I got the but to get out and shoot and a show and luckily everything lined up for me. The show was last night at the Casbah and for those who know the lighting is similar to a well lit closet.
Images are only barely barely edited as I usually don't like to edit live images.
Let me paint the scene.
Windows down, good driving music playing. 40-50mph on dirt road drifting certain corners a bit. Simply the most fun I have had driving in a long time. This all while keeping up with a 4x4 dodge truck ahead of me to keep pace. The truck continued straight and my journey called for a right turn. At the beginning of the road there was a sign that said road closed. I had already gone 40 miles and I figured I would take it easy and see why exactly the road was closed. This was my first mistake.
I continued on and the lodge was just a bit further. I zoomed over some snow which was actually pretty thick mud due to the recent "warm" temperatures. I then realized that I had found myself between the tough and the impassable.
I backed up as much as I could and I sped towards the previous patch of snow / mud and as you would have guessed. I got stuck. Struggling trying to get my car free just made things worse. The mud wore both my car and I down to a point that I was forced to surrender. This was after almost 2 hours of attempts.
Cold and coved in mud I walked to find signal... None and none. I probably walked up to 2 miles until finally I found a spot that had "3 bars". I called 911 just over 60 times until a clear enough message was sent that I was in need of help.
I then walked to my car for the local officer to arrive to assess the situation. About 30 minutes later an officer arrives and he didn't look happy right away... I don't blame him, I don't want to be muddy either. He attempted to push me out of my rut but no luck. After asking for my information he told me that he was going to write me a ticket for not following the road sign. He called a tow truck and made sure that I knew that I would have to pay for that. After awhile he came back and let me know that he cut me a break... Instead of a $750 dollar ticket I would just have to pay $120.
Near 9pm Tom roll up in his old tow truck. He's what you would expect, overweight, racist and with only 2 of his buttons buttoned at the bottom. Long story short we got my car out of the mud with just scratches...
At the end Tom told me how much it would be.... $400. $325 of that was just to drive there and back.
I feel ripped off, stupid and more broke than before... One day I'll catch that break that everyone else has had a taste of.
Image shot with the new Nikon D800. It is a 30 second exposure at iso 1600. The light to the left is the polices officers headlights.
So I am back from my trip quite early but I did have a few solid days to test my new Nikon D800 in the wild. I recorded some footage on the trip and I now present a sample of it now for you. For those people who know things the video is shot and no editing has been done to it besides cutting and exporting from Final Cut Pro X. It took me about an hour to wrap the few days worth of footage into a 4 minute story. The Las Vegas portion isn't nearly as good as the second half, just not enough footage taken in LV, so please judge after you have seen the entire video :). I hope you like the video and please let me know if you have any questions / compliments!
Please Watch in 1080P! I'm working on a Vimeo version...
httpvh://youtu.be/G0p_mlnQbIM
This is a very early quick look about the new camera that I have had now for 3 days. I don't have a good enough connection to fact check so I apologize ahead of time. 36MP Sensor: It has been said before but I am going to say a few things here anyways. The sensor is no doubt incredible but it will indeed punish camera users who's skill set has not been refined, and for those who have been it will just simply make you a better photographer. I try to explain, the sensor because it has so many pixels will make the flaws within your photographs stand out / magnify them. The problem is hard to explain but similar to the effect of a telephoto lens and a slow shutter speed. Not the same nor the reason why but even with speeds that should be fine the images are not tack sharp. This is simply due to the fact that you are provided with so much information. The same settings on a different camera (with less MP) would look much better but once again this is due to the fact that the information is not available. So once again there are other ways to explain this but I'm not in the right place to do so. If the image was scaled down it would look the same, the problem is not a major one for most uses.
So in conclusion chimps will be chimpier and photographers skills will be refined over time.
Autofocus: As far as I can tell there is really no difference. It still focuses very quickly and in a couple of occasions I was able to focus under moonlight, maybe that will be rare or maybe I'll just get used to it. The new way to change between auto and single point is taking the most time to get used to. I usually end up scrolling the wrong wheel but I'm sure with time I'll get used to it.
Metering: I know it has it's big brothers AF and metering so I know it's an improvement. In normal usage I don't see a difference but then again colors are usually a bit different with newer sensors. Also every once in awhile the camera will render a scene as if it's already been post processed, its something that you just have to see Nikon is known to have the best images straight out of the camera and I love them... But I feel as I get to know this camera better I will learn to control the beast.
LCD: When they announced the D800 I was bummed that they didn't upgrade the pixel count on the display. Little did I know that the amount of pixels that wasn't holding it back but it appears that it was the files itself being viewed. Images on the display are incredible but still keeps a realistic impression of what the image truly looks like (cough unlike another company cough). They say that they moved the panel backwards to make it better in bright lights but it looks the same as the D700 in my opinion. I see the issue now more that I am shooting video and having to stare at the display more. It's not bad, but I just dont see the improvement.
Video: New to the camera obviously but there are a few quirks. Settings being used before switching to live view are not retained. I haven't had the time to figure out or pay attention to what's going on but I saw a post online with someone saying the same thing. The internal mic is quite good compared to previous on camera mics. I am going to go off topic for a bit and talk about the rode videomic pro. It's incredible to be able to monitor this fine piece of equipment while recording. I picked up a dog barking from 250 feet away and the slightest move of my feet on the ground. I just can't wait to record something serious with it. A very nice addition to the video department is that the native 1080P files play back on an iPad without any tricks over the camera connector.
New Settings: Even years after owning my D700 I would find a new setting or set up a better way to shoot with the camera. I don't think the D800 will be any different. I'm going to list a couple of settings that I have not seen mentioned online. First the self timer setting now has an option to fire off a set amount (up to 99) with another setting for how long in between shots. I have been using this to bracket 3-9 images. Another option was to give the command wheel the ability to change ISO when in certain modes. For example in aperture priority the front wheel changes aperture while the back wheel does nothing, now it has the ability to change ISO by just scrolling. I feel that simple steps like these end up saving time and shots when there are less presses involved.
Lenses: Nikon has actually made an approved list of lenses on their site for their camera. This is because the camera can potentially out resolve the glass in the lens. This is a potential bummer because the sensor would show off all of the flaws of the lens. Honestly I have a whole range of consumer to pro glad and do far I haven't seen issues with any of them. I have noticed that I have been incorrectly shooting my 70-300VR lens, I guess it needs a faster shutter than what I had thought. It's probably a reason why Nikon added an additional setting to auto ISO to match the focal length. Without zooming once again you can't tell but if you want to double check behind door number zoom you can see if you have a winner. Also I have not noticed any diffraction yet with smaller apertures. When I finally review these images on the computer I'll find out the truth.
File Size / CF Cards: 4GB cards were what I survived on with the D700. RAW files are nice and thin compared to the D800. When a card is formatted in the camera it still underestimates the amount of photos that you could fit onto the card. Although it is quite funny to see the D800 quote you 50 RAW images on a 4GB card where it used to get me over 200. I'm sure that amount would lurk near 100 but still it's laughable. I saw it online a few times that people were having issues with their old memory cards just not working with the D800. I tested each of my cards with photo and video after a fresh format and I didn't have an issue at all. Although some of the cards processed the images very slow. So far I have been shooting a Sandisk Extreme 16GB 90Mbs card alongside a Patriot 32GB class 10 SDHC card. No issues (glances around for wood).
