D800, done it, anybody else??

[Daniel Browning]

I got a few comments from folks that were surprised I was switching to Nikon, so why not start a thread. Yes, the rumors are true. I'm going to the D800. The primary reason is that I'm tired of waiting for Canon to get their act together and fix the low-ISO pattern noise that's plagued all my Canon cameras. There has been little to no improvement in the last 6 years (aside from 1D- and Rebel series cameras), and now Nikon is ahead in several other areas that are important to me as well (chiefly clean HDMI out and 50% more pixels). And now that they have replacements for *most* of my Canon glass (especially my favorite 24mm f/1.4) and fixed some of the most annoying problems (mirror cycling in liveview), there aren't as many barriers. That said, Nikon still has a number of annoying problems, including the star killer algorithm, hardcoded black clipping, white balance preconditioning, harmful analog gain, masked-off pixel removal, “lossy” LUT that was never updated when they went from 12 to 14 bits, etc. But Canon had their own laundry list of issues, and I can live with these.

Now... who's with me?

[ahab1372]

Not me, but keep us posted please. I always like gear talk.

Arnt

[Dr Croubie]

Well, if I was going to go to FF for landscapes, a D800 and Zeiss 21mm would be a very nice buy.
But I just love my 7D too much, until there's a replacement for that I wouldn't consider nikon.
And i'm just too lazy to run a dual-brand kit, like birds off 7D, landscapes off D800, and having to deal with 2 different softwares and workflows etc.

Anyway, what's the ship date of the D800? I'm very interested to see how the images turn out...

[Daniel Browning]

And i'm just too lazy to run a dual-brand kit, like birds off 7D, landscapes off D800, and having to deal with 2 different softwares and workflows etc.

I could handle the software side, but I would definitely want to be able to use my lenses on all the bodies (as a backup, at least). I just hope that someone comes out with a good mirrorless compact that takes Nikon lenses. The Nikon One system is perfect except for the too-tiny sensors.

Anyway, what's the ship date of the D800?

March 22, but Nikon is expecting a shortage: http://the-digital-picture.com/News/News-Post.aspx?News=2115

I'll be scrambling hither and yon trying to find one in stock.

I'm very interested to see how the images turn out...

Me too! I'm planning a computer upgrade soon too, so I don't expect any problems from the increased pixel count. (Going from i7 950 3.0ghz + 24 GB RAM to Xeon E5-1620 3.6ghz, 64 GB RAM, plus upgrading from 8-disk RAID-50 to 24-disk RAID-50 -- keeping the 256 GB SSD)

[Daniel Browning]

True, but the cost of selling stuff 2nd hand and then buying again in a different mount is enough to put me off, pretty much forever.

Yeah, it's pretty painful. What makes it even worse is that a lot of Nikon's equivalent lenses are more expensive, although in the last year Canon has caught up in that regard. I haven't decided what to do about replacing my EF 135mm f/2 -- such a beauty. Nikon's equivalent is not nearly as sharp or fast-focusing. Plus I'm going to be up a creek when it comes to astrophotography -- the accessories are currently made for just Canon, for the most part. I'm begging Hutech to do a DC adapter, though.

[Raid]

Me too! I'm planning a computer upgrade soon too, so I don't expect any problems from the increased pixel count. (Going from i7 950 3.0ghz + 24 GB RAM to Xeon E5-1620 3.6ghz, 64 GB RAM, plus upgrading from 8-disk RAID-50 to 24-disk RAID-50 -- keeping the 256 GB SSD)

Is this a DIY array or off the shelf?

[Daniel Browning]

Is this a DIY array or off the shelf?

DIY. Planning a Norco 24-bay case, Supermicro board with five 8x PCIe 3.0 slots, and 3 8-port LSI 2008 controllers. Intel supposedly "launched" their $300 E5-1620 processors over two weeks ago, but for some mysterious reason (*cough* profit) the only processors that are actually available are the DP variety that cost three times as much.

For software, I'm planning VMWare vSphere 5 with PCIe passthrough, but I'm still waffling between ZFS on FreeBSD or mdadm+LVM on CentOS 6. Right now leaning toward the latter.

I'm glad the hard drive prices have finally come down to reasonably sane levels. Although I certainly wouldn't mind if they dropped back to pre-flood levels before I end up buying a huge stack of them.

[DavidEccleston]

Surprised you wouldn't wait for the final verdict on the 1DX and 5DmkIII. Hope you enjoy the other side, and looking forward to hearing what you love and what ends up driving you crazy over in Nikon land.

[Daniel Browning]

Surprised you wouldn't wait for the final verdict on the 1DX and 5DmkIII.

Yeah, it's a bit of a risky move for me. If it turns out that the 5D3 really did fix the temporal FPN then I'll be pretty upset with myself. But my expectations of Canon are so low that I don't really even think it's possible any more.

Hope you enjoy the other side, and looking forward to hearing what you love and what ends up driving you crazy over in Nikon land.

The worst part so far is that there is no site like the-digital-picture.com for Nikon. Ken R***well is at the top of every google search, which is really annoying.

[Jon Ruyle]

Surprised you wouldn't wait for the final verdict on the 1DX and 5DmkIII.

I read this post yesterday, and keep wondering the same thing. If you've been waiting for years for Canon to fix the low-ISO problem, why give up now, possibly within days of knowing if the next rev (5DIII and or 1DX) shows improvement?