Well, I finally received my D800 last Tuesday and took it out for a spin on Saturday. I took loads of pictures (I will post some highlights soon) with my Nikon 300mm F4 AFS prime lens attached. I decided to create a document/picture showing the details that are captured by the D800.

Here is a shot I took of a Blue Heron feeding. I reduced the size of the original picture to show it as it was taken. I then did a 100% crop, unprocessed and not enlarged from the original picture directly from the camera to show the clarity of level of detail the camera see's. I am very impressed with my initial camera shoot and the pictures captured. As a user of a D300 for the past 4 years, I am blown away at the quality and lack of noise in the pictures compared to the D300 (which I had to always process with noise reduction software). Nikon has definitely hit a home run with the D800.

Thats pretty amazing. But at 35 or so mexapixels did you need to get a fairly large memory card? I'd imagine if you shoot in raw, it would be pretty taxing on storage space.

look forward to seeing more pics.

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John Platt
Ladner, BC.

I already had a 32gig CF and a 16Gig CF card from my other camera. Storage dropped from about 1200 Raw after format on the 32gig (D300) to 400 Raw on the 32gig after format on the D800. I actually was able to fit about 600 Raw shots on the 32gig which is still not bad. I will be purchasing a 64gig or two soon, as I do take a lot of pictures when I am out on a good day. After taking about 600 shots and a few 1080P test videos I still had 65% charge left on the battery which is better than I thought it would be after reading about how much battery is drained by the D800. It is not as bad as everyone thinks. Btw, I'm using loss-less Raw compression. I had a 8gig SD card in the other slot which the camera used for video.

As for processing the pictures in PS 6, once again it isn't as bad as people think when it comes to processing the large files, given you have at least a dual core or quad processor. Mine is an i5 running Snow leopard 10.6.8 or Windows 7 dual boot. I'm' sure though that people who have to process hundreds of files at the same time will see an increased amount of processing time.

With that level of image quality it will be hard to find any cons! Really stunning sensor on the D800. Congrats on the new kit Terry.

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Deon van der Heever
Maple Ridge, BC

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deonvanderheever/

Thanks Deon. After going through my pictures and studying my technique, I realize I will need to be all the more careful where my focus point is in the shots when using low F-stops. Nikon is correct in stating that with the resolution of the D800 it is all the more difficult to get crisp, sharp shots and highly recommend tripod usage. I used my pro tripod and did achieve excellent sharpness but not always in the spots I wanted. It's not going to easy at first because birds rarely sit still long enough for you to think and react. Looks like I'm going to be relearning new techniques, but I don't mind, that's the nature of photography. Always learning. I think I remember reading they recommend using an F-stop of about F8 to get the best overall sharpness regardless of any lens.

Terry

That water droplet is unreal! I've had the D800 for about a month now, and the camera needs to be treated in a similar fashion to a medium format digital camera, as it does approach medium format resolution. You need top notch glass, and you really do need to slow down and think more, I've found. To be sure of a sharp image handheld, you need to double or triple your shutter speed in relation to the focal length of the lens. With a 200mm lens, shoot at 1/400 or 1/600 sec, not 1/200. The sensor is really an engineering marvel....the boys at Sony hit it out of the ball park this time.

Here's a shot of mine with a D800 + 400mm f2.8 VR + 1.4x TC:


100% crop:

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Some Canon, Nikon & Hasselblad digital stuff.

Yes, totally agree. Love the Osprey capture....no matter how much I don't like Sony, they definitely are doing something right with sensors and with Nikon tweaking them to their standards, we get to experience this marvel without the cost of MF. I'm glad I've invested in FX lenses. Unfortunately my only wide agle DX needs to be replaced now that I have the D800. Cheers!!!