I had an opportunity to work closely with the Fuji X-Pro1 and the new XF lenses for over a month in various environments and I have been intentionally delaying this review for one major reason – as of today (05/19/2012), there is still no RAW support for the Fuji X-Pro1 camera from Adobe. This means that I cannot work with RAW images in Lightroom or Photoshop like I have been doing with all recently announced cameras. I installed Silkypix software that supports Fuji X-Pro1 RAW files, but I ended up removing it from my computer almost immediately. I certainly did not feel like learning to use another image editing tool just because of no support from Adobe. I don’t know what’s taking Adobe and Fuji this long to provide RAW support, but it is certainly very frustrating to many Fuji X-Pro1 owners.

I have a love and hate relationship with the Fuji X-Pro1, which is unfortunate, because this could be such a phenomenal camera. On one side, the camera is compact, lightweight and produces stunning images. On the other hand, its autofocus system is terrible, manual focus is a pain and there are plenty of bugs and other issues. Similar to my experience with the X100, except the X100 had many of its issues addressed via firmware updates later on. I have no idea if Fuji is planning to make the X-Pro1 better the same way with firmware updates or not. Time will tell.

1) Fujifilm X-Pro1 Specifications

Main Features and Specifications:

1. Sensor: 16.3 MP (1.5x crop factor), 4.8µ pixel size
2. Sensor Size: 23.6 x 15.6mm
3. Resolution: 4896 x 3264
4. Native ISO Sensitivity: 200-6,400
5. Boost Low ISO Sensitivity: 100
6. Boost High ISO Sensitivity: 12,800-25,600
7. Sensor Cleaning System: Yes
8. Lens mount: FUJIFILM X mount
9. Weather Sealing/Protection: No
10. Body Build: Full Magnesium Alloy
11. Shutter: Up to 1/4000 and 30 sec exposure
12. Shutter Control: Focal Plane Shutter
13. Storage: 1x SD slot (SD/SDHC/SDXC compatible)
14. Viewfinder Type: Hybrid Multi Viewfinder with 100% coverage in Electronic mode
15. Speed: 6 FPS
16. Exposure Meter: TTL 256-zones metering
17. Built-in Flash: No
18. Autofocus: Yes
19. Manual Focus: Yes
20. LCD Screen: 3 inch diagonal with 1,230,000 dots
21. Movie Modes: Full 1080p HD @ 24 fps max
22. Movie Exposure Control: Full
23. Movie Recording Limit: 29 minutes
24. Movie Output: MOV (H.264)
25. GPS: No
26. Battery Type: NP-W126
27. Battery Life: 300 shots, 900 in power save mode
28. USB Standard: 2.0
29. Weight: 400g (excluding battery)
30. Price: $1,699 MSRP body only

A detailed list of camera specifications is available at Fujifilm.com.

2) Camera construction and handling

Similar to high-end DSLRs, the Fuji X-Pro1 is built tough with a full magnesium-alloy frame. The difference though, is that the Fuji X-Pro1 has a thin layer of magnesium alloy, making the camera very lightweight when compared to a DSLR. As a comparison, the Nikon D800 weighs 890 grams, while the X-Pro1 weighs more than half less at just 400 grams. While the camera is not designed to be weather-proof, I used it in very rainy conditions during my visit to London and the camera handled humidity and light continuous rain without any problems.

Handling-wise, I find the Fuji X-Pro1 to be great. The camera feels just right in hands and the lightweight Fuji lenses make the system very suitable for taking the camera everywhere you go. In my trip to UK, I decided to take the Nikon D800 with the 14-24mm and 24-70mm lenses, along with the Fuji X-Pro1 with 18mm and 35mm lenses. I came back with a lot more pictures with the Fuji X-Pro1, because I just did not feel like lugging around with a heavy DSLR and two lenses in a camera bag. The Fujinon 35mm f/1.4 lens was pretty much glued to the X-Pro1 body, hanging off my neck, while the 18mm lens comfortably sat in my jacket pocket. When I needed to go wider than 35mm, I would swap lenses and shoot. Can’t quite do that with the heavy D800. Even the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G prime feels much bulkier and heavier in comparison…

The camera exposure controls are superb. If you have used a DSLR before and never touched a rangefinder, you might find yourself looking for a way to switch the camera mode from Auto/Program to Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority or Manual. Unlike a modern DSLR, there is no camera mode switch. Here is how the camera looks from the top:

To change the camera to Shutter Priority, you simply rotate the top shutter speed dial located right next to the flash hotshoe (with a bunch of numbers going from “A” to 4000) to a desired shutter speed, while keeping the lens aperture ring at “A”. To change the camera to Aperture Priority, you leave the top shutter dial at “A”, while rotating the aperture ring to an aperture of your choice. To change the camera to Manual Mode, you pick whatever aperture you want on the lens and pick whatever shutter speed you want on the camera. Super simple and very intuitive, just like on older rangefinders. The only downside is that you cannot go in 1/3 increments when changing the shutter speed – there is simply not enough space to fit so many numbers on the rotary dial. In Aperture Priority mode, however, you can use the exposure compensation dial to fine-tune your exposure in 1/3 increments.

