Beautiful images and thanks for sharing. You mentioned the LV is fine with the D800 could you explain it a little bit in detail? As I am still struggling to compare it to Canon 5D III which has such a nice LV feature, making the fine focusing the same Zeiss 50mm lens on the Canon flawlessly on my recent shoots. What is the blackout time between shots on the D800? I rent one a while back and it seems a long time before the LV resume the display. Can you shoot continuously in LV mode? Is is easy to fine focus by zooming in 1:1 on LCD as I remember the displayed image was very coarse ? Is the vibration and noise (they do not exists on the Canon) during the blackout moment bothering you?
Quick answers:
- Black out time: faster memory cards help, but I tend to use live view to focus the first image, get our of live view and shoot my pano without live view. This is faster and reduces battery drain. It seems also possible to take images in a row at a fast pace in live view if you use continuous motor drive, but I see personally no value for my applications,
- Vibration and noise is the result of the shutter movement, not the mirror. I personally always use MLU anyway and have found less vibration induced blur with my D800 images than I used to see with my D3x. Meaning it went from extremely few to even fewer images made useless by mirror vibration. The damping of the D800 mirror seems truly excellent,
- The display is coarse in max magnification because it is not 1:1, it is basically 1:3. You will get a sharp 1:1 if you use medium zoom magnification. This being said, I find high magnification to be useful for accurate focus, even in very dark situations.
The live view of the D800 is not the sexiest, but it is a working and useful focus tool, which is all I need from it.
Cheers,
Bernard