D800E vs 5D M3, and the billionth question.

What lens and the Dx do you have.

Continue with that brand.

That's a really good point Shooter. 36mp definitely gives you the advantage.

I started with a Sony NEX 5N with a 50mm f/1.8prime and 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3(both e-mounts) and the a77 using 50mm f/1.4 prime and 'kit' lens. The reasons I've chosen D800e and 5DM3 is because I don't think Sony has reached the level of what the Nikon and Canon can do with this price range. While I like the versatility of my two current cameras, especially the 5N's compact nature, neither are what I would call professional or have what I would need to move to the next step.

The Nikon D800 and D800e is the best highest resolution camera on the market PERIOD. It produces the most detail, best dynamic range and basically bests the 5DIII in most respects.

BUT....

The 5DIII nails focus far more often and more easily. I've used both a LOT. I have friends with both. And in spite of fanboy denial the Nikon D800 AF is not quite right. Under some types of light it will give you a lock and be off. The AF issue is VERY common. I've yet to see a SINGLE D800 without it to some degree. There are people who claim their cameras give them no trouble, but consider that we don't always shoot the same way. Oddly (but tellingly) those with troubles are posting many more photos than those who claim their cameras are perfect!

Another important issue is SERVICE. At the moment Nikon service is an outright TRAVESTY. I think even Nikon fans know this is true at this point. After building some wonderful cameras and lenses, Nikon managed to nearly ruin it all with terrible customer support.

So why do I still own the D800 and the Nikon system? Because it's STILL superior to Canon. Nikon is truly state of the art, like a Porsche compared to Canon's very good (but boring) Honda.

The D800 system is killer....for portraits or pretty much anything else.









Robert

One reason I love the D800 body style (I'm coming from D200, D300 and D700) is that I can very quickly make lots of changes to settings. No menu diving. Flip a few buttons and/or switches, and it's a different camera.

I can't really hand the camera to someone else to use though. Too customized often, particularly due to AF-ON (and usually set for Aperture priority with a lot of changing of ISO).

One think Nikon sucks at is the ability to set custom menus that actually a) are fixed, and b) have ALL settings available. You can set up 4 banks of settings, but can't select all the settings in there, just some/most. And if you dial in a change, it saves with that bank. So I just manually change things as needed, which is thankfully pretty quick. But you do have to pick up the camera and be in the habit the first time of the day to review all the switch settings and ISO value before shooting.

On the right-side AF point for portraits, that's simply because if you have the shutter release on top (which I always do with a grip, but even if I tip the camera without it), it's the right-side AF points that are going to be up near the eyes.

I fully comply. To be able to crop in post give you the opportunity to enhance the picture, or to make a complete new picture out of the one you took at first sight.

Shooting horizontally still allows you to make a 18MP photo in portrait mode.

I think thats the main advantage of using D800 for weddings. And if you don't need your pictures that large its easy to reduce the image size in post.

Shotcents said:

Shotcents wrote:

The 5DIII nails focus far more often and more easily. I've used both a LOT. I have friends with both. And in spite of fanboy denial the Nikon D800 AF is not quite right. Under some types of light it will give you a lock and be off. The AF issue is VERY common. I've yet to see a SINGLE D800 without it to some degree. There are people who claim their cameras give them no trouble, but consider that we don't always shoot the same way. Oddly (but tellingly) those with troubles are posting many more photos than those who claim their cameras are perfect!

Click to expand...

I am sorry but I have to disagree quite a bit with you on this.
Coming from Canon myself I do not see much of a difference in 'nailing' the photo. There is nearly to none difference in the AF accuracy between D800 and 5D MKIII.

That you see some more pictures of people with 'troublesome' AF is due to the fact how the Internet works. People in distress tend to want to make their point by showing how 'bad' the AF is. While in many cases it comes down to their own poor technique.

Those that are satisfied go out, take pictures and enjoy their camera instead of wanting to make themselves heard. I am not saying that D800 had a flawless launch but neither was Canons 1D MKIII and MKIV's AF system.

I have both cameras (a D800, a D800E, now a D7100, and a 5D, 5DII, and a 5DIII). I'm a landscape so that not be what you do. I DO love detail and I do make somewhat large prints (2 foot x 3 foot are my favorite sizes to display in commercial spaces). Every day I can choose which camera to pick up and use because I now have lenses for both brands of cameras.

