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Nikon D800 or D800E?


george_kronfli

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<p>I am undecided whether to get the D800 or the D800E, the various test reports have not convinced me that paying more for the D800E, which I am happy to do, would give me better results. In fact it seems that in some cases post editing would be required. I shoot mainly non-still subjects, sailing boats in action, aircraft, some landscape and portraits. I usually print up to A4 occassionally A3. Your advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.</p>
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<p>Get the D800. You don't need the "E" version. The "E" has the anti-aliasing filter removed to increase sharpness, but this difference is negligible to most users. The "E" version is also more prone to moire since the filter is not there.</p>

<p>Save the money, or use the extra cash towards a pro lens.</p>

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<p>I went with the D800E based on the following logic: D800 + grip + extra battery + L-bracket + new computer (required) would cost about $5,300. Same package with D800E would be $5,600. So for $5,600 I could get the best Nikon sensor ever, or for $5,300 I could get second best. $5,300 seemed like a lot for second best.</p>

<p>The differences certainly are small according to the online info, but the price difference was small too. As for moiré, all the online comparisons I saw showed that when the D800E had it, the D800 did too, just a bit less. In practice, it hasn't been an issue.</p>

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<p>There has been already quite some discussion on it:</p>

<ul>

<li>http://www.photo.net/equipment/nikon/D800/d800-vs-d800e-which-to-choose/</li>

<li>http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00aHbc</li>

<li>http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00aL3e</li>

<li>http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00aJEV</li>

<li>http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00amZu</li>

<li>http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00anNQ</li>

</ul>

<p>For A3 print, you can do those already perfectly fine with 12MP. 36MP might be useful if you crop a lot, or print A2 and larger, but for those sizes, I really doubt you see massive improvements with having many more pixels, or the difference between the D800 and D800E.<br>

If I'd spend the money on a D800, I'd get the E for the reason Kent gives. But instead, as my prints are mostly A4, with an occassional larger print, I reached the conclusion that the D700 served my purposes and needs (and wallet) better, so I got one of those at a nice price after the D800 launched.</p>

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I wanted a D800 mostly for the resolution (and dynamic range); I already have a D700, which is a perfectly good general-purpose camera.

However slight the advantage, given that the price difference was around 10%, I decided that I wanted all the resolution I could get. That

meant getting the E a no-brainer, especially since the reports were that moiré issues were rare (I've essentially not seen any, though I don't

shoot much architecture or fashion that contain repeated patterns) and that the plain D800 isn't entirely free of such issues.

 

If I wanted a D800 as a general-use camera, if I wanted to shoot video more than occasionally or if I mostly shot JPEG and didn't want to

rescue the occasional image in post (and if I wasn't prepared to check for problem images as I went) - essentially, if speed and convenience

of workflow were more important to me than the last 1% of image quality - I'd have doubts about the E, but I knew what I was getting. I'd say

the same about the D600 - so, perhaps, if you're not sure whether you wanted a D600 or D800, you may not be in the market for a D800E

(and if you don't want a D800E, think about a D600). The difference between a D800 and a D800E is very minor (and gone by f/8), so don't

expect much.

 

Of course, I don't own both, so all I can report is that I'm a happy D800E owner...

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<p>I'm with Wouter on this. The D700 is fine and I appreciate everything working on it properly from day one....and the tank-like build. If I was going for D800...the E model does not offer enough moire erasure...as it was originally thought (or advert). Just saw refurbed D800 for $2300 at Adorama, but the E model hadn't dropped similar amount in price. It's up to you.<br>

Les<br>

</p>

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<p>"+ new computer (required)" - By my reckoning that computer cost you about $2000 Kent. Yet strangely my old pre-D800 era laptop works perfectly well for the odd 36mp image editing job, and my home-built £300 ($450 US) 4 core Athlon desktop with a "meagre" 8 gig of RAM also zips along nicely when faced with editing a D800 RAW file. I did have to splash out on an extra 1TB external drive though - cost me about the same as Nikon are asking for a spare En-EL15! So for the difference in price between a D800 and D800E you could easily upgrade your processing power and RAM.</p>
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I'm always dubious about the "needing a new computer" thing. I have a moderately fast computer from sometime last year, but strangely I

have no problem editing images on an old laptop with a single core 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. My tablet can display full size D800

images, too. If you want editing with a 36MP image to be as fast as you're used to with a 12MP one, of course you need your computer to be

faster - but there's not much special about the D800 there. Since the D3 and D90 came out, many of us have got computers that are three

times faster; the editing experience with a D800 is no worse than that difference (though more RAM never hurts, and is often cheap).

