Nikon D800 Overview
This week Nikon D800 DSLR was officially announced this week, targeting all types of fine art and landscape photographers. The changes in spec as compared to the D700 (a camera I own and love as much as the old F-100 film camera I started with back in the 90s) fall into all the expected categories, however the degree to which the specs have changed are impressive:
Resolution & ISO
Using the now-standard FX resolution that is common to all professional Nikon DSLRs, the D800 literally triples the resolution from the D700, moving from 12 million pixels to 36 million. Nikon is already touting the low noise performance across its ISO spectrum (natively 100 – 6400 with some extra “boost stops” on either side of those numbers). However with so many pixels crammed onto the equivalent of a 35mm sensor, it will be interesting to see the real-world samples. The camera has both a Compact Flash slot and a Secure Digital (SD) slot for camera media…
The D800 is slated to ship to retailers and customers sometime in March or April (I’ve learned never to rely on a specific date because delays and manufacturing shortages with new cameras are not uncommon), at a cost of around $3000. That’s actually a pretty fantastic price, considering the camera also shoots up to 30fps of 1080p video (H.264), and does it well based on the low light (but obviously edited and graded) sample.
Metering & Focusing Systems
The Nikon D800 uses an updated 51-point auto-focus system in combination with a viewfinder that offers true 100% coverage in FX mode (something that many photographers value), and can capture at full resolution up to 4 frames per second in continuous shooting mode. According to the official specs, you can also crop down to DX mode and capture 5 frames per second if you need a bit more speed at the cost of “low resolution” (low meaning a little more than 15 megapixels in this case – still more than the D700). The D800 also offers a 5:4 shooting mode to recreate classical medium format film proportions.
Also important to the quality of workflow and images a skilled photographer can create, the D800 uses the same Advanced Scene Recognition System used on the new Nikon D4 as well as the same 91,000 pixel light metering system and Expeed 3 image processing engine.
In short the D800 looks to be a fantastic advance in technology, and ergonomically I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve actually used one but by the looks of it, it is going to be both heavier than the D700 but also more durable because of it’s reinforced metallic inner frame and additional weather seals (something previously reserved for the flagship DSLRs).
Other cool “Extras” include a digital readout that lets you determine how level your camera is, and support for USB 3 transfer speeds (only useful if your computer has native support for USB 3) — we’ll need it, with files streaming through at 36 million raw pixels. That new compressed DNG spec is looking better all the time!