In general, the layout and design of the back of the camera is good, but I do have a couple of complaints. Here is how it looks:

The two main complaints for me are:

1. AF focus point is changed by pressing the “AF” button that is inconveniently located to the left bottom of the LCD. I constantly move the AF focus point when shooting, so this button should be elsewhere, or should be eliminated (see the next point below).
2. Why is the up arrow button (to the right of the LCD) dedicated to Macro feature? The arrow navigation buttons should be for changing the AF focus point, just like on Nikon DSLRs. I very much hope Fuji will make such choice available via a firmware update – it should not be that hard to implement this button change. And if buttons change the focus point, it would be great if the “AF” button could become a programmable function button.

Operating the camera and navigating the menu system is a breeze, except when dealing with some design issues and nasty bugs. Here is a list of issues I have found so far:

1. The On/Off switch problem. In some cases, the on/off switch does not work. I have had a few cases when I would turn the camera on and it would do absolutely nothing. The only thing you can do is move the switch to “Off” position and try again and then it works. I don’t know why this happens, but it is certainly annoying.
2. The battery insertion issue. Why does not Fuji learn from its prior mistakes? The battery on the X100 can be inserted in a wrong way and the Fuji X-Pro1 has exactly the same problem. All Fuji needs to do is shape the battery slightly differently on one side and the problem is solved.
3. RAW shooting at boosted ISO levels. Another X100 problem that never got addressed – why doesn’t Fuji allow shooting RAW at boosted ISO levels such as ISO 100, 12,800 and 25,600?
4. SD card writing problems. The Fuji X-Pro1 seems to have a problem working with some SD cards, just like the D800. I have two SanDisk Extreme Pro 8GB SDHC Class 10 (45 MB/sec) cards and both of them have severe writing issues when using the Fuji X-Pro1. Sometimes it takes forever for an image to finish writing from the memory buffer into the card. If I hit the play button the camera goes into a freeze mode with a rotating square and just sits like that for a few minutes. Turning the camera off does not do anything and the only two things you can do is either wait, or take the battery out and insert it back. Fuji seems to be using the same SD module as the D800, since both have the same problem with these cards.
5. Tripod mount placement. This issue is rather annoying, because the tripod mount socket is located off the center of the camera close to the battery/card compartment, making it painful to remove the card or battery while the camera is mounted. I use the Arca-Swiss quick release system and using a generic plate would keep the camera way off center. Hopefully a good custom plate from folks at Really Right Stuff will take care of this issue.
6. Auto ISO feature does not allow setting a minimum shutter speed. I understand this to be absent from point and shoot cameras, but for a camera worth more than $1500, ability to set minimum shutter speed should be there. Even the X100 can do this. Also, why doesn’t the camera allow to use Auto ISO at ISO 6400 and even ISO 12,800? High ISO noise performance is excellent, so the option should be there.
7. Bad battery life indicator. The battery life indicator on the camera is practically useless. I was happily shooting in London early morning with the battery indicator showing a “full” charge. Just after 10 or so shots, the camera went from completely full to blinking red “empty”. Why should I have to keep track of when I charged the battery and count the number of images that I captured? This is a really bad bug that needs to be addressed ASAP.
8. “Q” button issue. Pressing the “Q” button on the back of the camera while viewing through the OVF/EVF shows on the LCD screen instead of the EVF.
9. No option for different magnification levels when zooming in. A simple fix would be to allow using the zoom in/out buttons on the back of the camera to switch between different zoom magnification levels.
10. Firmware updates wipe out all camera settings. Whenever you apply a firmware update, whether that is to the camera body or a lens, it wipes out all camera settings.
11. AF issues. The Fuji X-Pro1 has a list of AF issues – see the “Autofocus” part of this review (along with the pain of using manual focus).

On the positive note, thanks to the recent firmware (version 1.01), the “aperture chatter” issue has been addressed, which was very annoying when operating the camera.

Just one more rant. The Fuji X-Pro1 has some great features like movie recording and panorama capture. But why doesn’t it have a simple intervalometer? The much cheaper Nikon 1 V1 has one, so why can’t Fuji provide it? Again, this is something that can be done via a firmware update.

3) Camera Sensor

At the heart of the X-Pro1 sits a brand new X-Trans CMOS sensor technology from Fuji. While traditional sensors with a repeating bayer-pattern color filter array exhibit moire problems and hence need an anti-aliasing filter to reduce moire by essentially blurring the image, the X-Trans CMOS sensor has a new color filter array that has a more random pattern that does not cause moire to occur in first place. Hence, an anti-aliasing filter is not necessary, which in turn translates to sharper, more detailed images.

Here is an illustration of a traditional bayer pattern color filter array compared to the new Fuji color filter array:

Top image: 1) Lens, 2) Sensor, 3) Optical low-pass filter.
Bottom image: 1) Lens, 2) Sensor, 3) Natural random arrangement of the fine grains of silver halide in film.

As you can see, the difference between the two is quite big.

Fuji says that their sensor not only delivers sharper images due to the lack of an anti-aliasing filter, but also has better color reproduction. Does the new X-Trans CMOS sensor work as advertised? It certainly does, in my opinion. The amount of detail from the camera when using the Fujinon 35mm and 60mm lenses (more on lenses below) is impressive when looking at images at 100%. And as I have already written before, the colors from the Fuji are simply outstanding. As a long time digital Nikon shooter, I am very impressed by what the X-Pro1 does with the colors. Not only does the camera produce beautiful colors, but Fuji clearly knows how to process skin tones – something Nikon is historically not very good at. This is quite evident even when looking at JPEG images straight out of the camera.