Patience. But I speak as a software engineer - there's always something that can make you wait for a computer.

 

If you want to feel the need for more memory, play with a high end medium format back, or get a 5x4 drum scanned. Those files are much

larger than 36MP, yet I've not heard the call for supercomputers from that community.

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<blockquote>

<p>Yet strangely my old pre-D800 era laptop works perfectly well for the odd 36mp image editing job<br>

</p>

</blockquote>

<p>My experience was the same. When I picked up the D800 earlier this summer, I thought my two year old MacBook Pro would have issues. Not a problem whatsoever...like you, I did have to spring for a new 1TB hard drive...all of $100. So...<br>

</p>

<blockquote>

<p>D800 + grip + extra battery + L-bracket + new computer (required)<br>

</p>

</blockquote>

<p>...is not an accurate statement for some people, which makes the price delta from a percentage standpoint much larger.</p>

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Extra battery is a good idea, and I did spring for an L plate (I upgraded my support, partly because of the D800 and partly because I want to

get a monorail), but the grip is pretty optional since it doesn't speed the camera up any. Still, the 10% price delta on the camera alone (at the

time) was small enough to be justifiable. Of course, factor in a fast CF card (the fastest card I had for my D700 was a Sandisk Extreme iii, at

30MB/s; I got a Lexar 150GB/s "1000x" 16GB UDMA7 card) and a fast SD card (I had nothing worth mentioning, got a 16GB UHS-1 95MB/s

card) and that's a chunk of the D800/D800E price difference. Because the camera locks up in live view until it's written the image - fix please,

Nikon - fast cards help.

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<p>We got a D800 not e. I understand that moire problems are rare, but difficult to remove if it happens. Since some shoots and photo opportunities are not available to repeat, made sense to me to try to avoid the (potential) problem as much as is possible. <br>

On a practical note, my observations are that one needs great light, PERFECT focus, and the best lenses to utilize all of the resolution that the regular D800 offers. I would be interested to hear from those that have both if they thought that the D800e would consistently produce notably better images in the real hand held world.<br>

Would be good to have both, I guess.</p>

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<p>We got the D800 not E a couple of weeks ago. My thinking was that there are some photo ops that are not repeatable and that the moire is supposed to be difficult to remove once present. So best to avoid as much as possible.<br>

From a practical standpoint, the regular D800 often seems to offer more resolution than the rest of the photo chain (including human operator) can deliver in a less than perfect real world. Some lenses that I thought were pretty good are less than perfect. It is obvious when focus is not perfect when looking at D800 (and D600) files at 100%.</p>

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<p>I can't answer your question directly, but I can offer my experience. I was on waiting list for a D800e. After many months, I cancelled the order and picked up a D800 when they became widely available. I've never compared the bodies side by side, but the D800 has been jaw-droppingly impressive when focus is on the money and when I post process the images.</p>

<p>I micro-tuned my lenses carefully, and that made a difference. I prefer contrast detection AF in LV when dealing with stationary subjects. Manual focusing in LV is disappointing, however. I'm used to Canon's sharper, more high resolution LCD images. Too bad Nikon dropped the ball here. The good news is that the D800's LV is FAR superior to that of the last generation of Nikons.</p>

<p>The D800 is a durable, reliable body and has worked well through months of shooting, weather, and travel. It feels comfortable in my hands even when coupled with heavy f/2.8 lenses. In terms of resolution, the D800 is considerably better than the Canon 5D2 and 3 (as expected), and those cameras are far superior in resolution to the D700. My old D700 files look dreadfully dull these days. The AA filter on the D700 was definitely on the soft side, and no amount of sharpening can make up for the resulting loss of detail. (I own or have owned every body in this comparison, so I'm not making this stuff up.)</p>

<p>Would I buy a D800e? Not at this point. My shooting is generally in the f/5.6 to f/11 range, and the D800e reportedly doesn't offer much of an advantage there. The only time I shoot more wide open than f/5.6 I'm shooting portraits. How much more detail do you need in a portrait? We end up softening facial imperfections anyway. What am I going to shoot at f/1.4? Graffiti?</p>

<p>I'm more likely to see what Canon comes up with next, because I like using their Tilt Shift lenses in LV with manual focus. As mentioned, I perceive MF in LV to be the D800's only weakness at this point. If Canon fails to come up with anything exciting within the next year, I might add a D800e especially if they do something to fix the live view issues. The D800 is fulfilling my needs under most circumstances, and I have Canon bodies for when critical manual focus and perspective control is required or for when I need a higher frame rate. The Canons also seem to offer a slight edge on skin tones, but I'm sure that that's a matter of personal taste.</p>

