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Author Topic: Nikon D800/E Review  (Read 10418 times)

M.Piq

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Nikon D800/E Review
« on: April 27, 2012, 09:48:09 am »


I don't know maybe I got wrong camera but at the my D800E photo you can see noise even at 200 ISO.
In NX  software at the every Iso from 200 NR is applied?????

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ReimarG

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #1 on: April 27, 2012, 12:04:29 pm »

I also got my D800E this week.  I had the usual major problem and a minor one I'll have to get used to.

Michael, doesn't it bother you that when looking through the viewfinder and your eye is a bit high, that the top half of the shutter speed, f-stop etc. characters are cut off?  I find my face tends to fit with my eye towards the high side and the parallax on the little window to the symbols is a bother.  Mildly disappointing, but noteworthy.

My copy of the E also does not focus with the left and right single direction AF sensors.  Not even close.  The 3 x 5 center cross-hair sensors are perfect on my 14-24.  Michael, do you not notice this on your wide angle lenses?  Mine's in the shop now getting this fixed, and I've heard others having similar issues.  My experience with Nikon cameras from the D70 on is that they all benefit (sometimes in a major way) with a Nikon-shop service calibration (not just the fine tuning I can do myself).

Cheers
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mac_paolo

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #2 on: April 27, 2012, 12:24:24 pm »

Very nice review. Thanks Michael.

My first two points:

A lossless compressed NEF is more or less a zipped version of a NEF. You gain absolutely nothing in terms of quality when shooting uncompressed. You just get bigger Raws.

Running a 32bit application under OS X won't change anything on the other running programs. OS X will simply treat capture nix as a 32bit application (memory constraints) and the other one will keep running fine in 64bit mode.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2012, 12:48:05 pm by mac_paolo »
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Stefan.Steib

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #3 on: April 27, 2012, 12:31:13 pm »

there is one detail that actually is not on par with the other features of the camera:
The Live View is grainy and just barely usable for the finetuning. It works - that´s the term that comes to my mind, but not like on a 5D MK2 or 3.
Besides that - this camera is gorgeous !

Greetings from Germany
Stefan
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TMARK

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #4 on: April 27, 2012, 02:27:08 pm »

This is the camera I've wanted since I first started with digital in 2003, with the 1ds.  All of the let downs and compromises of 35mm digital, the problems that kept me shooting film and medium format digital, have been resolved with this camera.  In fairness, the D3x was really close, but it was too big.  The M9 was close but not nearly an M6.  After all the steps backward, finally, a leap forward.  Finally, a dslr that has the DR of something close to film.  And it takes all of my Ai and Ai-S lenses, even the ones my mother used when she was with the AP in the 60's. 

I'll hang on to my Aptus 75s and RZ, because the larger sensor does impart a very different look, but really, between the D800 and the Fuji X100, I'm set.
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Michael LS

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #5 on: April 27, 2012, 02:41:38 pm »

A very thorough, interesting and well-done review, as usual.

The D800/e is truly quite a price/performance offering.
Amazon, I'm waaaiting...yet the anticipation is delicious!  8)
This will be my first full-frame, and sooo nice to get back to
the familiar format from 35mm film days that I knew and loved.

Having said that, an X-Pro 1 or Nex-7 in the stable would be
nice, too. Then I'm done buying- until the next temptation comes
along from the scheming, and wicked camera makers.

Last, and probably least, it is obvious the standard model and the "e" model
are so close in image quality, it literally makes no difference which model we
chose, so now we can move on with our lives and just enjoy
taking photographs- yaaay!!
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LGeb

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #6 on: April 27, 2012, 02:53:31 pm »

"Capture NX2 software is not available for the Mac in 64 bit mode. WTF? This means that if you're among the 50% of photographers that use Macs, and have a recent system, you can only run NX2 in 32 bit mode. Sorry Nikon. I refuse to run my whole system in 32 bit mode (crippling other modern applications that I need) just so that I can run your raw software."

The newest version of Capture NX2 is 64bit on Mac.
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michael

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #7 on: April 27, 2012, 03:00:14 pm »

Thanks, the article has now been updated.

– UPDATE: I had originally written that Capture NX2 was not available in a 64 bit Mac version. I was in error. It didn't install properly on my computer, and in a conversation with another photographer she mentioned that she had had the same problem as me, and that in a conversation with a Nikon support rep had been told that it was for this reason. I guess she shouldn't have believed him and I shouldn't have believed her. I appologize for any inconvenience that this mistake has caused.
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John Camp

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #8 on: April 27, 2012, 03:02:37 pm »

Thanks especially for including the lens selection. Like you, I've detoured into m4/3 for the past couple of years, and my Nikon lens selection has thinned out...but I think this camera will pull me back in. Excellent review.
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JeffKohn

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #9 on: April 27, 2012, 04:24:57 pm »

there is one detail that actually is not on par with the other features of the camera:
The Live View is grainy and just barely usable for the finetuning. It works - that´s the term that comes to my mind, but not like on a 5D MK2 or 3.
Besides that - this camera is gorgeous !

