Using Nikon D800/Crop Mode

[jenkins]

<p>Quick question out of curiosity, I am not a wedding photographer but I am asking you the question as I know you guys shoot a lot of images and from time to time so do I.</p>

<p>So if you do use this camera what crop mode are you using and what cards are you using? </p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

 

[william-porter]

<p>I assume crop mode on the D800 works the same way it does on my Sony full-frame cameras, so I'll venture a quick answer, and will be happy to be corrected.</p>

<p>I can think of only two reasons to use the APS-C crop mode.</p>

<ul>

<li>You're using the full-frame camera with an APS-C only lens (in Nikon terms, I think this = DX lens). In this case you may not have a choice. </li>

<li>You're using a full-frame lens but for some reason you simply want to take lower-res photos. </li>

</ul>

<p>The second item there is the one that's interesting, since as I said you don't have much choice about the first. So why would you want to take lower res photos?</p>

<p>I was shooting a rodeo once. I was watching my storage and could see my card was filling up faster than I expected. I was <em>sure</em> I'd packed another large capacity card, but when I looked for it a bit ahead of the time I would change cards, I couldn't find it. I panicked and decided to take action. But in that case, I didn't switch to crop mode. Rather, I stopped shooting raw and started shooting JPEGs. And when there was a lull in the action, I started reviewing the images I'd taken earlier and deleting some that I was sure weren't keepers. (As it turns out, I <em>had</em> packed the extra card. I found it when I got home and emptied my pockets.)</p>

<p>So I'm inclined to think that crop mode is fairly pointless and the only time I would use it would be when I'm using an APS-C lens (and I only have two of those left that I ever use). Even when crop mode is an option, there's a better option: switch from raw to JPEG capture. I guess crop-mode JPEG would make even smaller files. So I suppose you might switch to APS-C crop mode if you were just taking, oh, unimportant photos and didn't want to be bothered with the larger files <em>at any point.</em></p>

<p>But storage is so cheap! And I'd be mad at myself if I switched to crop mode to write smaller files, then realized afterwards that one of the photos was actually very good and I wished I could print it big. Much safer to shoot big and downsize later. </p>

<p>Will</p>

[jenkins]

<p>I<strong> assume crop mode on the D800 works the same way it does on my Sony full-frame cameras, so I'll venture a quick answer, and will be happy to be corrected.</strong></p>

<p>Will, it's a 36.3mp camera :)</p>

[william-porter]

<p>Simon,</p>

<p>Yeah, I'm aware of that. So you're saying that crop mode is more useful on the D800 because of the super-huge native file size? Sorry, still doesn't make sense to me.</p>

<p>If I didn't want to deal with 36MP files, I wouldn't buy a 36MP camera. Why buy a camera with this resolution simply to down-res the files? Don't mean that as a challenge. I'm trying to ask a serious question. Do people seriously shoot the D800 in crop mode a lot of the time, because they <em>occasionally</em> want the 36MP resolution, and the rest of the time, when they don't, the crop-mode images are as good or better than they'd get, say, from D600 at full-res? </p>

<p>Will</p>

[vivid_earth_photographics]

<p>No. People do not seriously use crop mode on a D800 all the time unless they want high res images. There is a distinct disadvantage in trying to use crop mode on an FX camera. When you go to crop mode, the big bright viewfinder becomes much more difficult to deal with. Either the crop lines appear in the center of it and composition is annoying and the borders are distracting, or you can have the camera blur out the area outside the cropped center which is also annoying to compose with since the remaining image area is small relative to the native area of the viewfinder.<br>

The crop mode is primarily useful if using a DX lens on the D800 which I imagine you would do because you have some old DX lenses you don't want to or just haven't yet upgraded to FX lenses. </p>

<p>There may be some particular circumstances which cause some photographers to occasionally go to crop mode for a different reason, but few people pay dearly for FX and then turn it off to then deal with a small image in a large viewfinder. </p>

[William Michael]

<p>I could understand a circumstance where a particular lens went down during a session and it needed to be replaced. For example if a (Wedding) Photographer were using a dual format kit – OR – had a DX Lens which could mimic the FX lens which went U/S – then the DX lens, could be used on the more sophisticated, FX camera.</p><br></br>

<p>As far as I understand the feature, it does (sort of) make another level of system redundancy (easier?) to a Dual Format NIKON KIT comprising Nikon (or third party lenses), which is not available in a Canon Dual Format Kit comprising only Canon Lenses; I don’t use Nikon DSLR.</p><br></br>

<p>WW</p>