Give it a month, let the hype and excitement settle and then reconsider. Honesty I can't see you gaining anything by going to the D800.
Anyway the 5Dx & 5D3 will be announced by then which will be better than anything Nikon has at the moment, so you might as well get one of each for the same price as a D800
I would hold off at least a couple of months. Apparently you make your living off a camera, or do you just shoot a wedding a couple of times a year? If it's your living, you might be wise to sit tight for several months and see what others are saying. We really don't know much about the D800 at all, and just a few guys hand picked by Nikon have had a tiny bit of experience with it so far.
1 thing and 1 thing only matters in this decision, do you need speed (AF and fps), high iso and rugged build (that is to say do you shoot mostly journalism/sports) or can you live without
honorerdieu wrote:
I would wait until the reviews come out. I am somewhat skeptical about the D800's ISO 6400 performance because not all cameras are created equal.
That said, there is no way I would give up my D3s for a D800.
Another issue to consider: you can shoot commercial work with the D3s and not worry about getting a license or paying royalties due to MJPEG.
However, the D800 uses H.264 so you can upload to your heart's content without paying royalties (at least till 2015, according to MPEG-LA) but any commercial work will require a rather expensive license.
Something to consider if you plan on using the D800 for commercial video work.
I have considered trading my D3 for a D3s or a D4 but now I am thinking about a D800. Would you think the D800 ISO performance would be close to the D3? I don't really need the high fps anymore.
I am considering picking up a d3s to complement the d800. This would mean unloading my d3x. The d3x is to close the d800 and far enough away from the d3s that the low noise high frame rate of the d3s will complement the d800 better. Plus I would rather work on the smaller file sizes when I am shooting general things. Portraits and landscapes will be d800 sports and all else will be d3s
There seems to be an assumption that people and other animates can be captured much like rocks and trees. My two D3s are set at 9 fps so that I can choose from various expressions, minimize motion blur (yes even at 1/250 and VR you can get people motion blur), variation in AF hunting and other variables.
For groups of people the stastics are brutal. A quick burst of frames is blink and expression "insurance"
(you can replace a blinker or scruncher with PS from an adjacent frame). The D3s has a huge buffer which means you can keep shooting when other cameras stop. Virtually the only way to shoot fast motion such as sports, dance and candid action portraiture.
If you have a D3/D3s/D700 try this but if you have a small buffered 4/5 fps camera you will never know. I enlarge my D3s people photos to 24x36" and they are very sharp in appearance. No need for more Mp for sharper pores(often I deliberately blur some in PS). I have ordered a D800E for inanimate photos.
You gain a lot of flexibility in cropping, people shooting video at 4K and then outputting to 1080p love the extra room you have to work with. Shooters working with 36mp still images will now find that same flexibility.
Even in an 11x14 a 36mp image could look better than a 12mp image not so much because of extra detail, but because artifacts are reduced because of the larger source file. There's lots of examples out there showing a 12mp image from a camera and the same image from a much higher MP camera that has been shrunk down. The higher MP original inevitably looks cleaner.
The question is though, who will notice? If you're a discerning photographer with excellent technique, then you likely will. If you're Jon Doe off the street and you don't spend lots of time analyzing visual imagery, you likely will not ...Show more →
Depends on your shooting style. But me and for the price difference, I would because I don't really need that high ISO capabilities of D3S. Who knows, D800 high iso will be great. 6400 is more than enough for me YMMV. Then I can use that extra $1500 to buy ZF.2 25mm F2 or ZF.2 35mm 1.4 or Nikon 85mm 1.4G or 70-200mm F2.8. Too bad I don't have a D3S.
M635_Guy wrote:
I'd take a D3s over a D800 every day of the week, but I don' think these cameras are comparable at all. I'd sell a D3x for a D800 though...