The X-Trans CMOS sensor with a new color filter is a great innovation. Sadly, most digital camera manufacturers today, including Nikon and Canon, still rely on the bayer pattern that was invented back in 1976 in Kodak labs. With all the new ultra high resolution sensors coming out, I believe manufacturers need to start adopting such innovations to get rid of the outdated anti-aliasing/blur filter.

4) Autofocus Performance and Accuracy

Here comes trouble. Fuji fans, get your rotten tomatoes ready, because you will probably want to use them after reading the next sentence. The autofocus system on the Fuji X-Pro1 sucks. Those who think otherwise, please give Nikon 1 V1 a try and you will see what I mean. Seriously, after all that trouble with the X100, I really hoped that Fuji engineers would do something special with the AF system on the X-Pro1. From what I can tell, looks like the Fuji X-Pro1 was developed around the same time as the X100. So many issues from the X100 migrated over to the X-Pro1…even the ones that were fixed via firmware updates!

Here is a list of compiled AF issues I have so far:

1. AF is slow and accuracy is terrible in low-light.
2. In many cases, the camera takes too long to acquire focus in AF-S (single) mode.
3. When re-acquiring focus, the camera will force the lens to start over and hunt for focus, even if the subject/object did not move at all.
4. After focus is successfully acquired, firing the shutter while continuing to half-press the shutter causes the camera to reacquire focus again.
5. LCD and EVF lock up / freeze between focus lock and exposure. The lag makes it difficult to photograph anything that moves. Surprisingly, this even happens when shooting in manual focus.
6. The AF-C (continuous tracking) mode is pretty much useless, since only the center focus point can be used for tracking subjects. AF-C should be no different than AF-S in terms of focus points.

And a couple of rants on manual focus:

1. Focus ring is terribly slow – so many rotations are needed to get from far to close and vice versa. Since manual focus happens through the camera, there should be an option to speed up manual focus for each ring rotation. Perhaps some camera setting that allows doubling or tripling the speed of focus change.
2. I am spoiled by the focus peaking feature on the Sony NEX cameras. Fuji should incorporate focus peaking to manual focus mode.

I tried photographing moving people and I was very disappointed with both AF-S and AF-C modes. AF-S obviously does not keep track of movement and by the time it acquires focus, the subject is already out of the focus zone. AF-C tracking with only one center focus point is too slow and unreliable. Take a look at this image that I captured in AF-C mode:

I tracked that guy with the center focus point for a while before firing the shutter (using the 35mm f/1.4 lens at f/2.8). As you can see, he is completely out of focus.

In short, forget about using this camera for anything that moves. While there is a known technique for manual focus lenses to pre-focus and then shoot from the same distance every time, I will to leave that with the Leica/Zeiss guys. This is a Fuji, and it has autofocus for a reason!

5) Fujinon Lenses

Let’s talk about the 3 Fujinon lenses that were released with the X-Pro1 – Fujinon 18mm f/2.0 XF R, Fujinon 35mm f/1.4 XF R and Fujinon 60mm f/2.4 XF Macro. It is interesting that Fuji only released prime lenses with the X-Pro1. This is certainly a welcome move for most pros out there and something I wish Nikon and Sony did with their mirrorless camera releases as well. Having plenty of zoom choices is good, but give us useful primes like 35mm f/1.4 first please! While I will be posting separate reviews of each of these lenses, here is a summary of what I think about them, individually.

1. The Fujinon 18mm f/2 is my least favorite out of the three due to its focal length and distortion, but it has its uses when a wide angle perspective is needed. When Adobe releases support for the Fuji X-Pro1 and its lenses, you will be able to fix distortion with a single click within the Lens Correction module. As for optics, its center performance is great, but the corners are rather weak, which is quite normal for a wide-angle lens.
2. The Fujinon 35mm f/1.4 is a must-have for any X-Pro1 owner. I personally did not want to take it off the camera, because the focal point is just right, optics are phenomenal and the lens produces very colorful images with beautiful, creamy bokeh. It is insanely sharp from center to edge, even at f/1.4. As I have already said before, the 35mm focal length on a 1.5x crop factor sensor is just right.
3. The Fujinon 60mm f/2.4 Macro is an insanely sharp lens from center to corner. It is excellent for macro and portraiture work, because it also renders beautiful bokeh when shooting at large apertures. With a lens hood attached it is the longest of the three and the heftiest.

In summary, all three lenses are superb, but if I wanted to pick one lens for the X-Pro1, it would certainly be the 35mm f/1.4.

What about lens handling and ergonomics? All three are very lightweight and compact for what they do, however, I do have a couple of notes/complaints:

1. All lenses are fully electronic and there are no manual controls (except for the aperture ring). You cannot even force the lens to extend/collapse its barrel when the camera is off.
2. Lens caps are designed badly, especially the rubber ones that attach to metal hoods. I lost mine within a week, because it does not stay on.
3. None of the lenses, including the 60mm f/2.4 Macro are image-stabilized.

