It's been a busy month, and I'm still trying to dig out and get everything cleaned up and some projects I've been working on finished. However, I slipped up on a few things, so let's correct them. Plus I didn't make clear enough explanations or comments on a few others. Here's my quick make-up session:
- Sendai. The D800 is indeed made in Sendai. That's what I originally wrote and asserted, but somewhere in the launch excitement I wrote Thailand (which was one of the main places where it was launched). Sendai is assembling both the D800 and D4, as expected. Capacity--at least for a single shift--seems to be about the same as in the D3/D700 era: 5k D4 units a month, 30k D800 units a month. To my knowledge, Nikon is only running one shift at Sendai at the moment.
- D800E. I haven't been perfectly clear on this: there is indeed a filter on the D800E, it's just not Nikon's traditional two-stage antialiasing filter. I've been having a hard time tracking down an absolute answer on what that D800E filter does. Rob Galbraith wrote that it blurs verically and then deblurs, while the non-E model blurs horizontallly and then blurs vertically. I've gotten conflicting answers out of Nikon sources, but I believe Galbraith is correct: the front stage of the filter on the D800E is part of an optical system in the filter itself.
- D800 versus D700. Do me a favor. Forget about the sensor. Pretend for a moment that they have the same exact sensor, but all the other features stay the same for each model. Which one do you want? Right. Thought so. The notion that the D800 isn't an upgrade for D700 users is mistaken. It is. Clearly it is (video, exposure, focus, new menu features, better Live View, etc.). Most of the complaints are about two things: (1) pixel-level noise likelihood at high ISO values; and (2) file size. I can't do anything about #2 (though see next point). I'd also say it's premature to make conclusions about #1. We went through this same thing with the D3 versus D3x, though there the controversy centered on the cost differential for reduced pixel-level integrity at high-ISO values.
- D800 "sizes". A lot of people seem confused by "size" versus "crop." The D800 supports Large, Medium, and Small sizes for JPEG and TIFF. It supports 1.2x and DX (1.5x) crops for NEF, JPEG, and TIFF. Can you capture an image that stores in a smaller number of MBs? Sure. With JPEG and TIFF pick the smaller sizes, which downsample from the full frame. With NEF, it's trickier: you can pick a smaller frame crop to get smaller sized files, but you're also cropping from the full sensor, not downsampling.
- Lenses. Everyone seems to want a list of "D800-approved" lenses. There will never be such a thing. Absolutely nothing has changed from my Rationalizing Lenses article just because someone sprinkled in a few more megapixels. A good lens is still a good lens. A poor lens is still a poor lens.
- D4 Delivery date. I had heard in an interview with a Nikon executive last week that the D4 delivery date was being moved, but didn't report it at the time (call it a senior moment). I've now heard three different reasons for the delay from three different sources, but I don't think the reason is important. The net is that deliveries will start in mid-March instead of mid-February. Disappointing, yes. But Nikon doesn't make such delays unless they discovered something that is better dealt with before the camera ships. I trust that they're trying to make our initial D4 experiences top grade.
- WiFi. It appears the D800 can't use the new WT-5 transceiver. This has caused a lot of whining. But there's a simple solution: use an Eye-Fi card, which the D800 supports. It's actually a cheaper and simpler solution. But transferring 75MB raw files isn't going to be fun over WiFi no matter how you do it, especially if you're firing continuously.
- Lenses. Conspicuously absent so far in 2012 are lens announcements. One with the D4, none with the D800. I'm sure we'll get some when the D400 and other stuff rolls later this year, but I'm now very, very worried that Nikon doesn't understand lenses. Still not much in the way of DX wide angle options (two zooms). Still missing in action updates (notably 80-400mm, but there are more). But here's the big one that shows that Nikon doesn't get it: no lenses ready for video. If the D4/D800 are such great video cameras, does Nikon really expect us to use them with contrast AF? Where are the geared focus rings? Yes, I know that I can buy plenty of add-on choices here, some of which are okay. But Nikon isn't driving the car here, they're assuming we'll get there on our own. When you abdicate like that, you'd better watch out: the user may drive somewhere else. For example, I find my Zeiss lenses more suitable to third-party modification for video, not my Nikkors. Oops.