Gadgetory

the tides are changing in the DSLR market and in my hand is one of the reasons why hi I'm Mike Perlman photography editor of TechnoBuffalo comm today I'm going to review the Nikon d800 is the Nikon d800 one of the new high water mark setters find out in my full review since 2008 the canon eos 5d mark ii has ruled the roost in the world of versatile full-frame DSLR s professional photographers and videographers flocked to the mark ii for its superb still image quality and HD video quality approximately six months later Nikon released the d700 and while it was a critically acclaimed DSLR for still shooting it lacked a video mode so it's safe to say that Nikon has been living in Canon shadow for the past four years but the tides have indeed changed as 2012 brings us the nikon d800 the d800 brings some crucial upgrades to the table first off we have full HD video recording and nikon has somehow managed to triple the resolution of the d700 sensor and the d800 offers 36 megapixels so let's get crackin and talk about the d800 s design architectural II there are a few things to be excited about with the new d800 most notably the dual card slots yes the d800 can host an SD card and a CF card and when one card is maxed out it'll automatically spill over to the other if you're in the middle of a video clip the video will stop and start a brand new clip on the other card also we have this nifty new live switch here we could switch between video and photo mode to give us a more accurate preview of what we're really going to record the d800 has a slightly larger 3.2 inch LCD screen with a 921 k display that's the same resolution as the d700 so don't expect much of a difference I was a big fan of the 100% coverage optical viewfinder particularly because I could use virtual horizon meters and grid displays now as far as an interface this is a prime example of what an interface should be on a digital camera particularly the 8 way directional pad is just so easy to press everything is just one button press and a command jog away selecting and executing manual controls and adjustments was Flash Gordon fast the menus are intuitively laid out it was so easy for me to get acclimated so as far as an interface on an advanced DSLR one of the best I've ever seen now four terminals the d800 has mic and headphone jacks and that's going to come in handy for video mode also we have a USB 3.0 so we have the high speed and we have an HDMI mini out the mini outs going to come in handy for streaming to an external monitor while you're recording video and we also have your standard 10 pin connector and flash sync terminal now one thing to note about the new d800 is that it relies on the new en il-15 battery pack which means you can't use the d700 batteries if you're upgrading from that camera also the battery life has a lower rating than the d700 the d800 can shoot 900 shots and the d700 was cleared for 1,000 but of course a Nikon is making a battery grip for this I looked it up it's about $450 now as far as the d800 S body weight goes it's about 3.3 ounces less than the d700 but don't let that fool you it's still a cinder block especially with this giant 24 to 70 millimeter NIC or that Nikon sent me I much would have rather had the 14 to 24 that I tested with the d700 but it's not a perfect world now let's discuss features the d800 has the same Nikon advanced multicam 3500 FX sensor module with TTL phase detection as found on the d700 the camera even has the same amount of maximum AF points at 51 but now the d800 has face priority in photo and video mode and it has a 3d tracking AF mode which adds new focus points while tracking subjects in terms of AF and servo AF this thing was a speed racer it was blazing fast now one of the big features about the Nikon d800 is something you'll find on the company's other DSLR is even down the price range is that it has full-time AF another thing about DSLRs in full time AF and live view is that it's not as smooth as a dedicated video camera so even though the Nikon d800 was one of the best full time F performers I've ever seen I still prefer a video camera because it's silent you don't get those grunts and groans from the camera now exposure on the d800 has been improved a bit with a new TTL metering system with a ninety 1000 pixel RGB sensor although the maximum ISO range on the d800 has remained the same from the d700 at twenty-five thousand six hundred we now have a new low ISO at ISO 5000 feet is the same as the D 700 with a 30-second / bulb all the way up to a 1/8 thousandth of a second one thing I notice about the auto ISO on the d800 is that the camera defaults to lower ISO settings then I would have elected four so what I recommend is manually setting the ISO especially indoors now of course the d800 has other specialty features such as an HDR mode but I thought it wasn't really that necessary especially because there was great bracketing exposure bracketing that I could have just bracketed and thrown all the images in Photoshop and done my own HDR images but you could also do things like white balance active d-lighting and flash exposure compensation bracketing which is pretty handy now one thing to note about the d800 is continuous mode it has a max continuous mode of 4 frames per second which is one less than the d700 s five frames per second on the other end of the scale this camera has time lapse and time interval shooting and it's capable of multiple exposures at up to 10 layers so that's pretty impressive as far as white balance control is very straightforward you have your manual and your presets there was also custom Kelvin control and you could do it down to the degree which I thought was great of course the d800 would not be added under without vignette control advanced noise controls at high ISO levels and an auto distortion control but I pretty much kept all of those in neutral to give this thing a balanced evaluation now let's talk about the flash before we get to image quality the flash the built-in flash on the d800 I actually was really impressed with it I know a lot of pros out there are going to put their $500 speedlights on this thing that's totally fine I recommend doing that but if you really need a quick fill flash the d800 pop-up did a pretty darn good job and the only thing about a built-in flash with the 24 to 70 millimeter lens that Nikon gave me is it casted a pretty hefty shadow so I had to back up and zoom in if I was going to do any flash shooting and now it's time for the most important part of the review image quality and in order to demonstrate that right now I'm using the d800 to film this segment and the rest of the review so from here on out we're rolling with the d800 now first let's talk about this beast sensor Nikon stuffed a 36 megapixel full-frame fx-format CMO sensor inside which is triple that of the d700 resolution images could be captured in RAW JPEG or TIFF and the average raw size was 50 megabytes and the average JPEG size was 22 megabytes now if you have an 8 gigabyte card and you shoot at full resolution full quality you're going to get about 100 shots fortunately my friends over at SanDisk sent me an Extreme Pro 64 gigabyte SDXC card in all my years of testing I've never had any problems with the SanDisk I always rely on SanDisk now I tested the d800 in a variety of locations and I was amazed by the detail and clarity with the triple pixel count colors and dynamic range were fantastic but the ISO performance was the best I could shoot at ISO 6400 with great results even the higher ISO values like 12,800 were impressive and thanks to the high resolution sensor I was able to shoot at higher ISO s and scale the images down for reduced noise effects now when you stack raw versus JPEG the RAW files definitely are higher quality I found colors to be more vibrant detailed to be sharper and images to possess a higher level of clarity I shot in RAW throughout the entire testing phase and I was super impressed the d800 as far as still images one of the best in the biz but perhaps one of the most highly anticipated features on the d800 was its 1080p HD video I shot exclusively in 24 frames per second and 30 frames per second and I was extremely impressed by what I found but overall the d800 HD video quality could be considered for film and commercial work thanks to its superb image quality I also love the fact that I could shoot with full manual adjustment including shutter speed aperture and ISO range low-light performance is very impressive although when I tested it in extreme dark environments I did I noise so that's something to consider and also keep in mind that when you compare the video quality from the d800 to its stills there's really no comparison with the video quality you find that the colors are not as vibrant and I stumble across a few more a patterns it's also a bit of shutter lag when it comes to motion but this was to be expected as currently there's no DSLR that matches it's still quality with its video quality now let's talk about the d800 audio situation I really like the built-in stereo microphone I thought it performed pretty well however you're going to want to go for an external microphone but one thing I noticed about the 3.5 millimeter audio jack was that when I plugged my microphone in the floor noise increased so kind of have this hissing background sound I think that's something that's characteristic of DSLRs and external audio if you're really serious about audio if you want pro audio get a Beach Tech XLR grip adaptor and Bob's your uncle so now it's time for the buffalo call with a nikon d800 it's awesome for the full review go to TechnoBuffalo comm until next time I'm Mike Pearlman keep snapping folks you