These are not major issues, but still worth noting. I believe the manual focus ring issue that I mentioned in this review can be addressed by a firmware fix, unless it is physically impossible due to the way the motor works within each lens…

6) Hybrid Viewfinder

The Fuji X-Pro1 has a similar hybrid optical (OVF) / electronic (EVF) viewfinder as the Fuji X100 with one difference – it is designed for two different magnification levels (“wide” and “standard”) depending on what lens is mounted on the camera. Switching between the OVF and EVF is done through the switch on the front of the camera, as illustrated in the below image:

In OVF mode (which is basically you looking through the viewfinder glass), the viewfinder has a bright white overlay that shows the approximate boundaries of the lens, along with some other useful exposure information. I loved this in the X100 and I also like it on the X-Pro1, although the shown boundaries are far from accurate and they sometimes jump from one place to another when half-pressing the shutter. Switching to EVF mode shows what the sensor sees through the lens, so the framing is fully accurate and more information is available to be displayed, including the histogram. The EVF is good, but not as good as the super high-resolution EVF on the Sony NEX-7 camera.

When a short focal length lens is attached to the camera, such as the Fujinon 18mm f/2, the OVF operates in its “wide” mode (0.37x magnification). When longer focal length lenses are attached, the camera automatically switches to “standard” (0.60x magnification), which shows the subject closer, making it much easier to compose your shot. Here is how the magnification levels work:

As with other mirrorless cameras with viewfinders, the camera switches from LCD to EVF when you look through the viewfinder. I really like this clever design of the hybrid viewfinder.

7) Metering and Exposure

While the Fuji X-Pro1 does not have a sophisticated meter as the latest generation Nikon and Canon cameras, it actually works surprisingly well in most situations. The camera does have a tendency to overexpose and underexpose in unusual lighting situations, but that happens even with advanced DSLRs, so it is not anything unusual. Gladly, the exposure compensation dial is right there on the top of the camera, so altering the exposure is a very straightforward process.

If you are a Nikon shooter, you will notice an odd behavior on the Fuji, similar to what Sony cameras do as well – when the shutter is half-pressed, metering gets locked by the camera. Trying to rotate the aperture on the lens or moving the exposure compensation dial will do nothing and the exposure will remain locked. The only thing you can do is release the shutter, then adjust your exposure, then half-press again to get a different meter reading. On Nikon DSLRs, once you half-press the shutter, you can still continue to adjust the exposure and the meter will continue to adjust automatically. This is not a big problem for me, since I do not mind releasing the shutter and half-pressing it again, but it might annoy others that are used to the Nikon way of things.

8) Shooting Speed (FPS) and Battery Life

The Fuji X-Pro1 is a pretty fast camera that can shoot at 6 frames per second. The good news is that when the camera is shot in burst mode, the memory card write process does not freeze the camera like it does with the X100. If you want fast writes, make sure to get a really fast SD card. I used some 45 MB/sec class 10 SD cards and there was definitely noticeable difference between them and SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/sec cards. Also, as I have noted already, some cards like the older SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC (45 MB/sec) have compatibility problems with the X-Pro1, where the writing speeds can be extremely slow and frustrating and the camera becomes inoperable when trying to play an image or turn it off. When shooting in bursts, Fine JPEG images will shoot approximately 16-18 images before the buffer gets full. It then takes approximately 10 seconds for buffer to clear out and memory writes complete. If you shoot in RAW, the buffer will fill up at about 12-14 images and takes good 20+ seconds to clear out. These numbers are based on approximate calculations using the fastest SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC 95 MB/sec cards. Slower cards will take even longer to empty the camera buffer.

In terms of battery life, the X-Pro1 specs state 300 shots before the battery runs out, which is in line with other mirrorless cameras. However, there is one major problem as I have also noted above in this review – the battery life indicator in the camera is basically useless. It can go from solid full to empty in no time, so until a firmware fix comes out, get in the habit of charging your battery often and do not rely on this indicator.

9) Video / Movie Recording

It seems like all modern digital cameras are coming out with movie recording options and the Fuji X-Pro1 is not an exception. It can record either 720p or 1080p high-definition video at 24 fps with stereo sound and offers some control of exposure before recording (not during). Unlike DSLRs that have to have their mirrors flipped up, which limits viewing of video recording only on the camera LCD, the Fuji X-Pro1 can display recorded video both on its rear LCD and inside the hybrid viewfinder. You can choose a desired aperture, adjust exposure compensation and a few other camera settings, but you cannot adjust the shutter speed and ISO – those are chosen automatically by the camera based on the camera meter reading. There is also no external mic connectivity, so using an external audio recorder is not an option (unless it is done separately and then manually mixed later). Because there is no dedicated button or switch for recording videos, you have to go into the camera menu and change the drive mode from stills to movie and vice versa. In addition, there is no support for capturing images while recording a video. The really slow manual focus adjustment through lenses is frustrating when recording anything that moves relatively fast. I do not understand why the camera stops recording video when the shutter button is half-pressed. Half-pressing the shutter button should force the camera to reacquire focus, not to stop recording a video. Hopefully Fuji will also address this issue in future firmware updates, since I find it rather annoying. Lastly, subject tracking in AF-C (continuous) mode is also a source of frustration, not only because of a single center focus point, but also because tracking is very slow and inaccurate.

In summary, the video features of this camera are rather limited and buggy, designed for occasional capture of video, not anything serious.

10) Flash

Like most top-of-the-line professional DSLRs, the Fuji X-Pro1 does not come with a built-in flash. However, similar to the X100, the X-Pro1 comes with a standard size hotshoe that can be used with Fuji’s flashes such as EF-20, EF-X20, EF-42 and third party flashes and radio triggers such as PocketWizard Plus III. In addition, there is a sync port on the left side of the camera, which allows you to hook up any strobe with a sync cable directly. This all means that the Fuji X-Pro1 is friendly with pretty much any professional studio strobe. Bear in mind that when using flashes, flash sync speed is limited to 1/180 of a second.