I choose one of the Nikon not only because of the increased visible resolution but the greater dynamic range and the neutral colors that come from Raw shooting. The files are compressed but lossless so they average about 42 MB per file and not the 70 MB per file that people that don't have the camera try to convince you of. The new D7100 has files that average about 31 MB in size. To make life somewhat better I treated myself to spending $16.00 on a Transcend usb 3.0 card reader. Boy is that fast (also a Lexar 3.0 card reader). I do have a pretty new computer but I did go all out with a 30" Dell Ultrasharp monitor to really see details up close and personal.

As far as some people are concerned they say that we Canon users should just accept the small Canon sensors. Canon will announcement their high MP camera someday but I'm not getting any younger. The horse was good in its day. Now I drive a car.

Shotcents said:

Shotcents wrote:

The Nikon D800 and D800e is the best highest resolution camera on the market PERIOD. It produces the most detail, best dynamic range and basically bests the 5DIII in most respects.

BUT....

The 5DIII nails focus far more often and more easily. I've used both a LOT. I have friends with both. And in spite of fanboy denial the Nikon D800 AF is not quite right. Under some types of light it will give you a lock and be off. The AF issue is VERY common. I've yet to see a SINGLE D800 without it to some degree. There are people who claim their cameras give them no trouble, but consider that we don't always shoot the same way. Oddly (but tellingly) those with troubles are posting many more photos than those who claim their cameras are perfect!

Another important issue is SERVICE. At the moment Nikon service is an outright TRAVESTY. I think even Nikon fans know this is true at this point. After building some wonderful cameras and lenses, Nikon managed to nearly ruin it all with terrible customer support.

So why do I still own the D800 and the Nikon system? Because it's STILL superior to Canon. Nikon is truly state of the art, like a Porsche compared to Canon's very good (but boring) Honda.

The D800 system is killer....for portraits or pretty much anything else.




Robert

Click to expand...

Hi Robert

I think that its only Nikon in the states that's having the service issues.. there's another 6.7 billion of us on the planet..LOL..and Australia service is first class in my experience ...not a fanboy..but just making sure you know that the sun doesn't just circle the USA..

Just a Photographer said:

Just a Photographer wrote:

Just a Photographer said:

Shotcents wrote:

The 5DIII nails focus far more often and more easily. I've used both a LOT. I have friends with both. And in spite of fanboy denial the Nikon D800 AF is not quite right. Under some types of light it will give you a lock and be off. The AF issue is VERY common. I've yet to see a SINGLE D800 without it to some degree. There are people who claim their cameras give them no trouble, but consider that we don't always shoot the same way. Oddly (but tellingly) those with troubles are posting many more photos than those who claim their cameras are perfect!

Click to expand...

I am sorry but I have to disagree quite a bit with you on this.
Coming from Canon myself I do not see much of a difference in 'nailing' the photo. There is nearly to none difference in the AF accuracy between D800 and 5D MKIII.

That you see some more pictures of people with 'troublesome' AF is due to the fact how the Internet works. People in distress tend to want to make their point by showing how 'bad' the AF is. While in many cases it comes down to their own poor technique.

Those that are satisfied go out, take pictures and enjoy their camera instead of wanting to make themselves heard. I am not saying that D800 had a flawless launch but neither was Canons 1D MKIII and MKIV's AF system.

Click to expand...

I think that this has a lot to do with whether or not the bodies have been calibrated properly. This may be an over statement but unfortunately too many Nikon bodies just aren't. I do not pay much attention to what I read on the internet about such matters. I do pay attention to my own eyes though. I have gone through 5 D800 bodies before getting one (finally) that has no focus issues. Been through 2 D800e bodies as well. I did play with a 5D MKIII for a few days a couple of months ago and saw absolutely no issues with accurately obtaining focus. On the other hand, I DID see something very strange. That was that on a very high rate of shots, the Canon just did not focus correctly on ANYthing in the scene. Shooting with flash on a tripod made no difference, it just did not show anything whatsoever tack sharp in the scene. This happened to me on several occasions. I do see the same behavior with my D800 and D800e at times, but at MUCH lower a percentage rate. Perhaps the Canon I used was jusst defective, I don't know..but it was alarming.

Although 5D MKIII is a good overall camera its not that doesn't have any problems.
Canon has problems of its own and its called shadow details and shadow recovery.Its due to the way Canon builds its sensors and how they are read out.

When doing shadow recovery on any Canon you will start to see a horrible grid pattern that is really annoying. Also the Canon 5D MKIII doesn't have very good AF on low contrast subjects where its hard to distinguish different subjects.

