Eagerly (and testily) awaiting September?

<p>Stephen: Having joined this thread rather late, 1) I'm not in the market for a D400-class camera (though a D3200 looks quite tempting as a complement to my D800E), but 2) I acknowledge that there's no camera with the build of the D300 (which, remember, was the successor to the D200, not the D2x) and a D7000/D3200-class sensor, and if that's what you want, Nikon can't provide. To be fair, the 7D is quite elderly now too. I <i>am</i> convinced the D300 will get a replacement at some point - Shun and other wildlife shooters have been too vocal about the need. Whether it's September is another matter. I can't imagine Nikon are expecting wildlife customers to move to an adapted 1-series, after all.<br />

<br />

As for what I'm going to put down to a misunderstanding: do not think of it as being "worthy" of having a higher-end camera. (If there's such a thing as worthiness, I'm certainly not worthy of my D700, let alone the D800E.) It's just a question of whether the different cameras that are available will actually help you. With any of them you lose the waist-level finder of the D5100, which personally I would find quite tempting for street shooting (though in the UK I'm never sure when someone is going to try to arrest me for owning a camera). None (but the D700, and for street shooting it's not exactly subtle) are better at noise handling, all are bigger. The autofocus <i>is</i> better on the D7000, and better still on the D300s, but incrementally. I can understand the suggestion that, for the subject matter you discuss, Nikon don't currently sell something that's much better than what you've already got - all the incremental improvements come with disadvantages. Only you can decide what trade-off is worthwhile.<br />

<br />

On that note, depending on how much you're tied into Nikon, have you considered an Eos 650D? Similar form factor to the D5100, roughly similar performance and autofocus, but with a hybrid sensor so you can get better autofocus in live view (with the LCD flipped out). Just a thought.</p>

 

<blockquote>I think a replacement is something which is in every way better or equal than its predecessor.</blockquote>

 

<p>Ilkka - I admire your optimism. I have come to accept that a replacement may be "an overall improvement". I've not even shot my D800E yet, but I'm not expecting it to be better <i>in every way</i> than my D700. Nor is the D3s better in every way, or the D4. It happens that I'm in a position to keep the D700 as well (though I need to sell some lenses), but there are trade-offs everywhere.</p>

<p>Hi Andrew<br>

I hear what you're saying and it seems that you're right. Referring back to, was it Keith's post about Street work? Almost none of the "street" shots I've seen on this forum are what I think of as Street, certainly not what I want to achieve- some of them are close enough and dynamic/ "real" enough to be street and very well-done, but the vast majority are not, including the tutorial on the subject that's available on this forum. Keith alluded to the fact that image quality in street work is given a lot of leeway, in favour of energy, intimacy and in large part making allowances for the fact that when a street photographer is "on duty" (and of course the best are on duty for an almost worryingly large proportion of their life), he is reacting to the situation in an covert role next to his fellow fragile, unreasonable, flighty and suspicious human beings. There is a fine line between street photographer and spy and I have at times crossed that line, lying in wait at the very tops of subway staircases etc. I contend that the very reason IQ is given second billing to content in street work is precisely <strong>because</strong> it is so difficult and because content is so much less predictable yet more meaningful when it's done right. I was very interested when I heard about the X100, but dumbfounded to discover the AF is a bit slow! Never mind the firmware, what about the AF! Probably the Sony NEX-7 is the nearest to perfect for street work at the moment, but I feel wierd about spending 1,300 GBP on such a small, fragile-looking item with such a currently limited lens selection. If money was no object I'd buy one tomorrow and have done with it, get the Zeiss and shoot away. I don't know what it'll be like when I get back to Europe, but as I said, in China, going incognito is very very difficult, so I don't think the size of the camera will make that much difference, considering I'm already riding around with a bike, watch and camera that costs so much in relation to the salaries of the people I am trying to photograph. Not 3 hours ago when I asked for my bill in a restaurant, the waitress shouted out "The Foreigner wants to pay!" <br>

There's no being inconspicuous around here. :-)</p>

<p>Stephen, if your primary interest is street and documentary photography, I'd suggest skipping dSLRs altogether. Not because they're inherently unsuited to the task. Not even because of the "discretion" factor. They're just bigger and bulkier in general, even Nikon's smallest dSLR. I don't like to tote heavy gear or bags, so I rarely use any type of SLR anymore, film or digital. Mostly I use pocket sized P&S digicams and 35mm compacts.</p>

