Eat Cake! DxOMark's highest score---D800

[Trever1t]

DxOMark - Sensor performance

The two Nikon full-frame cameras, the D800 and the D4, occupy the top two places in the full-frame category. Simple and efficient. Still, be careful: as ever, in this review we are discussing only the D800’s RAW-image-based sensor results. We will follow up with DxOMark results for compatible lenses for this camera whose small pixel size promises to be very challenging

 

[cgipson1]

aarrgghh...! you HAD to post that, didn't you!

 

[Overread]

Canon 1DX /5DMIII will be better

*hides*

 

[analog.universe]

Canon 1DX /5DMIII will be better

*hides*

I feel like the ISO performance will be. That D800 has some impressive dynamic range though, Nikon has always been a bit ahead in that department. I HOPE the 5DIII looks as good there...

The D800 certainly performed better than I expected it to, nice looking cam.

 

[Trever1t]

lol, keep wishing. Yes, read that whole report, it's an amazing score and surprising in a few areas such as the ISO quality Now they do caution that optics will make or break the overall scoring but the sensor is one piece of modern science, no argument can be made.

 

[cgipson1]

lol, keep wishing. Yes, read that whole report, it's an amazing score and surprising in a few areas such as the ISO quality Now they do caution that optics will make or break the overall scoring but the sensor is one piece of modern science, no argument can be made.

I only have two lenses that aren't Nikon top end (Sigma 50 1.4 and Nikon 28-300).. so as long as Nikon's best glass will resolve the D800.. it really does look promising! I would love to see what the 85mm 1.4 creates at 36 mp! Or the 70-200 2.8 VRII! The landscape and macro detail should be phenomenal!

 

[boomer]

I've really been contemplating going to the D800. But then I keep thinking of just getting a D700. These results are making my decision easier

 

[Trever1t]

I'd still recommend a D700 over this one for most of my shooting. I mean I will shoot 300+ frames a day/small event. That's a lot of file space over the course of a year, not to mention process time but who knows, once in hand (if ever!) even that might be better than expected. I have a D700 so I'm planning on using this new body for 'special' purpose shooting.

 

[boomer]

Storage is what I keep thinking about. Looks like the smallest RAW files 12-bit compressed are around 30-35mb. Some new drives for my RAID will have to come into play much sooner...And I'll need newer/bigger memory cards lol

As for the D700, amazon has it for about $2400 and adorama has it for $2200. How much longer do we think they'll be sold at that price for? I'm about a month away from purchasing one of the 2 bodies.

 

[cgipson1]

Terabytes are cheap now.... not concerned about image size....

 

[Netskimmer]

I am supprised the D800 did so well against the D4, especially regarding ISO performance. I've seen a few ISO comparisons between the D800 and the D700 and I really wasn't blown away, I wasn't surprised by this because most people were saying the ISO was going to be one of the D800's shortcommings. I can't wait for some actual field tests.

 

[analog.universe]

Storage is what I keep thinking about. Looks like the smallest RAW files 12-bit compressed are around 30-35mb. Some new drives for my RAID will have to come into play much sooner...And I'll need newer/bigger memory cards lol

As for the D700, amazon has it for about $2400 and adorama has it for $2200. How much longer do we think they'll be sold at that price for? I'm about a month away from purchasing one of the 2 bodies.

Interesting tid-bit about the file size issue...

HD density progresses faster than sensor resolution. In 2008, when the D700 was released, HD cost/gb was about $0.27. Now, it is about $0.05.

So, upon release, one 12mb D700 RAW file cost ~$0.0032 to store.
Upon release, one 36mb D800 RAW file costs ~$0.0018 to store.

The cost will instead be the glass worth mounting to it!

 

[cgipson1]

Storage is what I keep thinking about. Looks like the smallest RAW files 12-bit compressed are around 30-35mb. Some new drives for my RAID will have to come into play much sooner...And I'll need newer/bigger memory cards lol

As for the D700, amazon has it for about $2400 and adorama has it for $2200. How much longer do we think they'll be sold at that price for? I'm about a month away from purchasing one of the 2 bodies.

Interesting tid-bit about the file size issue...

HD density progresses faster than sensor resolution. In 2008, when the D700 was released, HD cost/gb was about $0.27. Now, it is about $0.05.

So, upon release, one 12mb D700 RAW file cost ~$0.0032 to store.
Upon release, one 36mb D800 RAW file costs ~$0.0018 to store.

The cost will instead be the glass worth mounting to it!

Good point!

 

[Trever1t]

That's true, price of storage not an issue....time spent editing is.

The ISO comparison is at "normalised" ...otherwise, at 1:1 screen resolution the D4 is 1-1.5 stops better high ISO.

 

[sovietdoc]

D800 is a very good camera. Too bad it's just so......slow. Fps was pretty much the deciding factor for me

I have a feeling that we will see lower res/better iso D800s at some point and 5d X with whoop ass sensor res...