I think too many people in here think that the grass is greener on the other side, but are forgetting that the perfect camera doesn't exist.

I neglected to mention that I also do street and slow shutter photography(especially at night capturing the traffic patterns) as well. Extreme detail and and light sensitivity would most likely be better in the Nikon. Correct if I'm wrong in this since you own a variety of bodies.

I'm not a professional photographer and I don't shoot with either the D800/E or the 5D series, but I'm friendly with a few professionals who work for Magnum, National Geo, and a major magazine and we talk a lot.

First: Don't quit your day job. Photography is a tough business and any swinging d*ck that has a credit card with sufficient ceiling is your competition. To be successful you must develop a style, a clientele, work very hard, and be lucky. I don't think your endpoint here is to shoot weddings, although Ansel Adams shot weddings up into the late 1950s, which was before he was discovered. The rest is history in his case.

Two: Not sure what your primary subjects or types of photography you're doing but that is a determining factor on your brand, camera, and lens selection. In other words, if you're shooting people, go with something like the Canon; they have better flesh tones IMO. If you're shooting landscape, it's all about pixel count like the Nikon. Yeah I know you can shoot RAW and correct it.....Right. There's only so much you can do.

Three: Pay more attention to the lenses, lens selection, and performance. The biggest investments you will make will or should be in good and fast glass. You may use some high end zooms, but you will definitely need some high end primes. I like Nikon lenses for sharpness but I prefer the Canon look for flesh tones for DSLRs. My favorite are Leicas, but we're talking DSLRs. YMMV.

Four and finally: Find out what the working pros are shooting in the area of photography you're interested. I live in DC where much of the photography is related to people in the news, gov't, etc. Almost all shoot Canons. Really!

There's more to it than DxO, sharpness, and megapixels.

BTW, I still own a couple of D300 and the "Trinity Lenses", as well as some Leicas. The D300 was good stuff in its day and the lenses were great, but if I started over with DSLRs, I'd go with Canon without hesitation.

Hey thanks for the helpful tips. In fact I'd like to thank everyone for their input! I've been getting more feedback here then the same question posted over in the appropriate Canon Forum. And don't worry Vetteran I'm well aware of all that this as a profession entails. In fact I just started a new day job to help support this effort. As far as photography goes I like to shoot street and slow-shutter. I'll be shooting a wedding in couple months and will be using one or the other(maybe both) by then. Now for some latest comments. To me, it's definitely a lot more then just the bodies like it's been pointed out before. It's about overall composition and how much flexibility you might have in post or getting more overall usable photos the first time. Nikon just released a firmware update for the D800/E and from what I've heard it's done a lot to improve some of the initial pet peeves(as I'll call them). I'd like to hear more about that and I'll post this same question over in the Nikon forum. Also, I know it's really about the glass and not so much what's behind it. I hear everything on anything about Nikon glass e.g Holy Trinity and not much about canon unless its the HT equivalents. Currently I've used 24-70 f/2.8g and 50 f/1.8g on a D700 both some spectacular results. What are some of the experiences with Canon using the equivalent or better lenses?

Body choices are tough questions. I shoot primarily people in the studio, and secondarily, landscape. I'm a Nikon shooter, particularly now that the D800E and D7100 are out. Does that mean I'm anti-Canon? Nope. I don't like their UI, which is probably the biggest obstacle for me, but if I were to win the lottery, I would have a Canon body so I could mount a couple of the really nice Canon lenses.... my view is that no single lens lineup completely blows away the other and there will always be spots in the line where you might find the grass greener on the other side. Now, if I won the lottery, would I buy the 5D iii? Nope - really the only Canon body I like from an image quality standpoint is the 1DX and I'd skip the rest. At the same time, being really honest, the 5D iii is quite likely one of the best all-around or "pretty good at everything while excellent at nothing" bodies, compared to the D800E which is absolutely world class at studio and landscape photography, and perhaps not quite as suited to event work as the 5D iii would be. So if I were the powerball lottery winner, I might have a 5Diii with that new Canon 24-70 and that Canon 17 TS lens (and probably not much else - I'm really not that blown away by most of the rest of their glass, but those two lenses are fantastic), and a D800E for studio and landscape work. So in some ways, body "roles" have switched lately. The Nikon D700 was a "good at everything but perfect at nothing" body but now the D800E is more of a "perfect for a few things but not quite as good at everything" body. So perhaps this is the difference maker for you.