<p>Consider instead a mirrorless camera like the Nikon J1 or V1, Sony NEX 5n, Olympus OM-D EM-5 (if you can find one) or any comparable model. Of the current crop of mirrorless cameras only the Nikon Series 1 and Olympus OM-D appeal to me, mostly due to their reputations for quick AF and overall responsiveness.</p>

<p>There are also some excellent small sensor P&S digicams. And some of the best street photography I'm seeing lately is done with smartphone cameras.</p>

<p>Hi Stephen. I'm now slightly less confused - I'd assumed you were shooting in the UK, in which case there is such a thing as a surreptitious camera (although there's also such a thing as a public so drummed up on media paranoia about terrorism and paedophiles that it may be hard not to cause offence). But this concept has made me so paranoid myself that I don't dare try street shooting - and, as such, I'm in no position to comment on the quality or categorization of other images. Perhaps you could point us at the kind of image you'd like to take, in case we can advise differently?<br />

<br />

I really would find it easier not to distract people if I wasn't actively looking at them - hence anything with a flip-out finder (or a proper waist-level finder - an F5 if you don't mind people knowing after you've taken the photograph, a Rolleiflex if you do...) wins. Though I second the smartphone suggestion. I'll be interested in the next review of the n808, when I see it.<br />

<br />

I look forward to seeing whatever it is that Nikon may or may not produce.</p>

<p>I do work in a strange environment, as a conspicuous stranger given much latitude and I am often taken as a tourist/wierdo-who-doesn't-matter. Also Chinese people are not violent as a first response and not paranoid about my taking photos of their children. I have taken some shots I am happy with, particularly with my S95 at close range but it is a limited device.</p>

<p>As in this one</p>

<p>server error times 2.</p>

<p>Argh!</p>

<p><strong>.</strong></p>

<p>Another pro for mirrorless cameras for street photography: using a manual 20mm lens (which will "give you" a 30mm or 40mm view, depending on the camera system), you can easily set the hyperfocal meter so that anything from 5 feet to almost infinity is in focus at a reasonable outdoor aperture, and then never worry about focusing on your subjects as they walk by. If the camera has a flip screen, you don't even need to hold the camera up to the subject. Very Winogrand.<br /><br />Obviously you can do this with SLRs too, but only if you want to buy Nikon or Pentax lenses exclusively, and the screens are a little more obvious, since they rotate out from the camera and not directly up.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I have both cameras and technologically you're correct but IMO the D800 ergonomics are poor; the design of the chassis has weird sharp corners and bumps. </p>

</blockquote>

<p>So goes the Internet Bologna Factor (sorry to insult bologna).</p>

<p>I recently received my D800, and it feels perfectly comfortable in my hands. Further as a former D200 and D700 user who's been shooting mostly Canon in recent years, the D800's controls were immediately familiar in my hands. I haven't even opened the manual - no need to. Everything is clearly laid out physically and in the menus, which once again, seem very familiar from my D700 days.</p>

<p>That little video on button that's located next to the MODE button - I haven't touched it once and I switch modes constantly. People who complain about "body bumps" and inconvenient button locations need to take a deep breath and spend FIVE MINUTES acclimating themselves to a new body design and then take it out and shoot it for a day or two until everything sinks in. Instead they spend weeks and months complaining about bologna.</p>

<p>(Once again, apologies to bologna.)</p>

<p>If anyone doesn't like how their D800 feels, send it to me. My hands promise to love and appreciate it.</p>

 

<p>Dan - I'm expecting to disapprove of the location of the AF mode selector and the ISO button on my (still unused) D800E, mostly because I've been complaining about exactly the same thing on the D700 for the last few years and they've not moved. It's not enough to make me return the camera, but it's annoying. I was hoping that Nikon would fix it (all I wanted was for these buttons to be mappable to the programmable ones). What it <i>will</i> do is encourage me to get involved with the effort to hack the D800's firmware to enable these features. I'd gladly have paid a premium for a D800 "hackers' edition" that came with source code. (No, I know that's not going to happen.)</p>

