Excuse the technical slant of this post, this is for those that speak the language. My usual blog fare is less tool-based.
A new Nikon D800E digital camera showed up at Samy's yesterday with my name on it, NPS pre-ordered, and so I dropped everything to go pick it up, since it felt like Christmas a month earlier than expected. Driving while salivating...
I know it's just a tool, it's just a tool, it's just a tool...
As an architectural photographer I had squeezed more than the expected life from my Nikon D300… it was well past it's planned move from primary to backup-camera status, it was getting long in the tooth (long in the pixel?). I hadn't jumped ship for the Canons, I hadn't up-bought to a 16, 18 or 24 MP Nikon. I HAD contemplated FX, medium format, or the removal of the Anti-aliasing filter in my camera to get the sharpness I wanted in my architectural photos (most architects like sharp edges as well). But I just sat tight, whined, and used my 5x7 large format camera when sharpness was paramount; the waiting/whining paid off.
Note: these 11 things come from a very specific viewpoint: mine. Everything I photograph is from a tripod. I use autofocus once to focus the subject, then turn it off (AF speed is unimportant). I use very wide angle lenses 90% of the time. Camera weight or size is not an issue. Sharpness is paramount, skin tones are irrelevant. The vast majority of my photos are taken at 160 ISO (sensor speed is irrelevant). 30 second exposures are not uncommon. Buildings don't move (California earthquakes excepted). Tethered capture to a Mac Air is common. RAW always. Video never. I want to do as little retouching as possible. I don't wear glasses. I never shoot HDR. I will manually layer many files in Photoshop if needed (see other posts). That influences what I think. That's just my opinion, I may be wrong.
D800E no moiré, impossible to see on screen without going to Flickr and downloading Full Size
11 things I couldn't find out about the Nikon D800E until it showed up yesterday...
Skip to the bottom for a link to my Flickr account with full-size (7360 Pixel wide) samples from my moiré safari.
#1. The tripod hole has been moved to the top. (Just kidding.)
1. First impression in the hand. The FX format makes the D800E body a little more stout in the hand (obviously) but it still retains the same feel as my D300, D200, F100 and feels intuitive right out of the box which is the primary reason I didn't escape to Canon and their spectacular 17mmTS - I hate the Canon "feel" (I hate the wheel). I thought the bigger FX viewfinder would be a BIG difference but the D300 was well magnified so while it's better, it's not notably better. Same with the bigger display, it's better, not notably (the D300 was the first amazing display). The D800E has a little viewfinder-eyepiece shutter to block out stray light when you're not looking through the viewfinder, finally, very F3 ish.
2. The shutter/mirror return are snappier-ish and quicker-ish and feel better-dampened even though the FX mirror box is bigger and more mass is moving. Solid, dude.
3. I get 100 FX frame (36MP) captures at lossless compressed NEF/14-bit (no Jpeg) on an 8Gig CF card. I need to buy 16's now. And I need to limit my brackets from +/-3 to 2 frames (one on, and one under for highlights). Or I'll need to buy another raid… and a faster computer… lather, rinse, repeat. ACR has no problem converting the NEF files to DNG's in Lightroom 4. Although I suspect I will need to keep the Nikon NEF files to use the anti-moiré filtering in the Nikon software. So my typical DAM, DNG conversion may be FUBAR.
4. The D800 has a quiet (Q) mode that lets you execute the first half of the shutter noise but forego the shutter return noise until you take your finger from the shutter, (it sounds like a mirror-up action). This could work for that one critical frame in the church during a wedding ceremony. You could capture and then put your camera under your jacket and release the mirror. Then do it again. (that sounds like why I got out of the wedding business) I will note that most of the noise is in the first half of this action so it doesn't do much, but there must be a more meaningful reason why Nikon added this feature.
5. The F*%#in' grid screen lines still do not meet in the middle, where grid lines must meet to be useful for architectural photography. So I will be sending my new camera to KatzEye Optics to get a new custom grid screen made with lines that meet in the middle. I had to do this with my D200 and D300 and the saddest part is that I will be boxing my new baby up and sending it to Massachusetts later this week for a new screen for two weeks. (Wah.)
