Nikon D800 thoughts

At the beginning of October "Nikon Rumours" posted some specs of the Nikon D800 and in this post you find a summary of the specs. Probability is high with 99 % and as there is no 1.April nearby, maybe this camera is really presented around the 26. October 2011. No, it was not due to the flood in Thailand. Therefore the presentation was cancelled. But I do know by now that the camera does exist, although I have no confirmation of the specs.
36 MP for about 3000.-€ sounds OK for me, as I paid a lot more for my Nikon D3x. See here why pros can afford expensive cameras.
What impact would this camera have? First, a lot of Nikon shooters complaining since years, that there is no lighter and cheaper body with at least 24 MP will get silent. Others will start to complain that 36 mp is too much, 3000.-€ is too much, 1000 grams for the body is too much and generally that live is unfair, because they don’t get what they want or if the get what the want, they don’t get it for free, not in the right colour and so on.

I as a professional photographer - and that means: I make money with my profession which also means I have a nice gain on my bank account at the end of the year. So let’s start again: I as a professional photographer who could afford to buy this new first thought this camera could be a real game changer for me. Oh maybe I just hope it will be like this because I am getting lazy. As good as the D series are, they have some drawbacks: they are solid build, no that’s not bad, but therefore they are really heavy and not only the camera but also the battery pack and the charger which I just call the "brick". And this charger is just working on 100-220 Volts. No way to charge with 12 Volts from the car battery, there is no such car charger existing. So an inverter is needed (from 12 Volts to 220 Volts) or to say it different: another brick comes into the luggage. A backup charger would mean a third brick, ok it is not the Chinese wall already but we are going into this direction. As much as I like the D3x in my studio and on location work, on hikes like recently in Iceland carrying such a camera with lenses and a nice sturdy tripod for a whole day over the mountains is a good exercise, at least my chiropractor will be happy.

Falkenschlucht, Traisen, Nikon D3x, 16-35 VR f4, 1 sec, f10, Carbon Stativ

Many comments already state that 36 MP is overkill, it would be better to get just 24 MP but with better High Iso, better Dynamic Range, faster continuous shooting. I also tend to that side; at least a camera like this would also be in my wish list and could be a camera for all situations. But that is the reason why I do not think Nikon will do this. They want to sell as many cameras as possible. If Nikon gives to the photographers a body that can do 8 fps, high Iso, 24 MP, all in a lightweight but still robust body, with a small flash included, this camera would sell really well but kill all the sales for D3s, D3x and D700 and their followers.
36 MP makes also sense, because the D7000 sensor with 16 MP extrapolated to FX gives a sensor with, what a surprise, 36 MP! So the technology is already here, but is it good? My D7000 makes me wonder, because with DX lenses like the 10-24 mm there are more pixels, but the picture tends to be fuzzier, so I get a bigger picture but really not much more resolution than with a D300. The only solution I found so far is to abandon Nikons Raw converter NX2 and use Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). See my article about deconvolut sharpening (sorry, in German only, but "diglloyd" is a good source for that sharpening routine). The high Iso performance of the D7000 is actually very good, better than D300 and certainly better than D3x. Oh and the D800 will have Video too, but I could not care less. A nice thing would be that the D800 will have some anti dust system. The D3x I have to clean regularly with a sensor brush.
A different layout of controls would be unnerving, as I have to learn the controls new, but on the other hand if it gets the "C1" and "C2" of the D7000 that would be nice.
A built in flash was also in the D700, so hopefully the D800 gets that too, nice for some fill in flash. Now with the D series I use the small Sunpak RD2000 which is a little lighter (150g) and more versatile than the Nikon SB-400 (170 g). If I take the SB-900 I have a reason to do so and no small pop up flash can replace them.
My D3x with Hand strap, GPs Device and L Plate from RRS has a total weight of 1640 grams, plus the Sunpak adds to 1800 g - that’s heavy! The D800 with Gps and L plate I guess will be below 1300 g.

So quite a lot of benefits could be in this camera but what would I loose?

The big and bright viewfinder, weather sealing, 4:5 crop Mode for both D3s and D3x, perfect high Iso and fast frame rates of the D3s. Nice things but no dealbrakers as I am not taking pictures in dim light often, sports is also not high on my list anymore and as much as I like to take pictures of animals, most of the time I found out that high frame rates are just an excuse for missing preparation, good pictures don’t come because you fire with 8 pictures per second. It can help to "Nail" the shot in sports photography though.

The real problem with such a camera is well presented in the November 21 blog entry of "diglloyd". To use this high MP count properly only the best lenses and use of live view with a loupe instead of AF will be necessary.

 

Alexandra Meissnitzer, Ski World Cup Semmering, Austria