Bowled Over!!!!!!

Well, I’m ready to eat a big slice of humble pie, maybe a whole pie!  After one morning out shooting the D800 my reservations are washed away!  The camera simply makes files that are superior to anything I’ve ever seen in 43 years of photography, period.  Is it perfect?  We will see, because much more testing needs to be done, but I can tell you from one mornings shoot, I am going to own this camera, actually I already do, Nikon will never see this one again, I expect to be writing a check!  So let’s get down to business on this bad boy, and I do mean “bad” boy…..

So far I have determined that 36 mega-pixels “does” make a huge difference.  The biggest gain is, of course, resolution, but even more important the gradation (smoothness of tones across the scale)!  The images below show the full image, (all are jpeg fine, at ISO 100 shot from a tripod with a cable release ), followed by tight crops of the original image, prepare to be impressed!

So is there any penalty?  Not really.  The files are big (duh!) and they move through the computer slower than you’re used to, but not as slow as I had feared, I feel like it took about 2.5 times longer to crunch a 5 stop HDR, but when the image is finished, it’s worth the wait.  I will do some testing on how the noise looks at high ISO, but my partner in crime from Nikon, Scott Diussa, shot some stuff at 2,500 this morning and they were surprisingly clean, very little noise!  Last night I shot a hand held image in the room at ISO 1600 and was shocked, I had feared that with all that resolution hand holding would be iffy, not so, the image shot at 1/8oth of second was sharp!

So, tomorrow it’s more testing, or maybe just having a lot more fun, again!!!!!!  Tomorrow more low light, High ISO tests, and more.  Needless to say, I’m more than very impressed!

the pilgrim

Update:  After a full day of editing and processing D800 images, I have a few suggestions;

1.  If you buy a D800 go ahead and get some larger cards, 64 and 128 might work great, at least 32 & 64 gigs.

2.  Upping the Ram in your computer will also speed things along, I’m guessing 8 gigs will be enough, but then you never have “enough”  RAM!

3.  If you have not gotten a solid tripod, head, and cable release, it’s time!

For now that about covers it, more info to come!