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<p>I went with the D800 when it first came out, mainly because of the fuss that Nikon made about moire being possible with the e version and not really knowing at that time how likely that was to be an issue before any proper tests were online between the two versions. That and the fact that the e version was around £200 more and was going to be another month or so before it became available.</p>

<p>I am very happy with the D800 in all things except the huge price drop in the UK after I had bought it! Funnily enough the price gap between the e version and the plain D800 is much more than it was at launch, looks like the e version will probably hold its value better long term and give a tiny bit more sharpness straight out of the camera than the D800. Either way I doubt that you would be unhappy, choosing again I would probably have taken the e version but the images that I am getting from my D800 are very, very sharp straight out of the camera. Most important thing is to use the best lenses that you can, a D800e with poorer lenses will produce inferior images to a D800 with better lenses, the different filter setup is only part of the story, good technique also helps.</p>

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Dan: Just seeking clarification, as someone who needs to do more live view shooting with my D800: are you walking about the (apparent) line

skipping on live view? I have to say I'd like an optional slow mode that fixes this as well (along with the exposure emulation being optional).

But then the list of BIOS requests isn't limited to that. I always want more, though in my defence some of it is things I've been asking for since

the D700 came out...

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<blockquote>Manual focusing in LV is disappointing, however.</blockquote>

<p>Dan, I'm surprised to read that. IME the <em>only</em> way to get repeatably accurate focus with the D800 is to use magnified LV. The LCD dot density seems pretty much irrelevant to me, since the in-camera magnification goes well beyond 100%. While my experience with Canon DSLRs is limited to the now ancient, small and fuzzy LCD of a 5D, I find it difficult to believe that the 5D III's extra 10% LCD "dot" quota over the D800 really makes that much difference. The rear TFT screen of the D800 has almost the same pixel count as the laptop screen in front of me, on which I find no difficulty at all seeing the plane of best focus in my D800 images.</p>

<p>I'm also puzzled by the conclusion that apertures in the range f/5.6 to f/11 are where the D800E <em>doesn't</em> show an advantage. Those apertures are precisely where any lens is going to give its best resolution. No general purpose camera lens works best at its maximum aperture, and certainly not at f/1.4.</p>

<p>I'm not disagreeing that, at best, the E version shows a slight and almost imperceptible real-life improvement in sharpness over a plain-vanilla D800. I just can't agree with those assertions above.</p>

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<p><em>Dan, I'm surprised to read that. IME the only way to get repeatably accurate focus with the D800 is to use magnified LV. The LCD dot density seems pretty much irrelevant to me, since the in-camera magnification goes well beyond 100%.</em></p>

<p>The problem is that the D800 skips lines in LV and video and doesn't display the actual detail captured by the sensor no matter how much you zoom (this is extensively discussed elsewhere). The image is also very noisy in lower light and/or at small apertures. The 5D Mk III LV image is massively superior especially in low light. I find the LV works ok but it's slow to use as one needs to open up to see the image clearly in macro work and to do this both the aperture and shutter speed need to be adjusted by many stops. Also in many cases the actual detail is very different from what I saw in live view, which is not what I experience with other cameras.</p>

<p>I bought the D800 instead of the D800E simply because the D800 images already contain much more detail than I would need in most practical applications, and in the filterless case, aliased artifacts cannot be removed since the information to calculate the correct scene detail is lost when the aliasing occurs (and the aliased frequencies are the low frequencies which are the foundation of the image so also smaller prints are affected by the artifacts, not just huge prints). Yes, subtle aliasing effects can be seen with most digital cameras, including the D800, but it doesn't dominate when it occurs, rather it is very subtle and can be ignored. It's always a tradeoff, how strong a filter you implement; I think the D800 implementation is pretty good. If I'm going towards any direction in my FX camera purchases, ideally it would be back towards 24MP.</p>

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<p>As Wouter mentioned above, I wrote an article for photo.net comparing the D800 and D800E: http://www.photo.net/equipment/nikon/D800/d800-vs-d800e-which-to-choose/</p>

<p>Back in June, I had both for about 3 weeks and made a lot of side-by-side comparisons. The fact of the matter is that the difference between the two is very very minor. To make a long story short, I would say just get the plain D800 and save $300.</p>

<p>For the record, I have a D800E myself because I want the little bit of extra resolution for lens testing. In real-life shooting, they are virtually the same camera, and moire is rarely an issue for the D800E.</p>