For me, having a standard hotshoe is a big plus, since I work in studio environments quite a bit. Here are some sample images taken in a studio with the X-Pro1:

11) Dynamic Range

When it comes to dynamic range, from what I can tell from the JPEG images, the new X-Trans CMOS sensor seems to deliver great dynamic range in photographs at even high ISO levels. It is no Nikon D800, but from what I can tell, it looks pretty close to what the D7000 can do. I have not performed any scientific tests yet and it seems like folks at DxOMark have not performed their tests either, because there is no RAW support for Adobe products yet. Once RAW support is available, I will go back to my X-Pro1 RAW images and pull some details out from shadows to see what it is capable of.

See the next page for Fuji X-Pro1 ISO performance, along with comparisons to Nikon D800 and Canon 5D Mark III.

12) ISO Performance at low ISOs (ISO 100-800, JPEG)

Some technical junk:

1. White Balance: As Shot
2. EXIF information is preserved in the images
3. Focusing was performed through Live-View Contrast Detect
4. Long exposure NR: Off
5. High ISO NR: Off
6. Image Format: JPEG
7. Imported images into Lightroom 4 and normalized to 16.3 MP resolution
8. Lightroom export: sRGB JPEG Quality 80

Here is the full image, showing which area of the image I cropped below:

Let’s take a look at how the Fuji X-Pro1 performs at low ISOs. Here are some crops at ISO 100 (boost), 200, 400 and 800:

Both are very clean, but the boosted ISO 100 looks much more overexposed when compared to ISO 200 for some reason. I would avoid using ISO 100 on the X-Pro1 for this reason.

JPEG output on ISO levels 400 and 800 looks as clean as ISO 200.

13) High ISO Performance (ISO 1600-6400, JPEG)

High ISO performance is a very important measure of sensor quality for low-light photography. Here is how the Fuji X-Pro1 performs at high ISO levels between ISO 1600 and 6400:

Again, going from ISO 800 to ISO 1600 practically does not add any noise to the image, even in the shadows. ISO 3200, on the other hand, adds a little bit of noise and here we can see the effect of noise reduction applied by the camera on JPEG images – clarity is slightly reduced as a result.

At ISO 6400 some details get washed away and we are starting to see some artifacts here and there. Still, the performance at ISO 6400 is excellent. Whatever Fuji does with its JPEG processing is very impressive.

14) High ISO Performance “Boost” (ISO 12800-25600)

Fuji X-Pro1 has two extra ISO “boost” levels – ISO 12800 and ISO 25600 for extreme situations. Take a look at these:

Boosting ISO to 12800 results in more noise and much more aggressive noise reduction by the camera. Noise is apparent in the shadows (although noise reduction makes it look a little “muddy”) and more artifacts are visible throughout the image. Still ISO 12800 is very usable in my opinion, especially when down-sampled. ISO 25600, on the other hand, looks too muddy and washed for my taste.

15) ISO Performance Summary

While I am still waiting for RAW support from Adobe in order to do direct comparisons against Nikon D800 and Canon 5D Mark III, JPEG samples above show that the Fuji X-Pro1 is capable of excellent image quality at ISO levels all the way to ISO 12800. To date, I have not seen a camera that can render such beautiful, noise-free JPEG images – I am simply amazed by how good the JPEG output of the Fuji X-Pro1 is.

But I cannot speak for Fuji X-Pro1′s true sensor performance for now, especially in comparison to heavyweights like D800 and 5D Mark III. That’s because JPEG output is obviously rendered by the camera and noise reduction is applied. As soon as Adobe releases a new version of Lightroom and Camera RAW with Fuji X-Pro1 support, I will update this review with image crops that show RAW sensor performance.

Camera comparisons will be provided when Adobe releases support for X-Pro1 RAW files

22) Summary

I got very excited when I read Fuji’s press release about the X-Pro1, because it was clear from the announcement that the camera was specifically targeted at pros and photo enthusiasts that need a high-quality camera that rivals DSLRs in image quality, minus the bulk and weight. With excellent specifications, a beautiful and stylish black retro design, the camera looked like it had a great potential to be my full-time travel companion. Lugging around a heavy DSLR in a backpack is not always practical and I find myself leaving the heavy gear at home more often than I would like. I have been waiting for a great mirrorless camera for a while now and the X-Pro1 looked very promising.

I received the X-Pro1 around the same time when I received the Nikon D800 and the Canon 5D Mark III. To be honest, my interest on the X-Pro1 was so big, that it was the first camera that I unboxed and I initially spent more time with it than the D800 and 5D MK III combined. After a few days of active use, I started to realize that it had a few problems that I would have to get used to… Don’t get me wrong, the Fuji X-Pro1 makes phenomenal pictures. But it has a number of annoying bugs and issues that should have been addressed before the camera was released to the public. Writing this review, I knew that it would look very conflicting. In parts of the review I highly praise the X-Pro1 and in other parts I complain about its annoyances and problems.

I can live with most of its issues, but the slow and unreliable AF are hard to get by. If I only used the X-Pro1 for stationary subjects, landscapes, macro or architecture, I would probably be happy with it. However, I shoot all kinds of stuff, including plenty of indoors photography, so the autofocus part is rather critical for my work. So one either has to live with the X-Pro1 problems, wait and pray that Fuji fixes them sometime in the future with firmware updates (like they did with the Fuji X100), or wait for the Fuji X-Pro2 to come out.