<p><em>People who complain about "body bumps" and inconvenient button locations need to take a deep breath and spend FIVE MINUTES acclimating themselves to a new body design and then take it out and shoot it for a day or two until everything sinks in.</em></p>

<p>Five minutes of use isn't a problem with any camera but when you start using it all day, every day, then certain designs turn out superior to others. You have to remember that not all hands are alike, some designs work better for person A and other designs for person B. The D800 itself isn't so much of a problem for me, apart from the too low viewfinder eyepoint and mode button it handles okay without the vertical grip. However, with the MB-D12 the body is unbalanced (the bumps that get in the way when I turn the camera from horizontal to vertical are mostly in the vertical grip, not the camera itself), the focus point selector of the grip is hard to locate without taking the camera down and looking at the camera, and so on. It may be a general problem of the accessory vertical grips - I wouldn't know, as this is the first camera where I bought one (people generally like the MB-D10 so I expected this one to be good; perhaps the D800 and grip are designed for shorter fingers than mine, like the D7000). If Nikon hadn't indicated the D800 is intended to replace the D3X, I might have waited for an integrated vertical grip version but I decided to give it a shot since I think a D4X is unlikely to appear (the D3X was already a small market camera for Nikon). As I expected the extra resolution (of the D800 over the D3X) is of limited use in my people photography since the AF system doesn't match the precision requirements of the main sensor (at wide apertures with f/2 and f/1.4 lenses). But the camera does focus better in low light and the AF spends less time thinking about what to do, and finally the main sensor has superior SNR per area, so the camera has other advantages apart from resolution (and of course Nikon doesn't claim the resolution of the camera can be taken full advantage of without using live view). The D4's pixel count is a little on the low side for me; I would prefer an intermediate like 24MP. I don't have much use for 10fps except for jump sequences and dance photography, but of course the very spacious buffer of the D4 is great. If I continue to dislike the D800's handling I may either keep it as a tripod based landscape camera (where its only disadvantage is the very swift battery consumption in LV use and the line skipping) or just trade it for a D4 or whatever model in that series is available at the time. If I didn't wear glasses, had smaller hands, and didn't require a vertical grip, I might think differently, but I'm not going to surgery of any kind to accommodate a camera, when designs are available at the store shelves which fit my needs straight out of the box, unfortunately not quite at the same price.</p>

<p><em>a former D200 and D700 user</em></p>

<p>I haven't used those cameras with their respective vertical grips; maybe their grips are also not good designs; I wouldn't know. Without the vertical grip, I don't think the D800 ergonomics are that much worse than that of the D200 or D700 except for the viewfinder eyepoint and the mode button's location. These factors do not prevent me from using the camera - they're merely annoyances that will help in having the camera transferred to a new owner more quickly than otherwise might be. If I take my right hand off the grip of the camera I can use the mode button, just that I have to have all the weight of the setup on the left hand in that case, which can be a problem with a 5kg setup. Again, my hands, not yours; perhaps you can lift 5kg with just one finger of your left hand and keep it there for as long as is needed - I can not. Anyway, I'm not interested in comparing the D800 with D700 ergonomics since as the D3X's replacement it needs to compare favourably with the D3X's ergonomics, not the D700's.</p>

<p><em>If anyone doesn't like how their D800 feels, send it to me.</em></p>

<p>If you send me a correctly working D4 in trade, I will gladly take up your offer.</p>

<p><em>My hands promise to love and appreciate it.</em></p>

<p>That's just the thing ... the internet is full of people who want to buy cameras to love them and to talk about it and defend their love rather than use them and perhaps talk about the content of their photography and love of their subjects. It seems only about 10% of the people online are willing to accept that different people have different bodies, different applications, and different needs, instead they have to start insulting people who are different. No wonder there is racism etc. in this world.</p>

I am keenly aware that people come in all shapes and sizes, but Nikon and Canon can't control that. If the D800 didn't fit well in my hand

I would explore different grip options or I would use a different model.

