Well its arrived obviously and apart from charging up the battery in between clients ringing or coming in I have only had a quick chance to check out the nikon D800.
Before going into what I havn't done yet
thought I would say something about the camera first. Size wise its a bit bigger than the D300 but the layout is very similar, holding it I have found even with my relatively small hands the little finger has nothing to grip onto, maybe because I am used to having a grip on the D300 .So first of all now ordered a grip as its my personal choice.
Have to break in here about third party grips, yes I have read reviews on all of them and rejected them for one reason or another and now Nikon Grips are down considerable in price paying the little extra to me was worth it.
Ok back to the camera the layout at the back is slightly different but coming from the D300 I found it easy to use, same as the menu as I said apart from things like movie mode, which I havn't even tried yet.
This camera is definately a top professional one and doesn't take to those who are used to point and shoot compact cameras, so don't even try.
As I said I have only just tried it out and wow what a difference, one certainly has to improve their technique to get the best out of it. So why do I say this?
First of all keeping the camera steady really requires a tripod and a decent lens ,as everyone says, the detail it brings out shows every little flaw. I even used a remote wired control unit to keep it steady and would recommend using one.
Even though mine is brand new out the box I fitted a nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens onto it and my Nikon SB900 flash for some kitchen shots ( its raining really heavy outside), and it showed up a tiny dust mite on the sensor, something my D300 would not have done, I found so far that manual focus seemed to to be the best option, at least where I was shooting may be different when I get a chance to use it outside.
I can already see why its recommended for studio and photographing building and landscapes but no one has said why that I have found. Well the reason being is getting all the settings right and a firm base ,ie tripod, for the best results.
Ok first impressions do I like it? has to be yes subject to trying out auto fucus on a moving subject that will be done another day same as trying out the movie side of it.
What I havn't discovered and I don't thing the camera does is use one memory card for stills and the other for video work. Both cards are for still photos in what can be used in different formats ie tiff-raw -jpeg etc. It seems the same card can and is used for video as well. Maybe someone with a duel purpose camera can enlighten me on this
Will post more later if I remember, but the main thing is I will know have to work hard on my technique and really concentrate on what I am doing
Bazza