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A Pleasure to Work With,
I recently sold my D800 body and replaced it with the D810. I do not typically upgrade cameras this quickly but I hoped that the D810 would be a little more refined in certain respects than the D800. So far this has proven to be the case.
UPDATE 8-11-2014 Spent two weeks shooting landscapes and wildlife in Maine. The new group auto focus setting was amazing for shots of birds. The focus tracking was amazing and I was able to secure the best eagle pictures I have ever taken and all the credit goes to the D810. My D200, D800 and even D4 would have had trouble tracking these subjects. The auto focus improvements are extremely substantial and have immediate real world benefits.
The big headline to me regarding the D810 is the shutter and mirror assembly. The sound of the camera is completely different than the D800 or the D4 for that matter. The D810 sounds like there has been a lot of work done on damping the mechanical vibrations that occur when the shutter is tripped. In my initial testing I found that with the Nikkor 105VR Micro that there was a noticeable reduction in the slight blur that I had always attributed to mirror slap on the D800. Holding the camera when it triggers, one feels less bounce going on inside the body.
UPDATE 7-23-2013 Shooting macro with the 105VR I definitely saw an improvement in focus acuity and it seemed that the combination of improved focus and VR yielded noticeably better results than the D800.
Having had a D800 and going through the experience of having to return several due to the “left focus issue” before I found a good one, it was one of the first things I tested. I am happy to report that I found no evidence of variability in focus across the range of focus points. The new group auto-focus feature descended from the D4s is very nice. There is no focus hunting and the focus system seems quite snappy and sharp.
One of my only quibbles thus far is with live view focusing. There is still more hunting than I would like. I would score live view focusing on par with the D800.
UPDATE 7-23-2014 I have worked a bit more with the live view focusing and it is definitely the most glaring minus so far for the camera. It is no worse than the D800 but compared to the improvements in the rest of the focusing system it is still lagging behind.
Image quality is spectacular. Color, and detail are outstanding. I shoot RAW and have been using the Camera Raw 8.6 Release Candidate from Adobe to process my files. They look near perfect without any adjustment. I do hope that Lightroom is updated for the D810 soon as it would not recognize the files I tried to import. I guess Adobe Bridge isn’t dead after all.
The D810 does seem to shoot faster than the D800 as advertised. No one will mistake its speed for a D4s but that isn’t really the expectation. It seems fast enough that I would definitely keep it in the bag for wildlife photography even though it might not be the “A” body for that kind of work.
The viewfinder is really clear and I may be mistaken but I think the data in the viewfinder is presented with a slightly different technology than the D800. Whatever is being used is crisp and very readable.
The menu system for Nikon cameras has always seemed very intuitive to me. I own a couple of Sony and Canon cameras as well and the Nikon menus seem just a tad easier to deal with. Sony has come a long way but there is still a noticeable difference.
I find the placement of the controls very intuitive and easy to manipulate. I know some users will prefer Nikon’s older system for selecting autofocus modes but I find the current set up quite intuitive.
One miscellaneous item is that the batteries and charger from the D800 work with the D810. I was happy for once that I didn’t have to buy all new batteries. SD and CF cards are of course the same but some newer cards like the Lexar 1066X work that would not in the D800 (officially)/
Video quality is excellent as well. This is not a feature that is terribly important to me but I think that many users who value DSLR video will really like it. The spec sheets spell out the specific improvements. I have done a fair amount of production using high-end ENG cameras with external camera control units. Out of the box the D810 compares well but I do wish that there were easier ways to access traditional CCU functions on a DSLR.