Given how many problems the Fuji X100 had when it was released, it just feels like Fuji released the camera prematurely. Surprisingly, many of the issues from the X100 that have been already addressed via firmware updates, made their way into the X-Pro1. Was Fuji working on the X-Pro1 and the X100 simultaneously?

I had such high hopes for the X-Pro1 – it has such a great potential to be a killer camera. If only it had a more robust AF system similar to the Nikon 1 V1, it would have been “the travel” camera for me…

23) Where to buy and availability

B&H is currently selling the Fuji X-Pro1 body only for $1,699.

24) More image samples

All Images Copyright © Nasim Mansurov, All Rights Reserved. Copying or reproduction is not permitted without written permission from the author.

The Nikon 85mm f/1.8G is a consumer-grade portrait lens for enthusiasts and seasonal pros that need quality optics of a fixed portrait lens at an affordable price point. Its large aperture of f/1.8 is great for low-light photography and the shallow depth of field helps isolate subjects from the background, beautifully rendering the background highlights, also known as bokeh. The Nikon 85mm f/1.8G replaces the older Nikon 85mm f/1.8D lens that had been in production since 1994. Compared to the AF-D version that has 6 optical elements in 6 groups, the new 85mm f/1.8G has a very different optical design with 9 optical elements in 9 groups. You would think with so much glass inside the new 85mm f/1.8G would weigh more than its predecessor, but in reality it actually weighs 30 grams less. The lens is designed to work on both DX (cropped-sensor) and FX (full-frame) cameras from Nikon. On DX sensors, the lens is equivalent to a 128mm lens, which is a good range for portraiture, but may be a little too long for most other types of photography.

Just like the old Nikon 85mm f/1.8D, the front lens element of the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G does not extend or rotate during autofocus operations, which makes the lens more durable and also makes it easy to use circular filters and filter holders. In addition to the above-mentioned optical improvements, the lens incorporates silent wave motor (AF-S), which not only provides near silent focus operation, but also allows the lens to be fully used on entry-level DSLRs such as Nikon D3100 and Nikon D5100 (the older Nikon 85mm f/1.8D cannot autofocus on entry-level DSLRs without a focus motor). In addition, the AF-S motor gives the ability to use autofocus with a manual focus override, which you cannot do on any of the AF-D prime lenses. Just like the older AF-D cousin, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G also has Super Integrated Coating, which helps reduce lens flare and ghosting. And unlike the 85mm f/1.8D, which had a 9-blade diaphragm, the 85mm f/1.8G has a 7-blade diaphragm. This might sounds like a downgrade, but it is actually not – the 7-blade diaphragm used on modern Nikkor lenses is rounded, while the old ones are straight. This means that bokeh on a 7-blade rounded diaphragm lens could actually look as good or better than on a 9-blade straight diaphragm. The heptagon-shaped bokeh that is produced by the older lenses is generally not visible at large apertures and is only noticeable when stopped down to f/2.8 or more, as seen in the bokeh comparisons below.

In this review, I will provide a thorough analysis of the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens, along with image samples and comparisons against the professional Nikon 85mm f/1.4G and the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G.

1) Lens Specifications

Main Features:

1. Internal Nikon Silent Wave Motor (SWM) powered Focus (IF) system provides fast, accurate and quiet AF and helps produce sharp and clear images at all apertures.
2. M/A focus mode switch enables quick changes between manual and autofocus operation if needed.
3. Nikon Super Integrated Coating (SIC) enhances light transmission efficiency and offers superior color consistency and reduced flare.

Technical Specifications:

1. Mount Type: Nikon F-Bayonet
2. Focal Length: 85mm
3. Maximum Aperture: f/1.8
4. Minimum Aperture: f/16
5. Format: FX/35mm, DX
6. Maximum Angle of View (DX-format): 18°50′
7. Maximum Angle of View (FX-format): 28°30′
8. Maximum Reproduction Ratio: 0.12x
9. Lens Elements: 9
10. Lens Groups: 9
11. Compatible Format(s): FX, DX, FX in DX Crop Mode, 35mm Film
12. Diaphragm Blades: 7 (rounded)
13. Distance Information: Yes
14. Super Integrated Coating: Yes
15. Autofocus: Yes
16. AF-S (Silent Wave Motor): Yes
17. Internal Focusing: Yes
18. Minimum Focus Distance: 2.62 ft./0.8 m
19. Focus Mode: Auto, Manual
20. G-type: Yes
21. Filter Size: 67mm
22. Accepts Filter Type: Screw-on
23. Dimensions (Approx.): 3.1×2.9 in. (Diameter x Length) / 80x73mm (Diameter x Length)
24. Weight (Approx.): 12.4 oz. (350g)
25. Supplied Accessories: LC-6 Snap-on Front Lens Cap, HB-62 Bayonet Lens Hood, LF-4 Rear Lens Cap, CL-1015 Semi-soft Lens Case

2) Lens Handling and Build

Similar to the recently introduced Nikon prime lenses, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G has a solid build, with a plastic exterior and a metal mount. The changes in optical and barrel design increased the size of the lens, which as can be seen below, is a little smaller and less bulky than the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G (Left: Nikon 85mm f/1.4G, Right: Nikon 85mm f/1.8G):

And here is with lens hoods attached to both lenses:

