I was in the midst of writing a blog post when a friend suggested that I try out his Nikon d800. Sure, how bad can it be? It turned to be a surprised to me. Its huge. Its heavy and its quite cumbersome to operate.
It has only been a couple of days that I have the camera with me. Togther with the camera body, my friend also loaned me a 85mm f1.8 nikkor, a tokina 20-35mm 2.8 and a very heavy and big 70-210 2.8 lens. Although I have yet to shoot with the lenses mentioned, I could not contained my excitement as I am now able to mate my Carl Zeiss 85mm 1.4 to an actual Nikon body. I actually wanted to shoot with my pre-Ai Nikkon 50mm f2, but apparently, the d800 wont take such pre-Ai mount lenses. Fortunately, no damage was done, both physically and egoistically.
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| A quick snap. |
Shooting with a manual focus lens on the d800 was and is still quite challenging. There is no focus peaking, no split prism and no effect preview. Its back to basics shooting. You have to use experience in knowing how its metering works, when to over or under expose. You also have to trust yourself more when it comes to focusing.
Not to mentioned its size and weight.You really have to adapt to the weight and the bulk of the d800. Compared my Sony a7ii and even my A99, this camera is huge-er a and heavy-er.
The controls is something of a steep learning curve too, Unlike the Fuji Xt2 where its just dials OR buttons, the d800 requires one to press a button AND turn a dial to make changes to the settings. I really am so appreciative, however, that the aperture can be controlled through the aperture ring on the lens and the shutters speed via one of the dials. As with all learning curve, I should be able to overcome the curve sooner, rather than later.
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| My eldest, in his private space. |
The file size is one of the biggest that I have to work with. Even uploading to Flickr takes a surprisingly long time. By the way pictures taken using the Carl Zeiss 85mm 1.4 can be seen here. I have yet to shoot more with the camera body, hopefully I will be able to take more pictures and upload it sooner rather than later. Already I have the body fixed to the Tokina 20-35mm 2.8. Lets see what tomorrow brings. I don't usually shoots with zoom lenses.
Thank you for reading.
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