The Online Photographer

*Or, How I Spent My Weekend Vacation

Testing Raw converters: this is ACR 7 with Process Version 2012

So I didn't actually get a lot of work done on the weekend. I spent my extra time happily playing with Raw converters and B&W conversions. (My current take on D800 black-and-white in a nutshell, for you current or former Dektol-breathers: the D800 is a 4x5 in an F100 body. I might be honeymooning a little.)

I've both been doing more experimenting with (and a bit more purchasing for—gak!—) the D800. Following the advice of several commenters, I bought both ACR 7, with the all-important Process Version 2012 RAW converter, as well as PictureCode's Photo Ninja. (Note: Process Version 2012 is included in Photoshop Elements 11, but the version of ACR in Elements is severely crippled. That sentence cost me $89 to write, so I hope you appreciate it.) And I've also been reading Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D800 and D800E, and, following his advice to buy fast UDMA cards, I also bought two SanDisk UDMA-6 cards.

As for a thumbnail review of the Guide itself...well, Thom Hogan is the best independent brand-specific technical analyst in the photographic cyberuniverse. Not only is Nikon lucky he exists, but his existence is among the good reasons to shoot Nikon. However, if this weekend is any indication, this particular 851(!)-page tome might be defeating me. It's superb, but suffers a bit from Tolstoy syndrome. I'm fascinated by insights into why Nikon sources its sensors from different fabricators and which subcategory of noise it is up with which astrophotographers must put, but I'm a slow reader and I just want to know how to get the bad boy off AF-C, which is how it came out of the box, and into AF-S....
(Answer: there's a command button hiding in plain sight. D'oh!) So I switched to Ben Long's "Shooting With the Nikon D800" video tutorial set on Lynda.com. More my speed; no offense to Thom. I'll study his [extremely] Complete Guide with pleasure, but at greater leisure.

Editation
Photo Ninja (hereafter, PN—a Raw converter and photo editor) is awesome. I like the way you toggle back and forth from the Browser to the Editor, and, in the Editor, from whole image view to 100%. And the quality of the conversions is fantastic. Especially in color.

The Illumination and Detail sliders in PictureCode's Photo Ninja make it particularly easy to get tasty detail in deep shadow areas

Supposedly PN is somewhat Nikon-centric, in that it reputedly does a particularly good job with Nikon cameras (although I don't know that it does any worse with any other brand). It's becoming known as something of a standard for the D800, anyway. I can see why.

But I'm pretty sure I'll end up using good old ACR. Confession: I love ACR. I consider "ACR for global, Photoshop for local" my home of homes in editing software. (Anyone remember who originated that mantra? 'Twasn't me.) All the controls make so much sense to me, and I like everything it does and the relatively simple way it does it, too. It doesn't hurt that two of the lead Adobe engineers for ACR are at least occasional readers of TOP, too.

Everyone who urged me to get the latest version with the Process Version 2012 converter was right, though: it's distinctly superior, more natural-looking and more capable. Worth seeking out. It's available in both Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6.

I identified the answers to a few more mysteries over the weekend, too: the origin of the idea that you have to use a tripod and good lenses with the D800/E, for one. It comes from Nikon itself, in its "D800 Technical Guide" PDF. And, reading Thom's Guide, I think I've identified an important conceptual split:

Some people feel that the better their equipment, the more obligated they are to optimize their result. My approach tends to be the opposite: I feel it's more necessary to optimize my results when I'm using inferior equipment...to overcome its deficiencies. (For instance, I know how to get the best out of bad lenses. With great lenses I'm much more casual—why? Because they free me of the responsibility and the restrictions of being so careful.) The D800 is such overkill to begin with that there's no need to be terribly careful, in my view. It's going to bring home the bacon if you simply use it halfway conscientiously. I'd rather have the freedom that affords, than further burden myself with restrictions in the service of perfection.

In other words: just because that mountain is there doesn't mean I have to climb it.

Thom's approach is the opposite: as he says in his Guide, "I'm pretty anal about getting 'optimal results' from my equipment." Not me—which is why, c. 1980–2000, I shot 35mm instead of medium or large format, and Tri-X instead of Pan-X (or Tech Pan). I like getting good, consistent, repeatable, controllable results robustly, and good craftsmanship is very satisfying, but I've never been terribly interested in optimizing everything out to the nth degree. The test shot at the top of this post is a good example. (Keep in mind you're looking at a tiny, barely representational JPEG of a much larger file.) It's shot without a tripod and with Nikon's "prosumer" 28mm ƒ/1.8G—explicitly not on Nikon's list of D800-safe lenses**. Is it "optimized"? No. It doesn't show the quality of which the D800 is capable...

~100% (after you click on it), unsharpened.

