Nikon D800

I think I’ve found the camera of my dreams, but availability is very limited, & with huge waiting lists every where I go. Plus to preorder, they all want the full admission price, $2999.95 & that’s for the body only,
please add another $1000+ for an image stabilization lens…

The Nikon D800 is a professional grade full-frame digital single-lens reflex camera produced by Nikon. It was officially announced on February 7, 2012 and went on sale in late March 2012 for the suggested retail price of $2999.95 in the U.S., £2399 in the UK, and €2892 in the Eurozone. Shortly after the camera went on sale, Nikon’s UK subsidiary increased the price of the D800 in that market by £200 to £2599, saying that the original price was due to an “internal systems error”. However, Nikon honored the original price for all pre-orders placed before March 24, and added that no price changes would be made in other markets.

36.3 effective megapixel full-frame (35.9 mm × 24 mm) sensor with ISO 100–6400 (ISO 50–25600 boost)
Nikon Expeed 3 image processor
Pop-up flash that doubles as a wireless flash controller
91,000 pixel RGB metering sensor with Advanced Scene Recognition System
Advanced Multi-CAM3500FX auto-focus sensor (51-point, 15 cross-type, 11 points sensitive at maximum apertures as small as f/8)
Image sensor cleaning
4 frames per second in continuous FX mode or 5:4 crop mode. 5 frames per second in continuous 1.2× crop mode or DX (APS-C) mode. With the optional MB-D12 battery grip, fitted with either the EN-EL18 battery pack of the D4 or AA batteries, continuous shooting at 6 frames per second in 1.2× crop or DX mode is supported.
Buffer size for 17 RAW or 56 JPEG with maximum quality.
Built-in HDR mode (2 frames up to 3EV apart)
USB 3.0 connectivity
1080p Full HD movie mode at 24/25/30 fps, 720p at 24/25/30/50/60 fps, HDMI HD video output, stereo monitor headphone out, and stereo input (3.5-mm diameter) with manual sound level control.
Shutter rated at 200,000 actuations
Live View with either phase detect or improved contrast detect Auto Focus
‘Active D-Lighting’ with 6 settings and bracketing (adjusts metering and D-Lighting curve)
Dual card slots, one CompactFlash UDMA and one SD UHS-I card slot (mirror, overflow, back-up, RAW on 1/JPEG on 2, Stills on 1/Movies on 2, copy)
Weather sealing comparable to D700, but less robust than D4

Image quality

The Nikon D800 achieved a new ‘king’ result in the DxOMark sensor rating by toppling the Nikon D4 by 4 points, even though the D800 is cheaper, being about half the D4 price (better quality-to-price ratio).
D800E

The D800E is a specialized version which uses a new optical anti-aliasing filter with no low pass filter effect (no blurring) to obtain the sharpest images possible. Nikon claims that possible aliasing effects (moiré) can be lessened by software-processing in camera or external programs like Nikon´s Capture NX2. The D800E version will be available in mid April 2012 for a suggested retail price of $3,299.95 in the U.S. and €3171 in the Eurozone. The UK price was initially announced as £2689, but at the same time that Nikon UK announced its price error on the D800, it also increased the price of the D800E to £2899. All pre-orders made prior to March 24 will still be filled at the originally announced price.

I love high quality photography, and will need several different lenses for a variety of different types of exposures.
This looks like a great starter lens : Very nice.

Chas

Why u need such a good camera? what taking pictures of u will be making?

p.s. 2999 i think it is still not that awful, u can try to do financing at the store for year or two…

i took finansing for more then 6000 dollars at my store my self for two years and i am quit happy that i can have high end music gear now and making good music with it , but not tommorow…

Chilly,
Oh well if you haven’t already heard, this camera is like a very new revolution in photography for Nikon.
The 1080p video mode and with it’s 36 megapixel full frame puts it on the throne, all by itself, ah with D4 and D800e ofcourse.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d800.htm

Make Canon EOS 5D MARK III sit up and take notice, 22.3 Megapixel full frame!

Take a picture, it always lasts longer…

Chas

Redhotpoker - 17 June 2012 05:10 PM

Chilly,
Oh well if you haven’t already heard, this camera is like a very new revolution in photography for Nikon.
The 1080p video mode and with it’s 36 megapixel full frame puts it on the throne, all by itself, ah with D4 and D800e ofcourse.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d800.htm

Make Canon EOS 5D MARK III sit up and take notice, 22.3 Megapixel full frame!

