Equipment report: Nikon D800

I received a new Nikon D800 from Levines (http://www.eplevine.com/, but don't rely on their website. Call them. They're great.) at the end of April. Since that time, I've mostly resisted the paranoia that is associated in the forums at the release of most new high-end equipment. I've just used the camera.

The decision was a bit of  a struggle in itself, as I was torn between the D4 and its 10 fps and amazing low-light capabilities and hoping for a camera that would actually fit in my small hands. As a wildlife photographer, it's not like I don't have enough to carry with a 500mm lens, teleconverters, and associated gear. The other concern was a seemingly in-bred belief that a camera with that many megapixels could not possibly have good low light capabilities. The edges of the day always seem to present the best photographic possibilites, a fact so well illustrated when I spent a blissful morning in the pouring rain at Damon Point in Ocean Shores, WA photographing snowy owls :

                                Nikon D700, 700mm (500+1.4TC), ISO 1600, f5.6, 1/180sec


At the same time, as Nikon was not providing an 800mm lens that I'd been admiring on the Canon front for the past few years. So, I had the choice of a camera with decent cropping possibilities or totally switching systems, a seemingly daunting task. Enter the D800.
At this point, with about a month of use, I can say that I am quite happy with the D800. I haven't pushed it's low light abilities to any limit. Previously, I used my D300 whenever possible for birds, because of the smaller field of view, but I was never really happy with anything beyond an ISO of 800, and that was stretching it. Now, with the D800, I have fine examples of images at 1600, and I will test its ability to go higher.
For the first time since I've owned the Nikon 1.7 teleconverter, I have decent images made with it and the 500mm lens.Overall, the speed of focus is perhaps my favorite feature. The file size and phenomenal amount of cropping possible while still leaving a reasonably sized image has to be number 2.
It's hard to separate the detail preserved in the D800 images from the improved detail that one can get from Lightroom 4, as I added LR just a bit before the camera, but the combination is impressive. I've experimented a bit with Nikon NX again for processing, and I can't really see a difference in the finished product of NX vs LR. As LR is at this point easier for me to use and integrated with Photoshop, I doubt I'll be using NX much.

                                                        Nikon D800, 28-70mm lens @ 70mm, ISO 100, F11, 1/80 sec