performance isn't quite as good as I was hoping/expecting. This is hidden well by the massive resolution, so I'll have to try and crack the pixel peeping addiction.
(b) The file sizes are massive. The raw files are averaging around 45Mb, using the default 14-bit raw with lossless compression enabled. While this should give me 350+ shots on a 16Gb card, the reader is estimating 250, which when I'm using to getting well over a thousand on is a significant downgrade.
The size isn't just a problem on the cards, it takes so much longer to transfer them onto the PC at USB-2 speeds, and of course uses a lot more space there.
(c) The cost. Quite how they are justifying the £2899 asking price compared to the previous generation I'm not sure - I paid it I'm sure lots of other people will. But at this price its a camera which I'm planning to keep for many years to come so ultimately I'm not sure if Nikon will make more money out of me long term or not.
The £360 for the grip was especially hard to swallow. Its just a small lump of plastic for Pete's sake!
(d) The battery life seems less. Using the grip with 8xAA NiMH+ batteries, it was reading that they were low on charge after a couple of hundred shots at the weekend. Now it might be that its showing the charge differently to the D300, which dropped to low charge when there was about a dozen shots of life remaining. The D800E certainly seemed to keep shooting at low charge for a long period of time and didn't run out.
(e) Quiet mode is daft. The Canon 5dmkIII has done this so well - it actually dampens the mirror. The D800 doesn't - it just releases the mirror when you release the shot button. The idea being you 'walk away' or wait for a better time to make the slap. Yeah right, I'd like to see someone with the patience to do this.
But its all worth it for that resolution. Rather than risking cutting things off out the frame on the D300, I'm comfortably fitting them within the frame boundaries, and have the ability to crop and still have a massive resolution perfectly frames.
Now I'll admit I had some reservations about getting this - upgrading from a well used D300 which I've had getting on for 5 years now (being an early adopter of the D300).
The photography which interests me at the moment is primarily wildlife (although I seem to end up at a lot of air shows too). A lot of people seem to be saying that the D800 is aimed at studio or landscape photography, neither of which I do. The general impression is that the D4 is the wildlife camera.
Now while I'm sure the D4 is excellent at wildlife, its primary benefit over the D800 seems to be the burst rate, 10fps with autofocus on, vs 4fps on the D800. While I'm sure that keeping the shutter pressed and hammering out 30 or so frames is one way to capture the action - its just not my shooting style. I prefer to take my time and just get one or two frames - for which the D800 would be perfectly adequate.
The other benefit of the D4 is the better high-ISO performance. Having compared various online sample shots from both the D4 and D800, when the D800 resolution is downsized the difference seems fairly small to my eye. I'm quite prepared to accept that the D4 is better - but when you've got two pixels to average the noise over on the D800 shot compared to that on the D4 it seems to be the D4 doesn't have quite the advantage which people might think.
My goodness this is turning into a wall of text, lets break it up with a sample:
A penny, not sure what that's supposed to show at web-size. But at 7,360 × 4,912 pixels I can tell you, even on a 30" 2560x1600 screen its FUGE. Dare I say it - even game changing big. Whereas previously with my pixel peeping passion I would discard many images due to them not being sharp enough - now the frame is compressed so much that even average sharp shots look great at full screen, win-win!
The exif is embedded into the photo. Please disregard the Camera Model being listed as D800 - this brings me nicely onto the first problem encountered - reading the files on Linux.
Previously I've been an avid supporter of 'Bibble', a Lightroom wannabe which focused on raw speed instead of features, but most importantly for me runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. Well, thanks to Corel, Bibble got bought up and renamed to 'AfterShotPro'. And guess what, to get support for the D800/E I had to buy AfterShotPro, despite being the same application with a new skin. gggrrrr
So I paid my £60 upgrade fee (after previously testing the , pointed it at the directory where I had hastily dumped a few initial sample shots and... nothing, nada, zippo. It refused to open them.