I don’t know that everyone who owns a D800 or D800E will want to upgrade to the D810. For me it is a decision that I am happy with and feel I have received adequate additional value from the new body. I will be taking the camera out soon for some extended nature photography sessions and will update this review after that. Thus far to me the D810 is a worthwhile upgrade that addresses some of qualities of the D800 that were important to me. If you are looking for an upgrade from a D700 or a…
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|First Impression of D810 Upgrading from D7000,
My D7000 and 17-55mm combination was good and I shoot lots of photos with it so I thought I will never have the desire to upgrade to full frame body. But boy I was so wrong. After yesterday, I realize the full frame bokeh and feel of the photo is much better than on DX body, indeed as people claimed. I used group focus most of the time since the kids were moving all the time. The focus was fast, got it right 97% of the time I would say. Much better than the single focus point of D7000 since the group focus has bigger focus area so you do not need to change focus point often. I use AF-ON button to focus, which is much better laid out than D7000. The AE-L/AF-L button on D7000 is so badly designed that I found it unusable.
Other impression with the D810 is that Pixels DO matter! It makes me not afraid of cropping the photo. Meanwhile I believe the photos look much sharper on my screen, comparing to D7000 and 17-55mm F2.8. Yes, the lens and no AA filter increase the sharpness on D810, but I believe the huge chunk of pixels squeeze on the screen makes it look sharper too. And I feel more pixels make spot healing in PS easier too. My computer (AMD 3.5 GHz, 10 GB ram) feels much slower, not as some people claimed that D800/E photo editing on regular daily home computer is enough.
Little things:
The D810 combination is much heavier than D7000 combination, not expected. I do not feel much better ergonomics as lots of people claimed because the weight basically canceled out the improved ergonomics for me. The build quality even the buttons quality feel much better, which I like. Besides liking the AF-ON button, the MODE button is pretty convenient to change M/A/S/P mode. The battery is ok, I shoot about 900 frames and still one of six battery grid left. Did not test, but feel D7000 consumes less battery. Hoya polarizer filter makes obvious little vignette.
Overall, I love the D810. It will be a solid performer for years to come.
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|Worth upgrading from the D800 in my opinion,
First of all, and I think most important of all is the autofocus is so much quicker. I was demonstrating it to my friend by just turning the camera to anything and press the shutter and it instantly focus and takes the picture. I set the menu mode for shutter release on focus only. On the D800, you will get the focus just a bit slower. Although this may not sound like a big difference, it allows me to get “that” picture with more confidence. I was never able to to use autofocus “c” mode to follow a flying bird because it is just not fast enough, or maybe I am not good enough of a photographer. However, on the D810, I was able to follow a dragonfly buzzing around my backyard and out of 6-7 pictures, I got 3 excellent in focus one. One of the picture looked like 3D because it was so clear!
The second difference, which I think is just as important to me is the improvement of ISO performance. I compared the noise level between ISO 800 – 12800 on both cameras. On the D800, I could definitely see annoying noise, even with noise reduction turned on by 1600, and by 3200, it was definitely unacceptable. On the D810, I could definitely see noise by 2500, and by 8000, it was definitely unacceptable. So, I can see that the improvement is about 2/3 -1 stop better. On the D800, I limit ISO to 1600. On the D810, I now limit it to 2500, although I think that ISO 3200 is comparable to ISO 1600 on the D800.
If you think this is not important, it is 1 stop difference. On my 24-70mm f2.8, with a 1 stop increase, it’s like an f2.0! On my 24mm 1.4, that’s like f1.0! I was at a restaurant the other day with the family and was able to click away many pictures without flash! The pictures were at ISO 2500, and looked amazing!
Another difference is the much quieter shutter click. It’s not a big deal to me, but it sounds much better than the D800.
I have noticed though, that some of my pictures are not as sharp as I am used to on the D800. I would retake the picture, but I would slow down; breath out, and kept everything super steady, and then the picture would be supersharp! I think the D810 is so sharp without the low pass filters, that any subtle shakes will show. I guess this can be a “minus” if you want to consider that a minus. :))
Another thing I like on the D810 is the “group focus”. This is 4 squares instead of one square to focus. So instead of aiming to focus with one square in the viewfinder, the D810 can be programmed to have 4 square next to each other. It is my opinion that this may result in better focus than the one square focus. The one square focus option is still there.
Overall, I really like the D810. I would definitely recommend this body, even if you have the D800 if you want that extra advantage. This is what the D800 should have been. 🙂
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