...But I'm not worried. It's going to look more than fine in the prints on 13x19" paper that I'm going to use the D800 for.

Same deal with the notion that you "can't" use the D800 with your lens stopped down past ƒ/8, a bromide whose arteries are hardening already on the 'Net. It is not optimal, doncha know. Dare to delve past ƒ/8 and all definition will be dashed to death on the rocks of diffraction. But have you seen the difference between ƒ/8 and ƒ/11?

ƒ/8

ƒ/11

(To eliminate variables, I shot these much more carefully for you. Here, I did use a sturdy tripod, all locked down, with the camera on manual focus, mirror locked up, and with the lights exactly in the center of the frame. These are screen shots of the Raw files as they opened in ACR, converted to sRGB because that's all I can publish. They should be 100% after you click on them, or in your feed reader. ISO 100. I set the aperture, with the camera in aperture-priority [A mode], and let the camera set the exposure. I adjust the exposure of one slightly to get them to match.)

If you look carefully, you'll see that there is a difference. The people who claim there is aren't making it up.

But then consider that you're looking at this detail unsharpened and unprepared for printing, and about eight times larger than the maximum size I'd print it.

So is it really true that you can't use ƒ/11? I think I'd chance it. Suboptimal though it may be. Bring that bacon home to Papa, Dragoon.

An actual Colt Dragoon, c. 1860. Photo courtesy J. Christopher Mitchell.

And that's also why I've generally been happy to use ACR and not go questing after the absolute ideal Raw converter for every single camera I use. (Although as usual I have no objection at all to anyone who enjoys that or sees an advantage in it.) Even if something else out there is a tad better for a particular camera, ACR is very, very good, and—well, as I said, I love it.

But although I'm staying loyal to ACR, I was delighted by Photo Ninja. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Ctein will try it out and write about it for you. I kept gravitating to it; can't keep my hands off it. It was like I was having a Photo Ninja attack. (Heh.) It's just too cool. To anyone with a technical or scientific cast of mind who has a sufficiently turbocharged computer, I heartily recommend giving it a careful tryout.

Especially if you own a D800 or D600.

Mike

Our other posts on the D800/E can be found here.

**Nikon's own list of D800/E-approved lenses:

AF-S Nikkor 14–24mm ƒ/2.8G ED
AF-S Nikkor 24–70mm ƒ/2.8G ED
AF-S Nikkor 70–200mm ƒ/2.8G ED VR II
AF-S Nikkor 16–35mm ƒ/4G ED VR
AF-S Nikkor 24–120mm ƒ/4G ED VR
AF-S Nikkor 200–400mm ƒ/4G ED VR II
AF-S Nikkor 24mm ƒ/1.4G ED
AF-S Nikkor 35mm ƒ/1.4G
AF-S Nikkor 85mm ƒ/1.4G
AF-S Nikkor 200mm ƒ/2G ED VR II
AF-S Nikkor 300mm ƒ/2.8G ED VR II
AF-S Nikkor 400mm ƒ/2.8G ED VR
AF-S Nikkor 500mm ƒ/4G ED VR
AF-S Nikkor 600mm ƒ/4G ED VR
AF-S Micro Nikkor 60mm ƒ/2.8G ED
AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.8G IF-ED

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

David Dyer-Bennet (partial comment): "I handled a D800 for the first time Saturday (a local friend has one now), and went through exactly the same thing you did with the AF controls. My D700 has a three-position AF control on the front plus another three-position AF control on the back, plus several menu entries; the D800 does this IMHO better, by having a control only for AF vs. MF, plus a button that enable the wheels to quickly cycle through the AF choices. Not what I'm used to, but better. But my friend had to point out the center button in the AF control to me."

Mike Anderson: "Nikon recommends no lens for the D800 for less than $1000? Hmm."

A. Dias: "Photo Ninja (PN) is a breakthrough in many areas. Well worth the small effort to learn its GUI and editing controls. I use it with Canon DSLRs and the images look real. B&W is easy to use with its simple-to-control color filters."

Ctein (partial comment): I see exactly where Nikon's recommendations for equipment and practices come from. There's no doubt in my mind that they got many critical comments from photographers who bought these new cameras and then complained that their photographs weren't pixel-sharp. They weren't sharp for all the known usual reasons: they didn't know how to pick a decent lens, they didn't know how to hold the camera steady, they didn't know how to use a short enough shutter speed, it never occurred to them to use a tripod…the usual stuff.  None of which is the camera's fault, it's the photographer's  fault.

"So, Nikon did exactly what I would've done: wrote up some webpages describing best practices and suitable hardware. It's good to educate photographers, and it preempts a zillion more damning e-mails.

