D800, done it, anybody else??

[Steve U]

Good on you Daniel, can't wait to hear your first impressions.

[Daniel Browning]

Are you going to leave us know and start a Nikon site like Bryan's site? LOL

If I could do even one tenth as good as Bryan, I would have started another site already. This site is fantastic.

Congrats on the new camera.

Thanks! So far my first picture is.... a shot of my old 5D2 so I can put it on craigslist.

[Daniel Browning]

Good on you Daniel, can't wait to hear your first impressions.

My first impression is that there are lots and lots of buttons and doo-hickeys. What do they all do!? This is going to take me a while.

[HDNitehawk]

My first impression is that there are lots and lots of buttons and doo-hickeys. What do they all do!? This is going to take me a while.

Just put it on "P" professional mode and shoot us some samples to look at. It does have "P" professional mode doesn't it?

[Daniel Browning]

Just put it on "P" professional mode and shoot us some samples to look at. It does have "P" professional mode doesn't it?

Hm, it does have "A" Awesome mode. I'll try that.

[Andy Stringer]

Hm, it does have "A" Awesome mode. I'll try that.

I think you misunderstood the modes, Daniel. "A" is for "Amateur". Only Canon has settings for professionals.

[Jon Ruyle]

Just in case anyone is interested, the D800 has been reviewed on DXO Mark and scored very impressively. It is in fact now the #1 rated sensor on their site. (Keep in mind that the 36mp is just gravy on top of this... DXO Mark does not take resolution into account when rating sensors, just low light performance, dynamic range, and color depth).

[Mark Elberson]

Just in case anyone is interested, the D800 has been reviewed on DXO Mark and scored very impressively. It is in fact now the #1 rated sensor on their site. (Keep in mind that the 36mp is just gravy on top of this... DXO Mark does not take resolution into account when rating sensors, just low light performance, dynamic range, and color depth).

I read a lot of their review. In the comments there were a handful of people accusing them of fan-boy-ism. Either that's true or Nikon is just plain awesome because outside of Phase One, Nikon does get rather lonely at the top of their lists.

By the way, you could probably easily convince me either way :-)

[Jon Ruyle]

Well, unlike dpreview, the DXO guys actually do competent quantitative measurements of sensors. I don't think it is fan-boy-ism. Nikon cameras simply have superior sensors according to pretty much any criterion you wish to choose.

(This on the day I am hoping to receive my $3500 Canon body...)

[Daniel Browning]

In the comments there were a handful of people accusing them of fan-boy-ism. Either that's true or Nikon is just plain awesome because outside of Phase One, Nikon does get rather lonely at the top of their lists.

They can accuse them of a few things, but fan-boy-ism certainly isn't one of them. The biggest problem is that so many people can't understand what DxOMark is really measuring, and how that relates to their own photography. For example, DxO's "sports" ISO is based on requiring a certain level of quality that is a much higher standard than my own (personally). According to my own standard, sports ratings would be much higher, and different between cameras (due to different read noise). If someone's personal experience doesn't match DxO's ratings, it might be because they have a different standard of quality.

The second biggest problem is they don't measure a lot of things that do matter (such as pattern noise). Canon fanboys think it's bad *now*, but if DxOMark also measured pattern noise (which is the *real* limiter of dynamic range), Canon's dynamic range numbers would plummet even lower. And they're already pretty laughable compared to Nikon and Sony.