D800 in Transit

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Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
The good news is I actually have one on the way to my address, the bad news is it won't be here until Friday. The wait is becoming painful. I actually had one on back order for a month from my favorite B&H, canceled that order and it's coming from all places "Walmart" Pretty much same price wherever you buy one from. I may have my grip and a extra battery before I get the camera. Will be a glorious weekend!
 
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Tami Jo

Senior Member
How exciting! I will be looking forward to those first shots posted soon. Hang in there Bill Fridays coming!
I'm surprised that Walmart carried that model...guess they carry much more online than they do in the store.
Nice you didn't have to wait any longer;)
 
Disorderly

Disorderly

Senior Member
Be prepared for a bit of a learning curve. I got my D800 a couple of months ago and am having to unlearn a lot of behavior from my D300. I shoot a lot in studio, and was used to working at F/8 at ISO 200. For group events I've had to shoot F/11; they set the lights at F/8 for ISO 100 shooters (generally Canon), which works out to F/11 at ISO 200.

Anyway, first group shoot I really wanted to shoot at ISO 100. So I did, and then discovered that the combination of a bigger aperture and the bigger sensor meant a whole lot less depth of field than I was used to. Shot a male model with muscles so big that when his eyes were in focus his arms were blown out!

So now I'll shoot F/11 at group events. And I'm seriously loving the camera, now that I'm getting some experience with it. And the high ISO is pretty darn amazing!
 
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Ruidoso Bill

Senior Member
Looking forward to taking it for a spin, I don't have anything scheduled this weekend except candids during a motorcycle rally so should be fun.

Thanks for the tips.
 
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gqtuazon

Gear Head
Disorderly said:
So now I'll shoot F/11 at group events. And I'm seriously loving the camera, now that I'm getting some experience with it. And the high ISO is pretty darn amazing!
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Congrats Bill. You'll definitely have a blast with it. It is a big adjustment since your lenses will appear wider but will lack the reach or tighter field of view that you are use to. Using a tripod with mirror up yields best results.

@Disorderly - from the lens tester's reports that I have read f8 was the optimal aperture to get the sharpest possible results and anything above it will start seeing lens diffraction although if you need the DOF, then that is the drawback.
 
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Disorderly

Disorderly

Senior Member
gqtuazon said:
@Disorderly - from the lens tester's reports that I have read f8 was the optimal aperture to get the sharpest possible results and anything above it will start seeing lens diffraction although if you need the DOF, then that is the drawback.
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I'd like to see a source for that. F/11 seems way too wide open for diffraction problems to start showing up on a full frame sensor. I've shot a D300 down to F/16 without seeing any diffraction problems. (The first source I found lists F/22 as the smallest aperture for a full frame sensor, and F/16 for crop.) I'd expect the sweet spot to be different on different lenses, which is a separate concern from diffraction.
 
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Billy Y.

Senior Member
I read somewhere also that diffraction starts to show up at around f11, but it said it was fairly unnoticeable until f16 and above, where you can physically start seeing its effects in crops.
 
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gqtuazon

Gear Head
Disorderly said:
I'd like to see a source for that. F/11 seems way too wide open for diffraction problems to start showing up on a full frame sensor. I've shot a D300 down to F/16 without seeing any diffraction problems. (The first source I found lists F/22 as the smallest aperture for a full frame sensor, and F/16 for crop.) I'd expect the sweet spot to be different on different lenses, which is a separate concern from diffraction.
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Try Thom Hogan's review. I've copied and pasted the article to make it more convenient.

Nikon D800 and D800E Review by Thom Hogan

Resolution, Diffraction, and To E or Not to E

Quote: "Here's the thing: certainly when we were at 12mp and lower we were living in a sort of Disneyesque world where everything was slightly sharper than reality. What do I mean by that? Diffraction wasn't getting fully recorded or seen in most cases. A D3 at f/16 was just starting to show visible differences on edges at 100% view for most people (though diffraction was already present, it wasn't clearly destroying edges enough for people to get upset). Some of this has to do with the way Bayer sensors record data. I've been saying for a long time that diffraction really only starts to be fully recorded by a Bayer camera when the Airy disc becomes about twice the size of an individual photosite. It's not a perfect predictor, since there's an optical system that sits above the photosite (AA/IR filter, which may have a waveplate in it, microlenses on the sensor itself). But it's been a "good enough" predictor for some time now.

 So what do we see on the D800 and D800E? At and above f/8 diffraction is being fully recorded (at f/8 the Airy disc diameter is 10.7 microns, while the D800 sensor photosite implied diameter is a bit less than 5 microns). Even at f/5.6 the Airy disc is big enough to be producing clearly visible diffraction." end quote.



 
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