"But no good deed goes unpunished, so a bunch of binary thinkers decided that if this is what Nikon considered recommended practices and gear, it was the only way. Which, of course, it ain't. And Nikon never suggested it was."

robert harshman: "I think the reason Mike keeps coming back to Photo Ninja is that it just gets it right with one click most of the time. It is the best Raw converter today, bar none. I've recently tested its smart lighting vs. DXO vs. ACR, all current versions as of November 12, 2012, and neither product comes close with one click.

"I tend to buy a lot of software and believe in supporting what I think are good developers. Hence I buy products I might only review and not even use much. It's an old habit, I've alpha/beta tested and purchased thousands of imaging products over the years and now have a iCloud license with Adobe—one of the best deals around. And yet today for standard commercial work I still use ACR, as PN does not yet have a batch mode, and I sometimes need to convert thousands of images for a single project.

"ACR is a great converter, but one of the biggest issues with it today for computational photographers like me is the per image adjustment. All of the adjustments that you make in ACR are relative to each image. So if you are stitching or focus stacking or bracketing, or doing lenticular work, making any adjustment in ACR is perhaps an issue. When I discussed this issue with the developer of PN, he had a solution within a week: Absolute mode. (For those of you using PN for this type of work, yeah, you can thank me for the benefit of Absolute mode. :-) And batch mode is coming at some point for PN. Once it's here, goodbye ACR, for the most part. DXO may stay around for its wonderful FilmPack."

Every time I write about cameras I persistently get asked why I haven't written more about the Pentax K-5, despite having bought one some while ago. I thought I should 'splain, once and for all*.

The reason I haven't written about it is that I seldom use it.

It ain't the camera. The reason I seldom use it is that Pentax doesn't happen to make the lens I would most like to have for it, a 35mm- or 40mm-equivalent. Which is, yes, quite ironic given that one of the main reasons to use Pentax is its selection of beautiful lenses nobody else makes.

Yeah, there's an older option, the full-frame 1991–2004 FA 24mm ƒ/2; yeah, Pentax brackets the focal length with current products, the 21mm ƒ/3.2 Limited pancake (31.5mm-e) crop-sensor lens and the 31mm ƒ/1.8 Limited (46.5mm-e) for FF; yeah, you can use older manual-focus lenses. And yeah, I'm too damn finicky about lenses and too settled in my preferences and I'm being all Goldilocks-y. What can I say? It's my hobby and I reserve the right. I like 35s and 40s** and Pentax doesn't have one. That's all.

I thought I could learn to love the K-5 with the magnificent DA 35mm Macro—a combo made in Elysium—but it proved just too long for me to get along with as a regular thing. More's the pity. I love that lens.

View of heaven taken with a camera/lens combination made there.

As far as the ergonomics and the look'n'feel of the basic design are concerned, the K-5 is in the same Zip Code as perfect. Just the right size, just the right weight, a good, solid, blocky, muscular yet conservative no-nonsense style, a great hand grip, excellent control placements, a good enough viewfinder considering it's an APS-C camera, and a great-sounding, quiet shutter. For a small and handy but full-featured DSLR it's a particularly successful design. I think Pentax made a smart move in keeping the basic design intact for the new K-5 II. 

K-5 II: muscular yet conservative style

And keep in mind that the K-5 II and the Nikon D7000 have maybe 90% of the sensor-y goodness of the D600 and D800, in a more sensible package. There are advantages to full frame, sure, but they don't hold the upper hand in all ways: there are advantages to "crop sensors," too.

Anyway, I'm sorry K-5 fans aren't going to get more of a review of the camera from me. But th-th-th-th-th-that's all***, folks.

Mike

P.S. Note that Pentax is an advertiser on TOP. Also note that I was a Pentax fan long before that.

*I have hopes.

**Yeah, I know I just bought a 28mm for the D800, but please don't throw that back at me. It's most likely temporary, until one of two things happens: either Nikon fills out its new FX prime line with a 35mm ƒ/1.8G for FX, or I suck it up and get over the deep-seated psychological barrier I have against spending $1,619 for a lens.

***Meanwhile, if anyone wants a very pretty, near-new, little-used K-5 in the box for $695, let me know. [UPDATE: Sold]

-

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JVA: "Lucky for me that Pentax does cover my favorite focal lengths with the FA 43mm and FA 31mm! I agree that it would be good for Pentax to add a 35mm equivalent."

Steve Biro: "Mike speaks the truth. Pentax still needs more lenses. I'm on my fourth Pentax digital body. I have most of the DA Limiteds (just not the 40mm) plus the DA 50mm ƒ/1.8. I wouldn't rule out an FA 43mm Limited.

