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I've traded critical focus for overall texture and feel by swapping from

my much love 24-70 to my newly acquired 70-200. I think I love it.

What do you think though?

Excellent result my friend! The D800 and 70 - 200 compliment each other and the results seen here are testament to the fact.

Wonderful sharpness and clarity to the eyes and I do quite like that kind of high key effect of the surroundings.

How are you enjoying the D800 Graham?  I am thinking of upgrading myself next year.

Best Regards

Alf

Hi Alf, thanks for your comments. You'll be glad to note that I'm still reaping the benefits of shooting in RAW - very necessary when experimenting with this particular technique. It's the first time I've used my 70-200 for portrait work, I have always been passionate about the 24-70 for this type of shoot as it offers fabulous clarity and colour rendition. However since moving to the D800 the only "drawback" is the full frame sensor which loses the multiplier effect, so what would have been around 105mm is now 70mm which requires me to get just a little bit too much up close and personal. So on the advise of a friend who is "personal contact averse" I had a go with the 70-200 shooting at about 150mm f/5.6. I think (subjectively) the lens lacks the ultimate crispness of the 24-70 but its still pretty fine. And it may just be that the longer zoom is that much less forgiving when shooting handheld at 1/200s. I also suspect that the VR slightly softens the image though I've yet to prove that to my own satisfaction. It was certainly the case on my 80-400 (RIP :( )

As for the D800 - it's just a lovely lovely thing. Only thing against it is the outrageous file size (though shooting with a white background like this massively reduces the typical file size down from c.45Mb to around 7Mb once convervted from RAW) - and of course it's frame rate is a little on the slow side compared to others. But then I have my V1 which will crank all the way up to 60fps when the occasion demands! So yes, i love love love my D800 and it's driving me on to experiment, to think harder about the setup and control of images, and to (hopefully!) achieve better. The only slight downside is that my images still pull in very mundane 4-5 ratings here on PNET. So I'll just have to keep upping my game!

Thanks for your comments, G. 

Good to hear you are still enjoing the D800. I have heard that it is quite a demanding camera, but one that yields excellent results.

Just a thought regarding hand held shots.  You may wish to consider increasing your ISO ? I see from you settings that yours was set at 100. I set mine as a minimum to 200 ( unless I deliberately want slower shutter speeds) and for really crisp shots up to 800 with no significant problem with noise.  In fact the last image I posted  "Lunch with Friends" I used ISO setting at 800 and if you take a look and click on the image to enlarge it, you will see how sharp it is.  Of course I used the 24 - 70mm which as you know doesn't have any VR function.  So maybe an option to using the VR is to get that shutter speed up, and leave the VR set to OFF and then maybe compare using with and without?

My Best Wishes to You & Your for Christmas & New Year

Alf

Alf, I was limited 1/200s in order to preserve the flash sync - anything faster and I get a black band across the image

Belicimo retrato.