Second Thoughts on Nikon D800

  About 2 weeks have past since I bought the D800, I started noticing the pros and cons of this camera even more (limitations/strengths). Might as well write what I found out so far. In terms of handling yes it is actually heavy if you consider the total weight of lens and body. I currently use the Nikon 50mm 1.4G lens with the D800 and it weighs about 1.2kg and if I add an external flash (SB700) about 1.5kg.

   Another area that stood out for me was the 2 card slot function not found in the entry level APS-C sized camera I used (D5100) Compared to Nikon's entry level FX camera the D600, uses 2 SD card slots. I must say the D800 loses at this match. The D800 uses 1 compact flash slot and 1 SD card slot, for me it gives me a headache since the two medias are different in size and price.

     What I did not like the most was the Compact flash is at the brink of extinction. Although Compact flash came out earlier than SD cards, manufactures are almost halting the production of CF cards since it is already substituted by the SD cards due to the low cost high production rate along with the higher capacity being produced to the market. As of 2013 (Tokyo) 16GB Sandisk CF is about $70 vs same 16GB Sandisk SD for $20-30 for same speed (Class10 30mb/s)

     But the pros (good) to having two card slots is the ability to separate the files (RAW and JPEG) for example writing Raw files to my SD card and JPEG to my CF card. this helps me alot when transferring files to my notebook pc to view on Photoshop and post process.

     The 36.3megapixel should NOT be underestimated lightly. In order to support the full megapixels I realized, it is essential to have a very large capacity hard drive to store your photos. Raw files are about 50mgb and Jpeg 20mgb (total 70megabyte) and I have taken about 500 photos which is about 35GB already in 2 weeks. In a year that is equivalent of somewhere about 420GB. In order to support the data it is worth to consider having the enough storage, And horsepower (laptop computing power) to efficiently transfer the data and post process the files. Honesty it takes 2-3x more time to read a raw file on my computer!!! than my D5100 photos.

I might have rambled too much but that was my 2nd impression of what I have thought about this camera, there is more to say, but Im still happy that I got this camera instead of the D600 although its popular among enthusiast.