"But the lack of a 24 to 28mm fast prime (that I can afford) forced me to buy my first Sigma lens a few months ago: a 28mm ƒ/1.8 that was on sale new with warranty for $329. It's not a bad lens at all but it's big and heavy, and I would have bought a Pentax if they made one in that focal range.

"The FA 31 Limited? I missed my chance with that one when it cost hundreds of dollars less. It's out of my league now and, besides, it's not what one would call 'diminutive,' either.

"I'm not a professional photographer, only a long-time enthusiast. So any desire I might have for a more complete system isn't as urgent as it might be for many. But Mike speaks the truth. We can only hope we'll see changes in the next year or two."

Mike replies: Given how long we had to wait for a FF AF 35mm prime for the last film cameras—almost until it didn't matter any more—I wouldn't count on it. For whatever reason, Pentax historically does not support the 35mm (and equivalent) angle of view well at all.

Mike's-eye view

I thought it would be a good idea to collate our various articles about the Nikon D800 and D800E in one place, to make things easier to find and so I don't have to get a headache whenever anyone asks where something is. (I'd ask my assistant, but my assistant is me and he's notoriously absentminded.)

If anyone is arriving at this page from the wilds of the Internets and just wants to know what I think, jump to Part 7. You can probably perceive from the titles that these were ongoing blog posts and not (ahem!) a formal review.

Here are my peregrinations on the subject so far:

Part 1: The Big Dragoon Arriveth; I Take to the Night
Part 2: More Experiments on the Virgin Mary
Part 3: D800E Haptics
Part 4: Day Three: A Bust
Part 5: D800E Day 4: ER a.k.a. DR
Part 6: D800E Day 6: Moiré
Part 7: Final Verdict: the Nikon D800E and AF-S 35mm ƒ/1.4G
Part 8: Attack of the Photo Ninja!

I know I said the "Final Verdict" post was the last post on the subject, but hey, I bought the thing—no doubt I'll have more to say about it as my life with it progresses. I'll add to this list if/when I post anything new that's directly on topic.

And by the way, my advice to anyone with the misfortune to be sane is to buy the D600. Or keep your D700.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A book of interest today:

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kent: "As a D700 user since the thing came out (two of 'em, actually), I'd be interested in more of your thoughts on 'or keep your D700.' The whole 'the D800/E is amazing!' thing is causing me to treat my D700's with less love than they probably deserve."

Mike replies: I have a lot of respect for the D700, which I also tried out when it was new. It was the camera that I got the best digital B&W out of prior to the D800. It also marks the only time in history that the thing I wanted a camera company to do, before it did it, was exactly what it eventually did. (A prosumer variant of the D3 in a smaller body—the D700.) I'm grateful that it happened that one time. Finally, in my judgement it's one of those cameras that Nikon makes from time to time that stands head and shoulders above its normal procession of models. When everything comes together. Like the N8008, which was also a landmark in its day. Or the F3. Or....

As for what you should do, may I recommend Lensrentals? I had a great first experience with them, and got everything I wanted out of my 5-day rental period, despite persistent bad weather. It was enough for a fair trial. Some things you just have to see for yourself. And as a Nikon shooter already, you wouldn't have to rent a lens.

Last post in this saga.

I ain't the biggest gearhead in the sandbox, but I do know the territory pretty well. For 25 years I've deliberately made it a point to experience a wide variety of cameras of most types: I've tested dozens of cameras, owned dozens of cameras, and seen and handled literally hundreds more. I wrote the first of my many published camera reviews in 1989, in Darkroom Photography magazine. I was East Coast Editor of Camera & Darkroom magazine and Editor-in-Chief of Photo Techniques. Among the 150 or so published articles I have to my credit are more than 80 columns for the British Black & White Photography magazine and a number of the annual "World's 25 Best Cameras" features written for Photo Techniques.

My concerns and concentrations have sort of shimmied and segued back and forth between professional reviewing and my needs and enthusiasms in my own work. My weaknesses: I have relatively limited experience with toy cameras, underwater cameras, specialty aerial cameras, subminiature cameras, medium-format digital backs and pinhole cameras, infrared shooting, Foveon sensors, and extreme telephoto lenses.

Most other things I have at least a passing familiarity with. I've used many cameras on loan for periods ranging from a number of days to more than a year, and at least snapped a few frames with a wide variety of cameras ranging from a plastic Diana to a Deardorff 8x10*. I've tried literally hundreds of lenses. The first digital camera I used was the .7-MP Agfa ePhoto 1280 in 1997, and currently I own five of them, including an Olympus OM-D and a Sony A900. I also own eight film cameras including a whole plate Chamonix and two Rolleiflex 6008AFs.

There are of course a whole lot of cameras I haven't used, or tried, or seen.

