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Any 2012 Olympics D800 Results?


christopher_ellington

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<p>I took my D800E to Wimbledon on Sunday. I have some images that I'll try to post when I'm not on a conference call. :-) They're not especially professional, but that's more to do with me than the camera (although a little to do with not being able to take the lens I wanted).</p>
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<p>Soeren: ! I joked about taking one to the 100m final in a thread about the right camera for the job, but I didn't imagine someone would really do it. Where were they?</p>

<p>(I'm still waiting to get a 5x4 - the last one I held was lighter than my F5, so I'm not that scared. Fuji's impending film discontinuations worry me a bit.)</p>

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<p>Jerry: Thank you for the link. Cool!<br />

<br />

Christopher: I just had a look through my images of Sunday. There were at least three single-digit D-series cameras there (on one side - I think there were a couple on the other too) but I'm too far away and on the wrong side of the body to tell whether they were D3s or D4s; I think at least one was a D3 from the shutter angle. Output? Not seen any yet.<br />

<br />

As for my D800E...</p><div>00afpG-486693584.JPG.2f81222dd0c16cd30cbed1220854495e.JPG</div>

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<p>I was quite suprised to see the LF photographer. It was during a post-game interview (women's handball, which is big for us in Denmark), and he was sat in the near background, seemingly taking several pictures on 4x5. Though I could watch him constantly for about 20-30 seconds, I couldn't see what he was pointing the camera at, and there was definitely no sports going on. Strange. He also used a Leica M, BTW, but I only saw the front of that camera, so no telling, whether it was film or digital...</p>
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<p>Hi Lisa. That was an 80-200 at 200mm (no teleconverter), using DX crop mode, and that image is about a quarter of the frame (half width). So full-frame equivalent would have been about 600mm. I was behind the royal box, about three rows from the back - not ideal. Thank goodness for the D800's pixel count. Even so, I've only got under 2000 pixels of height, and it's not really tack sharp (and 1/800s, f/4, ISO 1100 [on auto]). I can see why being court side with my 200 f/2 would have helped, but we work with what we've got...</p>
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<p>Andrew: thanks. I'm planning to buy a new camera before the end of the year. I hadn't planned to move to FX, but I'm starting to rethink that after taking photos of gymnastics at J.O. Nationals last week from the stands. I'm weighing the advantage of a DX camera over the extra pixels to crop from the D800. Maybe I'll rent one for a few days.</p>
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<p>Lisa: No problem. A bigger lens would have done me better (if I'd been able to track people with it), but I might not have got in with one. Most of my shots inside the arena were in DX crop (in the interests of not blowing my memory card - both write speed and filling it - with unnecessary edges), so a D7000 would have done just as well with the lens I had available - the reason not to would be that you can crop including the edge of the frame (and I do have a couple of images where I would have liked to include something just outside the image), but bear in mind the autofocus points are all in the middle, so it's not the common case.<br />

<br />

For gymnastics, if you can get in, I'm sure there's no substitute for physical aperture (600mm f/4 on FX, 400 f/2.8 on DX being roughly equivalent in light gathered over the frame). I would imagine that you'd have a good chance of predicting movement in gymnastics, so leaving spare pixels isn't so relevant. A D7000 is faster than a D800, the finder makes cropping more obvious (although I didn't have the problem seeing the DX rectangle that some people have reported) and probably a better choice if you're mostly planning to crop, even ignoring the price difference; of course, if a D400 appears soon...<br />

<br />

Having made that argument, it wasn't a trade-off I actually had to make. I don't own a D7000, or any other DX Nikon, so I may be missing something.<br />

<br />

I did take a few full-frame images with my fish-eye and my 14-24, for what it's worth.<br />

<br />

Shun: I agree, it was freaky. I'm very grateful to Andy Murray for wearing a lens test chart (the quarter-Union Flag kit for team GB is a nice focus target).</p><div>00ag8A-487067584.JPG.6368512200a5826dde1f9ce2c8c49b5b.JPG</div>

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<p>Andrew: thanks. I'm thinking in terms of final image quality - if cropping from a full-frame image would give me better images than zooming in from a crop sensor. I don't think the D800 is the perfect camera for me. I'm just trying to weigh the compromises. </p>
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  • 2 weeks later...
<p>Belatedly (sorry, been away): cropping a D800 frame down to DX size should give better images than using a shorter lens and cropping the DX frame down similarly. If you use a longer lens on the D800 and use it full frame, you should get better results than using a shorter lens on a D7000 and using it full frame (assuming decent lenses and no need for teleconverters). If you use a D800 and crop it to the DX frame compared with a D7000 and not cropping it at all, however, the D7000 should be just as good (and faster).</p>
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