The question that shouldn't be asked: 5D MKIII or D800 for me

[Damnations Fury]

First off, lets not turn this into Dpreview.

My backstory goes that I had to sell my D700 and all the rest of the kit last year due to buying a house and neeing money for a new kitchen (it was a painful time), so I am starting from scratch again. I have a had an NEX 7 for a while, but that has only reminded me of how much I miss the punch off Full Frame, so am in the procss of selling that.

I have been playing with the two cameras with similar lenses, but can't decide which way to go, pretty much down to one feature. Now this preference is mine, I am not saying what I think is verbatim, but these are my feelings on the two.

Overall I prefer the 5D for:
* The ergonomics feel bettter to me. I wouldn't say the D800 is bad, just 5D better. This is the reverse of the MKII and D700, where to me the MKII felt a little cheap comapred to the D700, which felt like a £2k camera.
* The autofocus was better in poor store lighting on difficult surfaces. The D800 got there quickly, the MKIII prety much instantly.
* I prefer Canon colours (skin tones especially). I know they might not be accurate and I know I can get the same results post processing, but I don't want to have to post process every shot and the Canon photos are more pleasing on my eye.
* I prefer the MkIII's noise profile in JPEG. I don't think there's much in it RAW, but I do prefer the MKIII's noise profile for the sutff i don't wantto PP.
* Would like to try canon's lense lineup (specifically the new 24-70 and the 70-200 2.8 IS)
* A strange one, but maybe for the change. If I still had a D700, i'm not sure that I would sell it for the D800. The megapixels don't worry me that much and other than the extended dynamic range at low ISO and slightly better noise performance, i'm not certain i'm getting a whole lot.

Sorry for the long list, but all in all, I preffered shooting with the MKIII, I just found it more enjoyable and that counts for a lot. The problem that is putting me off purchasing it is the the fact that spot metering doesn't link to AF point.

Now i'm by now means a pro, but was starting to head to more than just a hobby and used to help out a friend who did gig reviews, usually in some very dark dingy venues, with terrible, ever changing lighting. 90% of these photos would have dark to black backgrounds, and other than locking the metering and recomposing on the MKIII, i'm not sure how I would deal with this. On my D700 I could meter on the face of the person I was focussing on, adjust the meter and the camera would handle the changing lighting. With having to lock, i'm not sure how I would deal with this other than in post processing on the MKIII.

How do MKIII owners here deal with this? Is the evalutive metering up to this or is there another, better method than locking the meter than recomposing?

Thanks for any advice

 

[Damnations Fury]

TLDR on mine:
I think I'd probably marginally prefer shooting a 5D3 just as a result of being v familiar with the Canon system. If you're coming from a D700 it might go the other way.

I prioritised image quality as I don't want to look back in 3 years and wish I'd gone with a better sensor because now I can't print my images at the same sizes with the same sort of quality.

Decide what you want to do with your images. If you're not getting any money from your prints or you're not printing large on a regular basis, the 5D3 will likely offer that little bit better in most regards if it's what you prefer. There are quirks of either system that I'm sure many people would be irritated by, but I've noticed more on Nikon than I did going from Nikon to Canon the first time.

Also Nikon's entire lens lineup is pretty much up to date now and has been revamped almost universally. The lenses are also v. competitive on price/performance particularly in the mid range lenses. Canon on the other hand has a lineup that consists of an awful lot of lenses from the 90's, and they've shown that when they update their lenses they also double in price. Hopefully Sigma's and Tamron's new found form will limit this effect but I wouldn't be surprised if Canon ended up being the expensive option in all but the top end prime optics, once their lineup has been revamped in the same way Nikon's has.

Thanks for the posts, gave me a lot to think on.

To me, my head is telling me that the D800 is the obvious way to go as I don't need the extra fps and for many of the reasons you say. But my heart is telling me i'd enjoy using the 5D more (metering aside).

 

[Damnations Fury]

@ Op

Sounds to me like the 5d3 is for you overall. This spot metering exposure thing not being linked to an AF point sounds like a pain. If you can just press the exposure lock button once and it remembers so you don't have to keep holding the botton or keep taking multiple readings, then it should be ok, but just one more thing to think about.

The problem is that the lighting can be changing quickly somethies in these gigs, so locking the exposure can cause it's own problems.

I have managed to already reproduce the issue photographing an object against a white background causing the image to under expose. Recomposing worked fine, but I don't know if there would always be time for that with every shot.