{"id":2569,"date":"2012-04-19T08:10:24","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T12:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aboutrc.com\/?p=2569"},"modified":"2012-12-31T22:41:48","modified_gmt":"2013-01-01T03:41:48","slug":"working-with-the-nikon-d800","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/?p=2569","title":{"rendered":"Working with the Nikon D800"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Back when I was in Photoshop World DC, I got a chance to hang out with Richard Harrington of Rhed Pixel. \u00a0As we were getting ready to do some videos on the release of Photoshop CS6 Beta, a package showed up at the door. \u00a0Richard grabbed the box and brought it into the office beaming. \u00a0Inside it is the new Nikon D800. \u00a0I was really excited to finally be able to see it and put it through its paces.<\/p>\n

After spending some time shooting with the camer, both at Photoshop World and back here in Tampa, There were a couple of thoughts mulling about in the head that I wanted to get down on \u00a0paper.<\/p>\n

Oh, I’ll Just Get the D800.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right up until the run up to the D4 and D800, I had a flurry of D300\/D700 people excited about the step up to the full frame set of cameras. \u00a0Before the D800 \u00a0the conversation was easy – if you dont have the money to plunk down, get yourself a D700. \u00a0D3 sensor – not the D3 price. \u00a0This gave you great ISO, and a good all around started Full Frame sensor package (obviously a lot more coin than being on the DX side of things)<\/p>\n

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But then something funny started happening. \u00a0Right before the D800 comes out, many people would jump in and say “Well.. I was really gonna make that push to the D3S or the D4, but I think Im just going to settle with the D800. \u00a0Can’t really explain it – but it was like the general idea was that the D800 was just the next iteration of the D700.. so really you were just getting a cheaper D4 – with more megapixels. \u00a0Heck.. more megapixels cant be THAT bad right?<\/p>\n

More megapixels is great.. \u00a0but you best be aware that going the D800 route will\u00a0definitely\u00a0require some upgrades and changes on your part. \u00a0The D700 and D800 are not the same cameras. \u00a0At all.<\/p>\n

Getting Used To The Filesize <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

When you look at the D800, you are looking at a camera that is slightly bigger than a D700, but has a 36MP sensor inside of it. \u00a0In this, I usually tell people that the D800 is more of an\u00a0evolution\u00a0of Nikon’s D3X than it is the D700. \u00a0My D3S file sizes for a DNG file hovered at about 13-14MB in filesize. I thought those were big. \u00a0A RAW file coming out of the D800 is clocking just shy of 40MB. \u00a0That is a very significant jump. \u00a0Keeping the quality (which is awesome) aside, this is something that will take getting used to for some people.<\/p>\n

Whatever cards you use will more likely need to be upgraded for bigger ones. You definitely have that \u00a0“THATS all the shots I get on this card” when you put an 8GB card in it. You will also need to make sure you invest in high speed capacity cards because passing this amount of info from camera to card will need to happen a lot faster if you want to keep shooting out there (I use Lexar 600x cards for all of my stuff<\/a>, and go between 16GB and 1 32GB card that I have.)<\/em><\/p>\n

This will also mean that you will tend to shoot less. \u00a0I definitely am guilty of overshooting when I get to a shoot I need to do, and then I pay for it in having to whittle down those files. \u00a0If you shoot 1000 files.. you are going to see hard drive space just disappear!! \u00a0Time for external drives for you .<\/p>\n

Loading, Loading, Loading, <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The bigger the file, the longer something will take to render in some programs. \u00a0Lightroom 4’s definitely made some advances in working with files and the speed at which it can render (Photo Mechanic still being a speed demon in that space), but when trying to render a 1:1 to do some Develop work or to zoom in I definitely experienced a several second “Loading.. ” before i got the big file.<\/p>\n

Now.. most of this research is anecdotal, but I found myself waiting about 7-8 seconds going through some files of images. \u00a0This is a Corei7 mac with now 16GB of RAM. \u00a0If you are operating at less than that? You may have a trip to Crucial in your future to get a RAM bump. Or get a new computer with a faster processor. \u00a0Waiting excessively just to cull the files will take an adjustment. If you take the 1000 image shoot scenario and calculate the size and the time on these, you’ll see that your workflow will totally need some adjustments. \u00a0Is the D800 worth it? I totally believe so – but I think that being informed of these changes will help you decide if what you get from a quality standpoint is worth that.<\/p>\n

Details, Details, Details<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Image on left? A 100% zoom of the image on the right. \u00a0I shot this picture of my friend as she was standing right in front of a window with the blinds turned open. \u00a0You know that because you can see the blinds in the irises!! \u00a0When I saw that, I was like whoaaaa baby.. this is a good amount of detail right here.<\/p>\n

Then, I thought to myself… this amount of detail in an image is going to totally affect How you retouch an image, what you look for, and how you work on it! \u00a0I mean, you can totally see a lot of skin information in the picture of my friend to the right… enough to make me consider working the shot. However, you pull back and she looks beautiful! \u00a0I think of this as taking a really pretty girl and putting one of those super magnified beauty mirror up to them. \u00a0It looks completely different.. \u00a0 How much of what you see in THAT amount of detail are you going to want to deal with?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My buddy Rob was totally cool with me posting a 100 percent view of the shot in the interests of talking about the detail. \u00a0Rob is a handsome looking guy, and I can pretty much bet you that you would never notice this much in a shot, or consider working it. \u00a0However.. now that there is so much detail.. will some of these areas now set of alarms to you to retouch?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is not Rob – and this is totally a PG related bodypart. \u00a0I had to zoom in and do a triple take when I saw this. \u00a0I was like “What the heck? This isnt even in the shot I made, how am I going to work with this? DO I even work with this?”<\/p>\n

Retouching these kinds of details will also take a different approach. \u00a0You’ll find that running things like a healing brush or a Patch will definitely give you a more noticeable difference in the retouched area. You’ll have to be a little more thorough if you want to make it look really good. \u00a0Is that bad? \u00a0Not at all. \u00a0But its something you’d want to know going into it. \u00a0Your retouching may take longer. \u00a0Your settings and actions may need to change.<\/p>\n

My Take: I’m Loving \u00a0The Quality<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Overall I am very excited about the tonal range of the camera and the overall quality of the shots that come out of it. \u00a0I think that for those who go into the camera with these considerations in mind, you will have a much clearer expectation and appreciation for what the D800 can do, and what it brings to the table. \u00a0We havent even scratched the surface of what these cameras can do on the video side of things and Rob here is determined to go on that journey with me to figure that out. \u00a0As soon as we have some more on the field stuff, I will totally share it on!<\/p>\n

If you want to comment on this and get in on the conversation make sure you leave it at my Google+ page: http:\/\/www.gplusrc.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back when I was in Photoshop World DC, I got a chance to hang out with Richard Harrington…","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blog","7":"category-shoots","8":"category-photography","9":"category-reviews","10":"cs-entry"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2569"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2584,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569\/revisions\/2584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aboutrc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}