 

I'm also extremely impatient with poorly designed products. I was concerned by all of the negative comments - relocated buttons,

confusing menus, autofocus doesn't work the way my old Nikon did, left focus point issues, too light (that one was rather bewildering),

different body shape, difficult to focus, files too large, green LCD, exposes the weakness in your lenses, etc. Holy cow! Thankfully I

decided to downplay the weight of these supposed issues. I bought myself an amazing new camera that has so far exceeded all

expectations.

 

I have no predisposition to love the products that I buy. I didn't love the D700, and I eventually replaced it with a Canon body that gave

me better resolution. If I didn't appreciate the D800 based upon its own merits, I would have sent it back to the store for a refund and

continued to use my Canon system, which I still like very much.

 

It's not about falling in love with a product and defending it blindly. It's about finding gear that enables you to do what you need to do

without a lot of challenges. The D800 has worked out well in that regard so far, and none of those Internet-published issues have turned out to be a

problem for me and my type of shooting. If the D800 doesn't work for someone else, so be it. There are other good cameras out there, many of them smaller and cheaper and easier to find in a store than a D800 or a D4.

Find what works for you, but be careful not to get swept up in the online complain-a-thon.

<blockquote>If I take my right hand off the grip of the camera I can use the mode button, just that I have to have all the weight of the setup on the left hand in that case, which can be a problem with a 5kg setup.</blockquote>

 

<p>Ilkka - you had me really worried for a second there that the D800's mode button had gone somewhere stupid (compared with the D700's). I think I just misunderstood you. You've hit on exactly why I keep complaining about the location of the ISO and AF mode controls.</p>

 

<blockquote>It seems only about 10% of the people online are willing to accept that different people have different bodies, different applications, and different needs, instead they have to start insulting people who are different.</blockquote>

 

<p>A word from a poor person who whinges about Nikon's ergonomics - I hope, whenever I complain about something, that I state it thusly: "What am I doing wrong such that this doesn't work for me?" - or, perhaps "How are other people using the camera such that this isn't a problem for them?"<br />

<br />

I'm extremely happy to accept that I should put up with some inconvenience in order to assist other people. I've argued against those complaining about cameras that have "too many features" (i.e. not precisely the subset that they use - video is good for this). I don't worry that there's a white balance button in a prominent place on the camera when I've used it perhaps twice in all my shooting time (I usually use RAW, or AWB).<br />

<br />

Generally, my complaints have been when I can see no benefit to the way things are. For my pet hates, I can see those for whom having the ISO button to the left of the prism is not particularly inconvenient (if the camera is on a tripod with a short lens and you're looking down from the top so you can see what button you're pressing). I can see that the AF mode selector might fall nicely under the thumb for some people (if you're using a light or tiny lens such as a 50mm series E and the camera is sitting in your palm). What I don't see is how either of these controls can be seen as well-positioned from the perspective of, among others, anyone using a pro-grade lens (which I define as one of the three f/2.8 zooms or a big supertelephoto) and what possible harm to the ergonomics would come from making it possible to replicate the functionality on one of the already-programmable buttons that I can actually reach with the hand that's already on the camera. And I'm going to keep complaining about it until either someone tells me where my assumptions are wrong, or Nikon fixes it.<br />

<br />

I have a little time for anyone wanting to break the functionality that others use, but a lot of sympathy for those who want an improvement in a way that can't hurt anyone.</p>

<p>Quick update:-<br>

I eventually went for the Panasoninc DMC-GX1X kit, which lens I'll be upgrading to probably the 'Leica' DG Summilux 25mm f/1.4 ASPH when funds allow. I am extremely pleased with this camera- it is exactly what I was looking for and after a couple of days shooting with it on the streets of Suzhou, the improvements necessary to my technique are becoming clear. I have no problem whatsoever with the lack of EVF or tilting screen and was pleased to find my composition from the hip is adequate, though on the first day my shutterspeed was too low to avoid motion blur- despite everything being in focus and looking fine on the LCD, once uploaded to my laptop it was apparent.<br>

I love the creamy monochrome, ultra-fast focus (0.1s target acquisition in LV is impressive IMO) and the screen-tap focus option in particular is very easy and quick, especially for setting up surreptitiously then "body-flicking", as in the subway shot recently uploaded.<br>

Metering also seems more consistent than the D5100 and processor lag is a non-issue. I am a happy man</p>