6. The CF/SD card door now pulls out and opens, no more little D300 lever.
7. Surprisingly, downloading didn't take that much longer than my typical D300 image flow. I hesitate to include a "number" for how much time it takes to download images to a computer (lots-o-variables). However, thirty - 14bit, full size FX images downloaded and converted to DNG in Lightroom-4 take about 3 and a half minutes (30 lossless-compressed NEFs to DNGs.) (Firewire-800 Lexar cardreader, 8GB San Disk 60MB/s CF card, medium LR previews) Your results may vary. Didn't try USB 3 (no port on my Mac yet). Each DNG was about 36-39Mb same size as the compressed lossless NEFs. (compared to about 15Mb for my D300 DNG files; same amount of photos, 36/15ths as much space, do the math)
9. Nikon has still not added a © (copyright "c in a circle") symbol to the Image Comment menu (they do have an @ symbol for emails and a % percentage sign for no apparent reason at all). The D800E allows two lines of Image Comment text so I was able to spell out the word "Copyright schafphoto.com" with letters to spare. Plus the custom Metadata menu: "Copyright Information," where more text is allowed, two lines for "Artist" and three for "Copyright" so I was able to put in "Stephen Schafer, www.schafphoto.com, all rights reserved, schaf-@-west.net" (w/o the hyphens… I don't need any more spam). If you look at the metadata on my Flickr images, you'll see that the D800E data is added to the additional copyright metadata that gets glued to my files upon upload through Lightroom4; this makes my contact and copyright info show many times on different lines of my metadata code, for what it's worth, it's in there, a lot.
10. There are two Virtual Horizon features, one on the display, and one inside the viewfinder which is a bit tricky and counter-intuitive at first (at least horizontally). There are tiny little dashed lines at the edges of the ground-glass frame that indicate front back and side to side leveling, I'll get used to it. Suffice it to say that if you use these in-the-viewfinder horizon lines, you'll slow yourself down as if you were using a tripod. I think this is good, since 36MP files are not conducive to "machine gun" photography. The on-display virtual horizon will come in handy when leveling the camera, and when using the camera attached to a HDMI feed of the screen to level the camera when it's out of reach like on a high tripod, boom or clamp. The on-display Virtual Horizon graphic will superimpose itself on the Live-view when you figure out all the right buttons to push in the right order, that required the manual.
11. No more Autofocus C & S on the auto/manual switch just AF and M. I never cared since on a tripod I just want it to auto-focus or not.
(Who's counting) 12. I like that the INFO button is now separate and will override whatever screen or photo is showing in one-touch, handy for setting exposure blindly when on a tall tripod by just looking at the rear info on the big screen.
(While we're at it) 13. For anyone stepping-up from DX to FX format, it's nice to get the wide end of my old Nikon lenses back again. The D800E will let you shoot DX lenses across the full FX sensor, just watch for the vignetted edges. If you know you're going to crop square, you can get a really wide image, but lens cutoff exacerbated by filters and even petal-shaped hoods will start to creep into the sides as blurry black ghosts if you're not keenly aware of your edges (this is where the D800E 100% viewfinder comes in handy).
* I don't do video so no comment. Even with this feature-rich camera I have little desire to shoot moving pictures. (Think of all the money I'll save on audio equipment)
My worry with the D800E WAS that the moiré patterns caused by the lack of an AA filter would show up in all kind of architectural subjects. I still expect that mini-blinds will be the D800E 's downfall, but could not find any mini-blinds to sacrafice this morning.
Detail with moiré - see full size at Flickr
I have uploaded 4 of the worst photos I have taken in recent memory... but I knew you'd be curious...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/schafphoto/sets/72157629490955922/
I went out to hunt moiré patterns this first morning with the D800E showing little regard for subject or composition – just looking for patterns, roof tiles, fences, vents, receding lines of siding, etc. (I also learned the C.A. on my 28mm 2.8 Nikon AF-D lens sucks). Out of thirty images: I only found one mild moiré. My test shows me that I'm going to be just fine. The high resolution of the D800E makes only really, really small patterns into potential issues. (I haven't commented on the sharpness here because that's gonna take a lot more time to understand). The only D800E moiré pattern I could find was in the garage doors next to the back of the school bus. They are subtle at full size, but I have not used the Nikon software to remove them either. The Nikon software will probably easily remove that once I install it and learn how to use it. In the meantime, out of 30 views where I was trying really hard to make the D800E stumble, so far it has not and indeed has exceeded my expectations.
Newsflash 5 hours later, the buzz is already wearing off. I just figured out that that disc that comes with the camera is a coaster. It's boxed with ViewNX2, not CaptureNX2, leaving me no option but to drop $140 clams on Capture NX2 just to fix the moiré that's baked into this camera. Now that I tracked down moiré on my safari I know there's more out there, but I won't be able get rid of it. Bonehead move by Nikon, how much does CaptureNX cost them on a $3500 camera? Can't be much since they're giving it away for free in Jolly Old England... that's why they're jolly.
The new Nikon D800 advertisement in PDN has the slogan "Sorry, but you're going to want to reshoot everything you've ever shot." They may be right.
(Please comment on my Flickr page or e-mail me, my blog is not comment-friendly)
PS: My Nikon GP1-GPS unit works perfectly with the D800E so the images on Flickr are Geotagged.
See and experiment with the full size NEF file here: http://www.mediafire.com/?nt22c5nnk24b5sr
I'm always looking for freelance writing work.. See more of my work at www.schafphoto.com