Hasty searching the web showed others reporting the same thing - seems Corel were keen to write "supported D800E" without actually testing it and AfterShotPro will not open files off the D800E. Great! Fortunately a temporary workaround is to hack the exif in the raw files to read "Nikon D800", and hey presto it will open them. If anyone else runs into the same thing, the magic syntax foo for exiftool is:
exiftool -Exif:Model="NIKON D800" -overwrite_original <filename>
So out into the back garden on Saturday for a quick spin to test out the new autofocus with F8 lenses, or in other words 600 F4 + 2x teleconverter
A pigeon posed for a portrait:
Its ok - certainly usable even if I've left it at ISO1600 without noise reduction. A 1:1 pixel crop is:
which is far from perfect, plenty of noise and not that much detail complete with colour fringing - but keep in mind how little of that main picture you are seeing.
Comparing the noise at the pixel level, while its a least a stop better than the D300, I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying the 2 stops which Dx0 marks indicates. But always remember that we've got 3x as many pixels to average over!
So I was saying earlier - I wasn't sure if the D800 was for me given the nature of my photography. What swung is was mainly:
(1) The price of the D4 - its really just too far out of amateur range - even for one who is daft with his credit card.
(2) A full frame sensor with a resolution only marginally great than my existing D300. Which means I'm going to be losing 'virtual reach' with my lenses, and the 600 only just cuts it as it is!
The D800 on the other hand has a DX crop-format sensor pixel size of 15Mp - greater than the D300! So I'm losing nothing relatively speaking - I'm just filling in masses of area around the crop I would have got on a DX camera.
(3) There's no D400. I've given up waiting, I've looked at the D7000 and while its a solid camera it feels like a physical downgrade do the D300.
So a hasty visit to the Hawk Centre at Andover on Sunday to give it a proper run out, for a day of hand holding the 200-400 VR1 lens in the rain:
The ability to crop the picture and still get something usable is so alien to my prior experiences its still taking some getting used to. This is 4200x2800 crop, and its not doing it justice at forum friendly sizes. At ISO800, the noise level is good enough to not require any reduction software.
Pushing it up a notch to ISO1600 does benefit from noise reduction, as a 300x4500 pixel crop of Nigel the Scops owl here shows:
The autofocus is noticeably better than on the D300, with significantly less hunting with the 200-400, which while not a slow lens isn't in the same league as the primes. I was able to keep up with the faster falcons much more readily:
It appears to be especially good in lower light:
Despite being 'only' 4fps, at no point was I ever waiting for the camera to take a shot in single shot mode. The in-camera buffer seems fairly substantial (enough for 27 raw shots according to the manual if I recall correctly). I'd even go as far as to say it feels noticeably more responsive than the D300, I'm very impressed when you consider the amount of data being thrown about in its innards.
The downsides of the camera are:
(a) The ISO performance isn't quite as good as I was hoping/expecting. This is hidden well by the massive resolution, so I'll have to try and crack the pixel peeping addiction.
(b) The file sizes are massive. The raw files are averaging around 45Mb, using the default 14-bit raw with lossless compression enabled. While this should give me 350+ shots on a 16Gb card, the reader is estimating 250, which when I'm using to getting well over a thousand on is a significant downgrade.
The size isn't just a problem on the cards, it takes so much longer to transfer them onto the PC at USB-2 speeds, and of course uses a lot more space there.
(c) The cost. Quite how they are justifying the £2899 asking price compared to the previous generation I'm not sure - I paid it I'm sure lots of other people will. But at this price its a camera which I'm planning to keep for many years to come so ultimately I'm not sure if Nikon will make more money out of me long term or not.
The £360 for the grip was especially hard to swallow. Its just a small lump of plastic for Pete's sake!
(d) The battery life seems less. Using the grip with 8xAA NiMH+ batteries, it was reading that they were low on charge after a couple of hundred shots at the weekend. Now it might be that its showing the charge differently to the D300, which dropped to low charge when there was about a dozen shots of life remaining. The D800E certainly seemed to keep shooting at low charge for a long period of time and didn't run out.
(e) Quiet mode is daft. The Canon 5dmkIII has done this so well - it actually dampens the mirror. The D800 doesn't - it just releases the mirror when you release the shot button. The idea being you 'walk away' or wait for a better time to make the slap. Yeah right, I'd like to see someone with the patience to do this.
But its all worth it for that resolution. Rather than risking cutting things off out the frame on the D300, I'm comfortably fitting them within the frame boundaries, and have the ability to crop and still have a massive resolution perfectly frames.
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