Cutting to the chase: all things considered, the Nikon D800E and Nikkor AF-S 35mm ƒ/1.4G lens is the best overall photographic device of any description I have used thus far in my life.

•     •     •

That said, I'm not entirely certain that it's the best camera out there now, or even that it's actually appreciably better than the Olympus OM-D E-M5 for image quality in the small to medium-sized prints I make. My intuition—and that's all it is—is that digital technology has recently rounded another curve in its ongoing technological development, in that the engineers at the camera manufacturers are actively responding to the photographic community's concerns about dynamic range. This is leading to a new class of sensor and new emphases of implementation—and a new, higher level of image quality that is exciting and gratifying. These new FF Nikons; the D7000 and the Pentax K-5II; the newest rangefinder-style Fujis, starting with the X100 and definitely including the great X-Pro1; the current best Micro 4/3 camera, the OM-D; the NEX-7 and even the supersweet little Sony RX100 all seem to belong to this movement. There may be more. The Canon 5D Mark III, for one, might also belong in this group, though I don't know a lot about that one.

Although evolutionary in nature, this trend feels like a breakthrough to me. (The next breakthrough—currently still hull down on the horizon—will be when we're able to comfortably keep our digital cameras for seven to ten years instead of two to five. But that's a post for another day.)

•     •     •

Now then...people ask. But I don't usually see why it should be interesting to others what I actually do. As a photographer, I'm just another photography-phile, just like almost all of you. I don't see why my decisions amount to a bigger hill of beans than anyone else's.

But here's what I did. I dropped the rental camera off at UPS, and turned right around and drove to Mike Crivello's Cameras, my local camera store, and bought a D800.

I opted for the plain-jane version as opposed to the hot-rodded "E." For one thing, they had it in stock. The one I bought happens to be the very same one I handled the other day.

This is my first snap with the new camera, taken this morning. My dear doggie, a quarter-pit named Lulu. Ain't she handsome? Best-natured animal of any species I ever met. (At least towards me. She gets after some other critters pretty good, including my son's friend A.J. whom she doesn't cotton to for some reason. His friend Caleb is wary of her too. And she routinely scares the crap out of delivery people....)

The process I've been going through recently grew out of one central insight. I realized I was wasting a whole lot of emotional energy on the idea that I'm still going to be a B&W film photographer. Realistically, I have to give that idea up. That's a big step; black and white film photography and its entire culture was a huge part of my life for better than twenty years. And I loved it dearly. Still do.

But for me it's like resolving to walk everywhere when you have a car in the garage: you'll do it for a while, but the car is just too damn much easier. I wish I wasn't so lazy, but I am. I have to learn how to do exactly what I want to do with modern tools.

I really will have to sell most of my other cameras—along with the lens I bought, this is a very expensive camera. I've decided to keep just two digital cameras (one DSLR and one mirrorless) and one film camera**. For the DSLR, the D600 would have been a more sensible choice. Twenty-four megapixels is enough, and the D600's lighter build quality suits my usage level: I'm not hard on my cameras these days. But for some reason I just wanted the higher level model this time.

As for the D800, Nikon just seems to do this every once in a while: they hit a balance that seems clearly to exceed the sum of the specs. The image quality of this camera is truly exciting even for a jaded old photo-dawg like me. It sees in the dark, it's got oceans of pixels, and the highlight rendering seems to me like a long-simmering problem solved. And I find the camera itself marvelously comfortable and transparent to use, a highly refined design that falls to hand just right.

Lest you think that my purchase constitutes some sort of ringing, clarion endorsement of Nikon, though, let me bring you back to earth by pointing out that my last two major camera purchases were singularly, even rather inspiredly, unwise. I bought an A900 at the very end of its product run, for instance, paying full price for a camera that was just about to go past its sell-by date, that had been augmented by a significantly less expensive but nearly-as-good little brother (the A850), and that hadn't been terribly popular to begin with—certainly less popular overall than it deserved to be. It was a poor move on my part from a practical standpoint, and I will lose a significant amount of money on that one, as well as on the Don Quixote view camera. So, another facet of my ambition for the D800 is the hope that it will turn out to be a sensible, practical, and wise move. But, really, what I do is not necessarily any less dumb than the happy dumbass things most cameraholics do from time to time.

And I'm happy.

So that's it.

Mike

*For a while it was my ambition to collect a set of good or decent pictures taken with as broad a range as possible of different cameras and techniques. I gave this up as being sort of senseless, as well as too dorky by about a factor of two.

**Or possibly two, should the whole plate view camera prove unsalable. As one reader suggested, though, if I can't sell that on, I can always set it up in the corner of the living room as a superlative piece of decor and a conversation starter. That'll work. It's a true beauty.

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Omer: "Nice image of Lulu, who definitely appears to have some opinions."

