Wow, that was intense... Just got back home from a quick little casual wedding of two lovely ladies. I brought along way more gear than I needed... go figure, and made some stupid mistakes gear wise as well... Put my wireless transceivers in a pocket I never knew existed in my bag, only to not find them on location, making my planned flash setup fail hard. Forgot to bring fresh batteries for my K5. No strap for the K5. Forgot extra rolls of film... what film?
Anyways, this isn't about all that. This is about the D800 and how it handled a fast paced, energetic wedding, where photos and ceremony lasted a total of 90 minutes. Think about that, 90 minutes to get a ceremony and photos done. Why? Because these ladies wanted to get their drink on, and most of the guests had a time crunch to get on a plane and get home. It was also raining... like pouring.
I show up early at the venue to setup my flash guns. The plan was one flashgun behind the officiant set to wide to give some backlighting and get that nice glow out of them, and then one flash camera right and high to assist the sun due to the cloud cloudy mess we were in. Forget my triggers, so attempted for the first time in my life to setup my pair of SB700's with the built in triggering without a manual. Nope... sorry, can't figure that out. Cell phone? Forgot it at work. yea, brilliant start to this day. So I cranked the ISO upto 800 and said, screw the flash guns. They got nice and drenched anyways when the rain started pouring 30 seconds later. D800 with f2.8 80-200 lens sitting on the tripod, and I'm worrying about a pair of $300 flashguns? Yea... not smart. But the D800 and lens was unaffected. If I had the D600 today... I would have been crapping bricks leaving the D600 out as I never trusted it's sealing. The D800 I feel 10 times better about. My K5? I would have left it sitting there while I hid in the car.
Observation: SB700 flashguns are very well weather sealed in a downpour.
Next. Auto Focus. Since grabbing the D800 I setup my camera for "AF-ON" to focus only, and with constant focus on. I love this because it keeps you locked no mater what happens, makes for sharper images. On quick review at home, I'm right. BUT... I didn't trust it in the field because the screen on the D800 suuuuccccckkkkkkkkssssss........I'm glad I was forced not to trust the screen and trust the AF system... mental note, if you charge batteries for your backup camera (in this case a K5) bring them with you.
The above is a 1:1 crop of the focus point which was on the center of the mutli colored rose. On camera review this rose was very soft with little to no detail. I was very surprised... I expect that from the lower resolution K5 screen, but it was scarring me on the D800. I was very worried. I quickly was checking focus on all my lenses and noticed each one was giving me the same result, so I decided to trust that the AF was doing it's job properly and that the screen must be wrong. Thankfully, I was right to do so.
Critical point: Trust the AF system
The other thing I did pre-wedding was go and grab a CF card. My fastest SD car is a 60mb/sec Lexar 32gb card. More than fast enough for a K5. But the D800 has MASSIVE files. So I wanted to clear that buffer fast, especially since it only has 16 RAW shots before filling up. So I grabbed a 105mb/sec Promaster 32GB Card. Well worth the money in quick tests where the buffer does not 100% stall out for at least 20 frames. But...this is a wedding, and a new card. This day happens ONCE. So I decided to setup the SD card for jpg backup. After all...when I had the D600, once I figured out the "vivid" color setting had to be applied in Lightroom, I had very little editing to do of my photos in post to get the results I wanted. So, I was happy with just JPG backups. Yea.... bad idea. This killed the buffer, making it stall 100% after the 15 frames. And the buffer would take what felt like an eternity to start clearing, took at least a minute to refill. I did miss two shots because of this. But in the end, I'm glad I did because 4 photos were corrupted, but did make it out alive on the SD card. So next step? Upgrade the SD card.