Take a picture, it always lasts longer…

Chas

Hmmm, well my suggestion is if u really want that camera then try to find solution to get it (ofcause legaly) because the life is top short, u do not know what will happend tomorrow, but try to think carefully if u really need that and what u can make with it and if the answer if yes then get it.

p.s. 1080p is not considered high resolution anymore, with Apple new Retnel displeys it is even more higher and i am pretty shure soon anough the 1080p will not considered as high deff anymore, because 4K Video format is already exist..
by the way even my new I Pad has the higher resolution display then 1080p…

Just saying

also if u will decide u want a camera take a look at Red cameras, they can capture 4k resolution http://www.red.com/products

Gigapixel camera catches the smallest details
KATHERINE BOURZAC
One-billion-pixel snapshots offer researchers high-resolution view of dynamic processes.

A one-gigapixel image (top) shows minute details (bottom) of the skyline in Seattle, Washington.
A camera made from off-the-shelf electronics can take snapshots of one billion pixels each — about one thousand times larger than images taken by conventional cameras.

David Brady, an engineer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues are developing the AWARE-2 camera with funding from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The camera’s earliest use will probably be in automated military surveillance systems, but its creators hope eventually to make the technology available to researchers, media companies and consumers.

The camera is described today in Nature 1, in a paper that includes some of its images. One snapshot shows a wide view of Pungo Lake, part of the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina. In a compressed version of the entire image, no animals are visible. But zooming in reveals a group of swans; going in closer still makes it possible to count every bird on and above the lake.

Researchers including wildlife biologists and archaeologists already use image-stitching software to create similar images from lots of lower-resolution files. But the ability to take the entire picture in one instant rather than taking individual shots over a period of minutes to an hour — during which time those swans might all have flown away — will be useful for capturing dynamic processes.

With such technology, “when you’re in the field, you don’t have to decide what you’re going to study — you can capture as much information as possible and look at it for five years”, says Illah Nourbakhsh, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who developed image-stitching software called Gigapan. “That really changes your mindset.”

Bigger and better
In general, taking high-resolution images demands a large lens. Very rapidly, the optics become “the size of a bus”, says Brady. And high-resolution cameras usually have a limited field of view, meaning that they can see only a small slice of the total scene at a time. For example, each of the four 1.4-gigapixel cameras being used in the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, which will scan the night sky for potentially dangerous near-Earth objects such as asteroids, focuses on a view of the sky only three degrees wide. And each uses a 1.8-metre mirror and a large array of light-sensing chips to accomplish the feat.

AWARE-2 sidesteps the size issue by using 98 microcameras, each with a 14-megapixel sensor, grouped around a shared spherical lens. Together, they take in a field of view 120 degrees wide and 50 degrees tall. With all the packaging, data-processing electronics and cooling systems, the entire camera is about 0.75 by 0.75 by 0.5 metres in volume.

The current version of the camera can take images of about one gigapixel; by adding more microcameras, the researchers expect eventually to reach about 50 gigapixels. Each microcamera runs autofocus and exposure algorithms independently, so that every part of the image — near or far, bright or dark — is visible in the final result. Image processing is used to stitch together the 98 sub-images into a single large one at the rate of three frames per minute.

“With this design, they’re changing the game,” says Nourbakhsh.

Super video
The Duke group is now building a gigapixel camera with more sophisticated electronics, which takes ten images per second — close to video rate. It should be finished by the end of the year. The cameras can currently be made for about US$100,000 each, and large-scale manufacturing should bring costs down to about $1,000. The researchers are talking to media companies about the technology, which could for example be used to film sports: fans watching gigapixel video of a football game could follow their own interests rather than the camera operator’s.

The challenge, says Michael Cohen, head of the Interactive Visual Media group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, is dealing with the huge amount of data that these cameras will produce.

The gigapixel camera that takes ten frames per second will generate ten gigabytes of data every second — too much to store in conventional file formats, post on YouTube or e-mail to a friend. Not everything in these huge images is worth displaying or even recording, and researchers will have to write software to determine which data are worth storing and displaying, and create better interfaces for viewing and sharing gigapixel images. “The technology for capturing the world is outpacing our ability to deal with the data,” says Nourbakhsh.