Dave: "As a very satisfied D800 user, I'm curious how much difference (if any) you see between the 'E' and standard model in real-world shooting. Maybe a quick follow-up post after you've used the new body for a few weeks?"

Mike replies: Okay.

Robert Harshman: "Congrats Mike, it's a great system, I ordered a D800 today as a backup to a D800E and primary if shooting products/people. Like you say, I think it's the best SLR I've ever held in my hands/used and I do have access to a Canon 5D3, a great camera too, but not quite a D800/E.

"A couple of notes on the D800/E use. Keep the ISO as low as possible cause you lose DR with every push up and it's not small. By the time you get to ISO 1600 or 3200 you have lost 4 stops of DR. And based on my own test and others reviews, don't push the ISO beyond 1600. You are better off beyond that under exposing and pushing the shadows up in PS.

"And lastly, but perhaps most useful is try Photo Ninja RAW converter, it's automatic smart lighting adjustment should blow your mind vs. ACR and you actually get a few more pixels as if that matters here. Seems most DSLR's actually capture more pixels than the stated dimension and what all other RAW converters produce.

"Enjoy the current top of the hill :-) "

Riley: "It's good to be happy."

Jeff Smith: "Enjoyed the posts on the 800E and hope you thoroughly enjoy the camera too. I sometimes think that coveting new gear is a sickness, but you like what you like and new gear is nifty. I bought two new cameras this year—well, three if you count the used Nikon 35Ti film camera, which is a jewel of an old semi-compact film camera, but by golly is it slow in operation to today's gear.... And as I tell my wife I sold two cameras this year too, so all-in-all not too bad. Heck I even sold the old Yashica T4 for more than I paid for ages ago. And now I can't stop thinking of the Fuji X-E1 and that wonderful little Sony RX1. I guess it never ends, does it. But really do we want it to?"

Mike replies: Not me. It's fun!

I really did luck out on Saturday afternoon. Sunday was a total bust for shooting: dark and rainy. (If you watched Sunday Night Football last night, that was the weather we were getting here, too—I'm a hundred miles from Chicago.)

I did something marginally useful with the camera yesterday, at least.

I futzed with it.

On the old CompuServe Photo Forum back at the dawn of Time, it was called camera-fondling. I just fiddled with the thing in my armchair (yes, I have an armchair) while suffering from Packer withdrawal (bye week this week). Worked out all the buttons, explored the menus, practiced various ways of holding it, "tested" a few things." Heh.

There's very little remarkable about the D800/E in this respect except how utterly comfortable it is. It's not even all that complicated unless you want it to be. The full-sized, 100% viewfinder is great, even with my glasses on; I can make it do pretty much everything I want it to do without much problem; and it fits my hands just fine. As I said before, various individuals might have one or two niggles based on the way they personally like things to be laid out, but longtime Nikon shooters are likely to have zero problems adapting to this one.

What's more, The weight and bulk of the camera with the 35mm ƒ/1.4G makes it easier for me to hold the camera steady. I compared shots taken of the bookshelf at various shutter speeds with the same shots by flash, and I can handhold this pretty low for me. I do better with it than I do with, say, the K-5 or the G3.

I use a wrist strap with it. When I transport an SLR, it hangs from my right shoulder via a small-pad UpStrap, by far my favorite camera strap because it doesn't slip off my shoulder. (I can't hang a camera from my neck for more than a few minutes). When I shoot I carry the camera in my right hand and let the strap dangle. The wrist strap is for insurance. The one I use is the OpTech Cam Strap QD, an $8.95 special for small digicams that comes in a wide variety of colors (mine's black; I linked to the blue one because the picture's better). I wouldn't want to let a heavy DSLR like the D800 ever dangle from such a lightweight wrist strap, but it's enough to catch it if I ever lose my grip. (I tested it, ten inches above the cushions of the dog's bed just in case of failure.) The Nikon is comfortable to grip and hold, and I find it comfortable to carry.

-

[Ed. Note: I removed the original section about moiré from this post, because I think I messed up.

I can say for sure that I looked closely at a large number of the photographs I took with the D800E over the fivc-day rental period, and I could find no evidence of anything that looked like moiré or false color or interference patterns. That's not definitive evidence of anything except that I didn't happen to observe any problems during this trial.

My apologies to a number of commenters, whose comments are now "orphaned"—that is, they respond to something that's not there any more. Apologies as well for any additional discomfort, inconvenience, disappointment, etc. this late change might cause anyone.]

-

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
A product of interest today:

Stupid picture of garage. Upshot for today: the D800E has sufficient
dynamic range for really good B&W. Finally. And Woo-hoo.

Where to start.