So ultimately I think you need to figure out what your specific needs are. AT this moment in time, if what I needed FIRST and highest priority was the best current (not future, but right now) AF system in a body that did pretty much a lot of things pretty well, even if it wasn't the absolute best at any one thing, the Canon 5D iii (or better yet, the 1DX) would be the one, if you can deal with their UI (which of course is personal). However, note the emphasis placed on really, truly, honestly needing the very best in current AF system over ALL other aspects. Not "I think I want the best AF", but really truly shooting subjects where it matters. (Not that the Nikons are bad, they are not, but at this time as I write this, I give Canon the AF crown, particularly in the 1DX).

However, now let's talk about backup bodies. I shoot with a D800E with a very small D7100 as a backup. Canon has *nothing* in the AP-C lineup that is close to the D7100 - the D7100 blows away the the 7D (quite honestly with no exaggeration my least favorite current DSLR from any manufacturer). The D7100 is a small viewfinder little DX camera that acts like an FX camera in terms of image quality at lower ISO, which is the first in my experience (and I've shot digital - of various brands, since 2003 and have friends who shoot Canon, Olympus, etc, so I have more-than-just-Nikon experience here). So on the Nikon side, I think the primary body + backup body argument is stronger if you want your backup small and light. And on it goes - you could go back and forth. But if you needed lightning fast, precise, tunable AF, yea, the 1DX is about as good as it gets. But at what point is "good enough, good enough", and that question can be raised about sensor performance as well as AF performance.

Lens wise, since you asked, IMO Canon's best lens might be the 17 T/S. A very specialist lens, but a very fine one. Canon engineers obviously got hacked at Nikon lens designers blowing them away for decades in wide angle lens design and came up with something truly special. The new Canon 24-70 is quite nice, and like all professional 70-200/2.8 lenses, the new Canon there is quite nice. Canon super tele's (the exotic stuff) are also world class too. They have a slightly better 24 TS option too. But the mid line stuff? I'd take Nikons 24/1.4 over the Canon, the Nikon 28/1.8G over any wide Canon makes except the 17, and you'd probably be a buyer of the Sigma 35/1.4 since it's better than either Canon or Nikon, and I definitely prefer the two Nikon 85's, particularly the affordable 85/1.8G, over the Canon counterparts. At 135mm I wouldn't bother with either and go for the expensive but brilliantly excellent Zeiss 135/2 instead, so that's mount agnostic in this discussion.

Ultimately you may need to spend the time and rent each body for a week (certainly at least that long) and see what YOU think. How YOU react and interact to the body and the UI is actually important, as we have to remember the image creation process is important and can often trump the smaller differences in technical image quality. Some people hate Canon UI, some hate Nikon UI. Neither is wrong, it's up to you. But I do think there are sensor advantages to Nikon as well as backup body advantages to Nikon right now, while there are slight AF performance advantages to Canon right now. If your agnostic to the UI, those differences might decide which way to go.

As far as other photographers, I live in a pretty busy southern US market and I travel extensively in the summers. I see a pretty even split between Nikon and Canon, with perhaps a smidge more Canon in the sports market and a bit more Nikon in the landscape market as of late. Most pro's I know don't get into the brand arguments as much as the forum folks do; talk to someone good, they're almost always discussing light, timing, being in the right place, composition, and have the technical side of their craft, for their brand of choice, down so well its second nature, so they don't have to think about it much. They'll switch when something compelling comes out, or often if they get hacked off at the type of pro service they are getting when they need it.

-m

Bruce Photography said:

Bruce Photography wrote:
I'm not getting any younger. The horse was good in its day. Now I drive a car.

Click to expand...

My mule and I had a good run too, now enjoying the cars very much! more so since yesterday...

IMO: There are thousands of satifised d800 users, myself included. They don't spend their time on this forum posting about it. Make the decision on the merits of the cameras, and don't worry about the issues that go so much attention in this forum.

I agree with you j_photo for the most part but I still like to see what some of the opinions are out there. I'd like to hear more about the recent update Nikon released. It's fixed the AF issue apparently.

D800e, D800, or even the D600. You will have more detail than you can use - providing your skill level is up to these three cameras.

Maxwiz said:

Maxwiz wrote:

I agree with you j_photo for the most part but I still like to see what some of the opinions are out there. I'd like to hear more about the recent update Nikon released. It's fixed the AF issue apparently.

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max: fair enough. I didn't mean to criticize your asking the question. I must be surffering from complaint fatigue.