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<p>I thought the 800E still had an anti-aliasing filter but that an anti-anti aliasing filter was put over that to put back the aliasing that the anti-aliasing filter removed to achieve the same effect of having no anti-aliasing filter to begin with but at the same time minimizing the extra production costs of having two variations of the same camera. Which could explain why their is so little difference between the 800 and the 800E when comparing to a hypothetical 800E that was built with no anti-aliasing filter to begin with.</p>
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I've not had major issues with the D800 live view, but there's no doubt that it has some deficiencies. I believe (based on sample images, not

testing) that only rows are skipped, not columns, so the issue is more with horizontal edges - live view is still the most reliable means of

focus. Outside in daylight the noise issue is immaterial, too. Still, for a camera that really benefits from using live view, it's a shame Nikon

didn't nail it. I've always assumed that the same line skipping is behind video content from the D800 looking sharper (because it's aliased)

than the D4. I'm prepared to believe that Canon did it better - hopefully that inspires Nikon to fix it.

 

RJ: my understanding is that f/5.6 is where diffraction starts making the advantage of a D800e over a D800 disappear. Depending in the lens,

I try to stick between f/4 and f/5.6 if I'm after sharpness - it's why I'm a bit miffed that my 14-24 isn't better at apertures above f/8. The old

"lenses are sharpest at f/8" adage doesn't cut it with the D800 (and presumably not with the D3200 either). Of course, a lens that's sharp at

f/8 is still just as sharp, it just won't out resolve the sensor. It's been obvious to me for some time in magazines that (35mm) landscape

shooters who use f/16-f/22 aren't getting the best from their sensors - the D800 takes it up a notch. So I'm suddenly happier about my 200

f/2, less so about my 80-200, I bought a 50 f/1.8 AF-S and a 150mm Sigma macro, and I'm looking increasingly longingly at the 400 f/2.8 and

the new Zeiss normal prime. Not being good by f/4 matters to me far more than with my D700, and I'm resigned that there'll be no D800

equivalent of what my 28-200 did for my D700.

 

...not that resolution is everything, but I want to make the most of my camera at least for some shots.

 

John: the D800 and D800E both have a two-part low-pass filter (I believe), each part of which spreads light in one direction. On the D800, the

halves combine to spread light in both directions across the sensor; on the E the orientation is different and the two halves cancel out. The filter is

already weak on the D800 (the D700's is unusually strong), hence the difference is small.

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<p>I have a D800E and have seen no issues with moire or other color artifacts. I also use liveview and find it works very well for static subjects. I only shoot raw, so I was able to crank the sharpness and contrast up in the picture controls (ugly JPGs, but makes the LV image easier to use). You can also program the center button on the control pad to zoom to 100% on a single push. It's very easy to judge focus when setup this way. Sure the Canon may make this easier, but the image quality of the D800 is still better for the pictures I take.</p>
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Andrew, Joe:

 

Ilkka graciously answered the Live View manual focus issue better than I could have. It seems that the Live View image has a lot of the

detail removed making critical focus decisions all but impossible in some cases. Perhaps the live view image is based on video

resolution specs rather than the full photographic resolution of the camera. The Canons show much more detail in Live View despite

having lower resolution sensors.

 

I almost sold the D800 over this issue, because ideally I want to be able to use perspective control lenses to their fullest effect.

 

Then I made a happy discovery. In Live View mode, AUTO focus is amazingly accurate. I switched to Live View AF whenever it was

feasible (non moving subjects) and started enjoying the full impressive resolution of this fine camera. The A/B comparisons versus

normal AF with micro tuning showed a clear advantage for Live View. On a recent trip to Italy, I used Live View AF as often as possible,

and I really like the results.

 

The bottom line is that the D800 and e aren't perfect cameras. But it you can find ways to maximize what they do well and avoid their one

apparent weakness, the payoff in resolution is outstanding.

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<p>Many thanks to all for your highly informative and very helpful responses. I am certainly glad I asked as I was wavering between the two. One day it was the 800E, next day it was the 800. Of course real life experience by people who actually use the camera compared to just testing it is invaluable. Based on all your comments and recomendations and on also on the test results by Shun and others including DPE but mainly because of your actual experiences, I have opted for the D800 which I think will be more than sufficient from the quality point of view as I really will never need the massive magnifications that will show the slight edge of the D800E. Also the D800 seems to be more suited to my style of photography than the D800E. Here in the UK the price differential between the two is about £350 (USD$565) and although this really was not a deciding factor, I don't think spending the extra funds would have achieved better results in my case. By the way, I am upgrading from a Nikon D90 so I hope to see some significant improvements especially with better rendition of the contrast and detail in the highlights etc. Thanks again.</p>
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