The Nikon 85mm f/1.8G also has a rubber gasket on the lens mount, which provides good sealing against dust making its way into the camera. The rubber gasket definitely helps not only in reducing sensor dust, but also in reducing the amount of dust that could potentially end up inside the lens. As I explained in my “what to do with dust inside lenses” article, it is quite normal for lenses to suck air in and out when focusing or zooming in/out. The filter thread is also bigger – it is now 67mm, versus the 62mm thread on the 85mm AF-D. This is not good news if you already own the older 85mm f/1.8D lens and bought specialized filters – larger 67mm filters would have to be purchased separately. Because the front element is round and is recessed inside the lens (which is good for shooting against the sun), it can be difficult to clean the outer area of the lens element that is close to the lens barrel. Because of this, I would recommend to get a good 67mm clear/protective filter such as B+W 67mm MRC clear filter and leave it on the lens at all times. Not only will it help protect the front element of the lens and reduce dust, but it will also make it much easier to clean the lens when needed.

Despite the bigger size and bulkier lens barrel, as I have already mentioned, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G is actually 30 grams lighter than its predecessor and almost twice lighter than the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G! It balances really well with any DX camera and it feels just right in terms of size, weight and focal length on professional DSLRs like Nikon D3s as well.

I have received several inquiries from our readers about weather sealing on cheaper Nikon prime lenses. The short answer is “No”, these lenses are not weather sealed. While I have been using my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens in hot/cold/dry/wet weather conditions and have not had any issues, Nikon lenses without gold rings are not designed to withstand tough weather as professional lenses. That’s why Nikon does not specifically mention weather sealing in their marketing materials on these lenses. Another good news is that the rear element of the lens does not move in and out when focusing, so you do not have to worry about changing the lens focus to infinity when changing lenses (like on the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G).

As for the focus ring, it is conveniently located on the front of the barrel, making it easy to manually focus with a thumb and index fingers while shooting images or video. The lens comes with the “HB-62″ lens hood, which snaps on the front of the lens and sits tight without wobbling like some other Nikon lens hoods. The M/A and M switch on the side of the lens allows autofocus with manual focus override and full manual focus operation. The latest Nikon DSLRs like Nikon D5100 immediately recognize the focus position and provide notifications on the information (“I” button) screen.

3) Autofocus Performance and Accuracy

I found autofocus performance and accuracy of the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G to be very similar to the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G. While AF is rather slow to begin with when compared to the older Nikon 85mm f/1.4D), it is definitely more accurate, as I have reported in my Nikon 85mm f/1.4G review. The Nikon 85mm f/1.4G seems to be a tad faster when rapidly changing focus from one subject to another, although the difference is not substantial, both in indoor and outdoor environments. Unfortunately, we are not in the same situation as the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G, which significantly outperforms its 50mm f/1.4G counterpart in AF performance.

I tested the AF acuracy of my lens sample with the LensAlign lens calibration tool and it turned out to be dead accurate, without any need for AF adjustments. Here is a sample crop from the LensAlign test:

I personally get annoyed any time a lens has front/back focus issues like this. I do not understand why manufacturers cannot do more thorough QA tests before their products are shipped to retailers. We, as consumers, should be receiving properly calibrated lenses and cameras and not having to deal with testing our gear using focus charts. Unfortunately, these kinds of QA issues happen with all manufacturers, including Nikon. In my experience, however, third party manufacturers such as Sigma and Tamron typically have more QA issues (although they both have gotten much better lately).

As with any other lens, be careful when shooting at very large apertures in low light situations. If you cannot consistently get accurate focus in daylight, your lens sample probably has a front/back focusing issue.

4) Lens sharpness, contrast and color rendition

As I reveal in my sharpness tests in the subsequent pages of this review, the performance of the 85mm f/1.8G is excellent throughout the aperture range. You can see many examples of lens sharpness taken in a controlled environment in the next page, along with comparisons against other lenses.

5) Bokeh

Bokeh is a very important characteristic of portrait lenses. In this case, we are dealing with three cream machines, especially the 85mm f/1.4G and the 105mm f/2.8G, which are some of the most sought after lenses just because of the way they beautifully render bokeh.

Here is the full image from which I made the below bokeh crops:

Here is a bokeh comparison between Nikon 85mm f/1.8G, Nikon 85mm f/1.4G and Nikon 105mm f/2.8G at maximum aperture:

All three look good and creamy, but the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G stands out with very smooth and less defined bokeh due to its maximum aperture of f/1.4. Let’s see what happens to bokeh when all lenses are stopped down to f/2.8 (still max aperture for the 105mm f/2.8G):

Interestingly, the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G seems to have a slightly smaller diaphragm opening than the 85mm f/1.8G at f/2.8, which results in smaller background highlights. In this case, I actually prefer the bokeh of the 85mm f/1.8G. Overall though, the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G certainly looks the best here due to much less defined and smoother background blur.

While the 85mm f/1.8G has a 7-blade diaphragm (compared to a 9-blade diaphragm on the 85mm f/1.4G), you would not be able to see any difference between the two at large apertures. This is because the new diaphragms on all modern Nikkor lenses are rounded, which only shows defined edges when stopped down to f/4-5.6 and smaller.

If you are crazy about bokeh, this lens certainly has a lot of potential:

Overall, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G renders great-looking bokeh that is very comparable to the one on the professional Nikon 85mm f/1.4G.