To begin with, I got lucky today. It dawned as gray and drab as it's been since the camera arrived, but then after noon it cleared up and I got a solid two plus hours of cloudless skies and full sun.

Then it clouded up again. But the clouds were pretty this time:

And then I went around taking "stupid shots." You know, where you just wander around and point the camera at $#!T and take meaningless pictures of nothing because that's what's there. You find yourself taking pictures of parked cars and pigeons and random manmade objects in public spaces.

Seriously? (At least I shot at ISO 100 all day today.)

I hate that. But I seem to do it a fair amount.

So you know this is about an imaging system, right? (If you're just joining us, I've rented a Nikon D800E and an AF-S Nikkor 35mm ƒ/1.4G from Lensrentals.com for five days. Sunday is my last full day.) We can't look at the sensor/camera and we can't look at the lens. If you want to know about a lens you have to use it on many cameras and if you want to know about a sensor/camera you have to use it with many lenses. With only one camera and only one lens, I can only look at the two together.

So let's look at a couple of files. Not pictures, just files. Because that's what I do when I get to know a camera: I just go around throwing torture tests at it, trying to get it to fail. It's only when you know where it fails that you can dial back and get a handle on where its limits are.

So I do a shot like this, just to see how much detail the camera/lens will see in the tree-trunk. I was surprised:

(Detail from photo above)

That's pretty impressive. The camera and lens is not only getting texture, but the color of the lichen on the shadowed side of the silhouetted tree.

Then take this shot:

Standard torture test. Right into the sun, which was centered directly above the frame, about as far above the top edge of the frame as the roof of the building is below it. There were some scrummy clouds coming up from below, but the sun was shining brightly directly into the lens. Flare test. I've done this a hundred times if I've done it once. I was thinking, wonder if it'll show ghosts; wonder how well it will do with that word "ANTIQUES." I was convinced that telephone wire would be "broken" by an area of flare.

Well, it showed every brick in that wall and every brushstroke in the sign. So it did pretty well. Then I started thinking, hmm, wonder if there's any detail in that little bush? Most lenses don't do that well with shadow detail with full sun just out of the frame and dead ahead. (I wasn't using the hood.)

(Detail from photo above)

This is manipulated, but still. There's even detail in the more shadowed lower part of the bush.

Then I thought, hmm, there was a band of clouds just above that building, wonder if I can recover any of that? So I cranked the sliders again and the clouds showed up.

This is with exposure set at –2 and "Highlight Protection" cranked all the way over in NX2. And there's some blowout, of course. But this was really bright—there's way more here than I could see with my eyes. The amount of information this file maintained is extremely impressive in my experience.

Okay. Then, repeat about six more times, with various other stupid picture tests.

 •     •     •

As usually happens when I'm "supposed" to be out trying out a camera, sooner or later I just get into it and start shooting for myself as usual. I don't seem to be able to help this. I just get into "picture seeing mode." You know how it is.

Today I could kick myself for missing two great opportunities—I could have gotten the owner of a local Greek restaurant out in front of his establishment, and then there were three oversize Wisconsin Energies trucks working all bunched together that I could have done some cool things with.

But here are a couple for you.

First, a few of my fellow Waukeshavians exercising their right to express themselves. And then this neo-Romanesque lannon-stone church, the First Baptist, which you might recognize from a past TOP appearance...that one in a Canon camera trial. I know a lot of you would probably like this better in color, but I ain't showin' it to you that way. Hehe.

I like the shadow of the tree.

So you know, throughout much of this evening I was rehearsing in my head some of the many superlatives I might use to praise the D800E's dynamic range (or exposure range, as Ctein still prefers). Incredible; gobsmacking; deeply wonderful; gratifying. Etc. But you know, when you get right down to it, this is really just the first digital camera I've used that has DR that's adequate*. Without going to extreme measures. For black and white, at least. The kind of black and white I like. Adequate. That's the exact term, and it alone is reason for excitement and celebration.

Mike

*UPDATE Sunday evening: Whoops. As Ben Ng pointed out, I used the wrong word. (Writers hate when that happens.) The word I wanted was "sufficient."

Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Larry Gebhardt: "Your shadow torture tests show the same thing I have found. Not only is there detail in the shadows, but there isn't pattern noise. Other cameras come close when you look at just the numbers, but fail to give a clean and useable image."

Alex (partial comment): "Tell us, how did you process these for black and white? Nik Silver Effects?"

Mike replies: I should have mentioned that. The conversions above should be considered highly provisional—I've just played with a few files in Photoshop CS5 (I don't have CS6) and ACR 6.7.0.339 so far. (Of the two, I prefer ACR, but then, I love ACR—it's really my home editing program these days.) I have no current special conversion programs and I did the ones you see here hurriedly and rather crudely. (I was busy yesterday.) For one thing, these were done with an eye on producing these little 800-pixel-wide simulacra for the site. If and when I print any of these, I'd work much more carefully and at much greater length at getting the conversions right. I suspect you can work at post-processing black and white images just as much if not more than you would on color images.