Greetings from Germany
Stefan
Seems like every user familiar with Canon DSLR's who tries a Nikon has this complaint. What you have to realize is that the maximum zoom allowed on the Nikon liveview is not 100% pixel view. It's something like 400% and yes it is grainy and interpolated. I personally don't find this zoom level useful, some do. But if you want a clearer, actual 100% pixel view just don't zoom to the max but rather one step lower.  The only time the 100% view will be grainy is in low light levels (especially if you're stopped down), but even then it will still be sharp.
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ReimarG

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #10 on: April 27, 2012, 04:36:23 pm »

Thankfully, the D800(E) has the one-click zoom on the multi-selector that models previous to the D7000 had.  They are preset to choices of low, medium, high.  I tried high, but it was crazy high, probably 400%.  Medium seems to work fine for me.  I wonder what the exact zooms are of all three?
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michael

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #11 on: April 27, 2012, 04:48:18 pm »

I got as far as "The camera comes with an almost 450 page printed manual – and needs it" to know that the camera isn't for me.
My car has about a 400 page manual as well. That doesn't mean that I couldn't just get in and drive on day one.

Any competent photographer can just pick up and use a D800 with about 5 minutes of familiarization.

Michael
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DaveCurtis

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #12 on: April 27, 2012, 05:08:36 pm »

Just looking at my canon 5D3 manual. It is 403 pages and the camera needs it. These full featured cameras need good paper manuals.

And I agree, pdfs are useless out in the field.
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michael

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #13 on: April 27, 2012, 05:26:49 pm »

It would seem that I'm an incompetent photographer.

It wasn't my intention to insult you. I hope you didn't take it that way. I was simply making the point that basic camera operation is pretty straightforward. It's only when you get into the advanced features that a manual is necessary because some of them are pretty sophisticated.

Michael
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Rob C

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #14 on: April 27, 2012, 05:34:26 pm »

Just looking at my canon 5D3 manual. It is 403 pages and the camera needs it. These full featured cameras need good paper manuals.
And I agree, pdfs are useless out in the field.



That's something that you can probably counteract for yourself by setting as close to manual as you can or like. I did that, and the only time it didn't work was recently, when I managed to kick +1 into the exposure compensation dial, which I certainly had never intended to use at all!

I just can't understand how photographers can embrace all this electronic stuff and appear to enjoy it. I suspect it isn't as simple as my having a dinosaurian tendency; more, I think it's the advantage that a life in film gives me. Of course, a chorus of other film users will be able to discount that at once, but I don't mind at all because it works for me.

Rob C

jeremypayne

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #15 on: April 27, 2012, 05:44:49 pm »

It wasn't my intention to insult you. I hope you didn't take it that way. I was simply making the point that basic camera operation is pretty straightforward. It's only when you get into the advanced features that a manual is necessary because some of them are pretty sophisticated.

Michael


When I first got my D700 (my first auto-focusing SLR) I needed to read the manual and several 3rd party interpretations of the manual before I TRULY understood the ins-and-outs of the auto-focus system.

Didn't mean I wasn't shooting - and using auto-focus - on day 1.
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Quentin

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #16 on: April 27, 2012, 05:50:47 pm »

I don't usually read manuals.  I don't have the time.  I use the same workflow, more or less, with every camera I buy, medium format or compact.  Most the new stuff is technogarbage we'd be better off without.  ;D  Then again, I'm a "digital immigrant", and perhaps my visa has expired ??? :o
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DaveCurtis

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #17 on: April 27, 2012, 06:47:15 pm »

Is I see it, to get the best out of these complicated tools you need to read the manual. In the end it can improve camera handling and help you get the shot.

For example you can 'turn off' some of the crap you dont need and program in functionality that you regularly use.

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Theodore

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #18 on: April 27, 2012, 08:27:21 pm »

Michael - I really enjoyed reading your observations about the D800/E.  I've spent my digital life with LL, coming to it at the time I was leaving film and you were posting photos from China with a Canon 5D 24-105 f4L, and knowing the time that you've spent with Canon, with MF, Leica, the D3/D700, with the 4/3rds more recently, and your objectiveness about each, I was very much looking forward to your write-up.  It's very nicely done.  Thanks for putting the piece together and sharing it.

Best,
Theodore
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JeffKohn

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Re: Nikon D800/E Review
« Reply #19 on: April 27, 2012, 10:45:34 pm »

RE: reading the manuals. To be honest not that much changes from one model to the next. Once you're familiar with Nikon DSLR's you can pretty much pick any one of them up and feel at home. Sure the higher end models have extra features that can be worth getting to know, but if you want to keep things uncomplicated there's no reason you have to learn the ins and outs of every model. And frankly some of the features are not worth messing with, for example as a RAW shooter I've never felt the desire to mess around with any of the in-camera post-processing crap, and I'm sure I'll feel the same way about the new HDR mode they've added.
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