Observation: Fast CF card should be coupled with a fast SD card if using both slots simultaneously
It was still early, and even though the battery light on the K5 was flashing...I was feeling frustrated with the buffer and the AF that I decided to keep the K5 on my hip with the DA*50-135 attached. It was funny having that combo on my hip, my D800 with 80-200 f2.8 in hand, and knowledge that my Q was in the glove box of my car with the 06 zoom..... but that is not the point here. The point is, that switching from D800 to K5 is not as seemless for me was it was with the D600. I already feel like I know the D800 fairly well, and aside from ISO I can adjust all major shooting functions without taking the camera away from my eye. The problem with the K5 is that the hand position is incredibly different. It's very similar with the D600, but the D800 spaces things out more, and the dial pad for moving focus points just feels better too. In fact the whole camera feels better. Both cameras are very solid, but when you swap instantly back and forth the K5 feels almost toy like...for a second until your brain switches back over and muscle memory kicks back in.
Oh, noise at ISO 800 by the way... none. Like what the K5 produces at iso 200.
So I complete my shoot, I get about 300 photos today. I always shoot burst so as to minimize the blinks, and I do a lot of candids. the D800 does NOT keep up with this as well as the K5. But that was to be expected. The file sizes are double that of the K5, and with the RAW+ mode I was shooting in...well that just made the camera work even harder. I'm sure when I do my next shoot (Saturday if the weather holds up), I will dial this in a bit better. But man was it fun to use this camera... and when I uploaded the photos onto my computer (took 10 minutes on USB3 to download the whole CF card to my machine through Lightroom. Granted I got a solid state drive on my PC) I was so happy with the results. I've done my quick selections, and took two of my favorite photos from the session and added them at the end of the post....and I obviously missed the focus on the kissing couple. But I still like it.
So what do I think of the D800 so far?
1: Major upgrade from the D600. The D600 to me was an "equal" to the K5 in terms of image quality, but inferior to the K5 in terms of ergonomics, weather sealing, and build quality. The D800 solves 90% of my issues with the D600, and is incredibly superior to the K5.
2: It's a professional tool. For a Pentax shooter who is not planning on selling his Pentax kit, I see no reason to make the D800 my daily camera. While it will be my primary camera for professional shooting, my K5 will be my primary camera for hobby or street. The D800 is just too big, too heavy, and too "attention grabbing" for day to day use out on the streets. My K5 with Limited series lenses are light, durable, and portable enough for me to take almost anywhere and not become a nuances. I feel with the D800 I'm just screaming "look he has a camera!"
3: The noise control is unreal. Really... you think the K5 is good? What about the D600? Well the D800 is better. Immensely better. Stupidly better.
4: The focusing system is fantastic
5: Either CLS (creative lighting system) is unreliable, or I have no idea how to use it. Quick google search reveals it's a strong possibility for both.
6: Weather sealing held up to a pretty hard downpour, confidence is high
7: Big files means the need to splurge on expensive CF/SD cards that are fast enough to keep up. Best deal I've found is $160 CAD for a Promaster 32gb CF card with an advertised speed of 105mb/sec from McBain Camera. Or $70 for a Acumem 32gb SD card advertised at 90mb/sec from Vistek.
8: The sensor is unreal.
9: I miss image stabilization on EVERY lens.
Lens update:
*50mm 1.8 D lens is going bye bye. will upgrade to 50mm f1.4 G
*85mm 1.8 G lens is still my favorite producing fantastic images on the D800. I need to use this lens more
*50mm f1.4 Planar from Zeiss is an amazing lens, but the focus ring is a bit too tight. Love it's rendering though. Does give off minor chromatic aberrations. Wish they offered it in an AF model. Is there another 50 that produces this kind of optical quality with AF?
*80-200 f2.8 really is an amazing piece of glass and is right up there with the 85mm 1.8 G. For $1000 less than the 70-200 f2.8 VC you can either get this or the 70-200 f4 VC. For the speed upgrade, and $200 savings.. I'll take the 80-200 any day of the week. That being said... I will probably eventually upgrade to the 70-200 f2.8
*24 f2.8 D has started to control my mind. It's surprisingly sharp, but has bad issues with purple fringing. Thankfully easy to correct.
*I need a standard zoom. Saving up for the VC Tamron. The original one I was looking at is so incredibly soft.
*I very badly want a 105 f2 DC. I use my 77mm Limited way to much on ASPC. I want this FOV on FF
Last edited by Wired; 06-20-2013 at 06:54 PM.