I do have a little book here (publishers inundate me with review copies of all the latest technical books) called From Oz to Kansas that purports to be an overview of "Almost Every Black and White Conversion Technique Known to Man" (the book's subtitle). If that's what it turns out to be, I'll be going through it to learn a little more about the available conversion methods.

Dave in NM: "I think I'm beginning to understand what it is that makes you feel the D800E is especially well suited to B&W photography. Based on what you've written thus far, it seems like the key is not strictly the appearance of the images it produces, but mainly the result of the malleability of the files—the ability to push, pull, and massage them with impunity. Digital Tri-X. So, in the sense that the D800E is offering unprecedented dynamic range and resolution in a 135 format camera, it becomes uniquely capable of displaying (emulating?) the best characteristics of B&W film. There's room for more interpretation in the processing, and the files respond with a graceful flexibility. It's subtle, but I think that's what you're reacting to in a positive way. Go for it, Mike. Keep a little camera for the self-conscious times."

Mike replies: I think that's right, Dave. I hope I'm not implying that other cameras might not rival this one (how would I know?) or that other people haven't done nice B&W conversions (of course they have). I just haven't been satisfied prior to this with the B&W possibilities for my own work of the limited subset of cameras I've tried. Also, don't forget that I haven't even gotten to the other 50% of the process yet: printing. That's a whole 'nuther 55-gallon drum of worms.

Mark: "This digital stuff is a little confusing to me; the only digital pics I take are with my phone. So, just to be clear, the B&W photos weren't taken using using the camera's B&W mode (if it even has one); they were converted to B&W after the fact, outside the camera. Is that right?"

Mike replies: That's correct. I opened the color files in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw, a plugin for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Lightroom—I have ACR 6.7.0.339, which is not the latest version), and converted them to black and white with ACR's conversion tool, which looks like this:

The sliders just darken or lighten those colors in the image. Obviously there are lots of interpretations available in just this relatively simple panel, and there are many other conversion tools and conversion programs as well.

In my own modest software suite (which, again, is not the latest and greatest) I prefer ACR's controls to Photoshop CS5's, because it has a slider for orange and Photoshop's doesn't. Also, I get more haloing in Photoshop. An example of this haloing can be seen in the top left corner of the top picture in this post (between the evergreen tree and the sky) which I converted in Photoshop. That top picture is sort of "getting there" in terms of a decent conversion, but it's certainly not there yet. That much haloing would be unacceptable to me in a print.

I would do an instructional post about conversion, except that I feel I'm just not an expert and have no business explaining it to anyone. However, I will say that, as with fine printing, judgement is 50% of what's needed. The other 50% is tools, techniques, and skills, and that's obviously important as well, but it's crucial to have an opinion about what you're trying to accomplish. For instance, here's a detail of the "stupid" speaker photograph as I presented it in the post:

(That tiny spot of red is the clipping warning in ACR...I love this camera [g].) And here's a variant interpretation someone else might like better:

The change is just some adjustment of the blue and yellow sliders, nothing else. (And note that there's more clipping now. Obviously those red bits aren't in the file.)

I should add that converting pictures to grayscale, like Photoshop in general, is something I find to be fun. I love mucking about with it, trying different things, struggling to get things right. There are formidable polymaths of software out there, but I'm not one of them (although I probably know more about it than I think I do). To me, Photoshop brings to mind the famous Isaac Newton quote about his own ignorance:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

There's Photoshop for you in a nutshell. Or should I say a seashell. [g]

Steve L.: "I would encourage you to upgrade to CS6 so you can get the new version of ACR with 'process 2012.' Huge improvement over the old ACR, especially for beautifully drawing out the dynamic range of a sensor. I was only marginally happy with my Pentax K5 for B&W, but with the new ACR it's a B&W monster. I resisted because it meant spending the money on CS6 which I really didn't need (I had CS5), but I'm really glad I took the plunge. It's awesome, and much cheaper than a D800E."

Bojidar Dimitrov: "If it's not the resolution you are after, then a D7000 might be just the ticket. Many people claim that the D7000 and D800(e) have the same sensor, only the FF version has more area.

"I myself has a similar revelation regarding DR when I got the D7000 (10D -> 30D -> D90 -> D7000), and I've not felt the urge to upgrade since then. Not even the D600 is tempting me. Here are some B/W portraits."

Mike replies: Very nice Boz. Thanks. I think Gordon Lewis uses the D7000 too.