It’s all becoming very clear to me now…

Chas

Click thumbnail to see full-size image

chilly - 18 June 2012 01:57 PM

also if u will decide u want a camera take a look at Red cameras, they can capture 4k resolution http://www.red.com/products

Chilly
Those have to be the dang ugliest cameras I’ve ever seen.
Nikon Cameras are a thing of beauty, practically art into themselves.

But thanks for the objective view points…

Though, you likely aren’t a photographer and so have no clue about this subject which you try to
spak abou… please!!

Ah, keep to subjects you have actual factual knowledge.

thanks

Chas

Number of megapixels is not really that important whether it is 22 Megapixels or 36 megapixels.

The talent of the photographer is way more important. LOL.

Jan

Hi Jan,
Well ofcourse what you mention is partially correct. Being an excellent photographer does take some skills which can be learned and with practice, compose marvelous photos. But with large megapixel photos, cropping can be done, where the chosen segment or section of the pic can be blown up to magnificent proportions, and still be perfectly clear sharp and bright. No pixilation. So for me, having those extra options is actually a Godsend and truly a photographers dream come to fruition.

I’m very interested in some poster sized prints...so many of my subjects, get the full exposure they so deserve.
Hope you are doing well, and practising your ABC’s!!

Chas

50 Gigapixel Camera May Be The Future Of Photography
Lee Rannals

Imagine having a camera that could take a broad picture of surrounding landscape, but would be able to crop down to view a single ladybug sitting on a leaf. That’s just about what Duke University and the University of Arizona researchers have come up with.

Scientists have developed a 50 gigapixel camera, which is essentially like using more than 6,000 Apple iPhones to capture an image with the same resolution.

The 50,000 megapixel camera may be more of a pipe dream right now, but scientists believe as technology continues to shrink down, it could be available to the general public within five years.

The megapixel rating of a camera shows just how much resolution a picture will have once an image has been taken.  Pixels are the individual “dots” of data, so the higher the pixel count, the higher the resolution.

The team lead David Brady explained how they were able to develop the ultra-resolution gigapixel camera.

“Each one of the microcameras captures information from a specific area of the field of view,” Brady said. “A computer processor essentially stitches all this information into a single highly detailed image. In many instances, the camera can capture images of things that photographers cannot see themselves but can then detect when the image is viewed later.”

He said the main challenge for the researchers was developing high-performance, low-cost micro camera optics and components.

“While novel multiscale lens designs are essential, the primary barrier to ubiquitous high-pixel imaging turns out to be lower power and more compact integrated circuits, not the optics,” he said.

The prototype camera is two-and-half square feet, and 20 inches deep. Only about three percent of the camera is made of the optical elements, while the rest is made of the electronics and processors.

The researchers said the area featuring the processors and electronics is what would need to be cut-down in order to make it a more practical use for everyday photographers.

“The camera is so large now because of the electronic control boards and the need to add components to keep it from overheating,” Brady said. “As more efficient and compact electronics are developed, the age of hand-held gigapixel photography should follow.”

The University of Arizona team helped to develop the software that combines the images from the microcameras into one large 50 gigapixel image.

Michael Gehm, team leader and assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Arizona, said supercomputers face similar problems as to developing the optics.

“Supercomputers face the same problem, with their ever more complicated processors, but at some point the complexity just saturates, and becomes cost-prohibitive,” Gehm said. “Our current approach, instead of making increasingly complex optics, is to come up with a massively parallel array of electronic elements.”

He likened the way the optics work together with its lenses to how a computer network works.

“A shared objective lens gathers light and routes it to the microcameras that surround it, just like a network computer hands out pieces to the individual work stations,” Gehm said. “Each gets a different view and works on their little piece of the problem. We arrange for some overlap, so we don’t miss anything.”

The researchers published details of the new camera in the journal Nature.

ICredit: Duke University Imaging and Spectroscopy Program

Chas

Click thumbnail to see full-size image

Canon

If you have ever pondered the reasoning, how that of a high end camera, could cost so very much money, seeing this video might help you justify the expense.

How Canon built your digital camera

This is a very interesting if technical view, inside the Canon Camera manufacturing factory.

Chas