6) Vignetting

Most prime lenses heavily vignette when shot wide open and the same is true for the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G, so no surprises here. The good news is that as you stop down to f/2.0, vignetting decreases significantly. At f/2.8 vignetting is almost invisible and by f/4.0 onwards it is completely gone. Take a look at lens vignetting at different apertures:

This type of behavior is expected from large aperture lenses, especially when they are mounted on full frame cameras. The Nikon 85mm f/1.4G also vignettes significantly at large apertures, despite its high price tag. The older Nikon 85mm f/1.8D vignettes more – dark corners are visible even at f/2.8 and f/4.

If you use Lightroom 4 or Photoshop Camera RAW, vignetting is not an issue for this lens, because the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens profile is already included in the latest update.

7) Ghosting and Flare

Ghosting and flare are controlled quite well, depending on where the bright source of light is positioned in the frame. It does not do as well as the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G though, because the latter has better lens design and Nano-coating to further reduce ghosting and flare. Here is an image with the sun positioned inside the frame:

8) Distortion

The Nikon 85mm f/1.8G has a slight amount of barrel distortion, which is not very noticeable. The older Nikon 85mm f/1.8D had no noticeable distortion in comparison. As I have already pointed out, Adobe already has a built-in lens profile in the Lens Corrections module, so you can easily take care of the problem with a single click.

9) Chromatic Aberration

Lateral chromatic aberration is controlled well, even in high-contrast situations. Longitudinal chromatic aberration / LoCA (which is the effect of color fringing in front of and behind the focused area), on the other hand, can be quite visible at very large apertures, which is expected for a fast prime lens. Here is an extreme example of LoCA with some axial purple fringing:

Unfortunately, unlike lateral chromatic aberration, LoCA cannot be easily removed in post-processing.

Let’s now move on to the good stuff – Sharpness tests. Select the next page below.

10) Sharpness Test

Some technical junk:

1. White Balance: Auto, changed to “Custom”: 4400 Temp, +15 Tint in Lightroom
2. ISO: 200
3. EXIF information is preserved in the images
4. Lens was mounted on Nikon D700 Camera and Gitzo tripod
5. Focusing was performed through Live-View Contrast Detect
6. Mirror Lock-Up mode with Exposure Delay set to “On” and remote cable release to completely eliminate camera shake
7. Long exposure NR: Off
8. Image Format: RAW
9. Lightroom settings: Default settings
10. Lightroom export: sRGB JPEG Quality 80
11. Testing was performed at f/1.8, f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6 and f/8.0 apertures
12. Nothing was moved during testing

11) Sharpness Test – Nikon 85mm f/1.8G Center Frame

The Nikon 85mm f/1.8G has excellent center sharpness, as can be seen below. Wide open at f/1.8, the image starts out a tad softer and gradually improves when stopped down to f/2.8:

At f/4 the lens seems to reach its peak performance:

And stopping down further does not improve its sharpness:

I am not including smaller apertures, because stopping down the lens beyond f/8 reduces image quality due to diffraction.

12) Sharpness Test – Nikon 85mm f/1.8G Corner Frame

The performance of the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G at largest apertures is surprisingly good. Wide open and at f/2.0, the lens yields slightly softer, but acceptably good results. There is a modest amount of vignetting present at the largest apertures, which is why the first couple of images are significantly darker:

By f/2.8, the extreme corners look very good and the peak performance is once again around the f/4 mark:

Similar to the center, stopping down the lens to f/5.6 and smaller does not increase sharpness:

Overall, the sharpness results are very impressive for this lens, but the above crops are meaningless without a comparison against other lenses. Let’s move on to see how the lens fares against the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G.

Compared to Nikon 85mm f/1.4G

Let’s see how the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G compares to the much heavier and bulkier (and much more expensive) Nikon 85mm f/1.4G lens.

13) Nikon 85mm f/1.8G vs Nikon 85mm f/1.4G Center Frame

First, let’s see how both do wide open (Left: Nikon 85mm f/1.8G @ f/1.8, Right: Nikon 85mm f/1.4G @ f/1.4):

At maximum aperture, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G seems to be a little sharper than the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G, which is incredible. Let’s see what happens when the f/1.4G is stopped down to f/1.8:

Now both seem to be about the same. Here is both stopped down to f/2.0:

I cannot see any difference between the two. Let’s see what happens when we stop down to f/2.8:

Again, both seem to be on par. Stopped down to f/4:

Same story here. And finally f/5.6 with f/8:

To be honest, I cannot really see any difference between both lenses from f/1.8 onwards in the center.

14) Nikon 85mm f/1.8G vs Nikon 85mm f/1.4G Corner Frame

Let’s see how the lenses compare in the corners. Again, here is a comparison with both wide open (Left: Nikon 85mm f/1.8G, Right: Nikon 85mm f/1.4G):

Again, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G clearly does better wide open than the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G, even in the extreme corners. Both show pronounced vignetting, which seems to be about the same. Let’s stop the f/1.4G down to f/1.8:

Even stopped down to f/1.8, the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G still cannot match the 85mm f1/1.8G sharpness-wise. Let’s stop it down further to f/2.0:

Again, same story – the f/1.8G is clearly sharper. Stopped down to f/2.8:

Now both are about the same. Stopping down further more does not seem to change anything:

15) Nikon 85mm f/1.8G vs Nikon 85mm f/1.4G on Nikon D800

One request that I have been getting is to compare both lenses on the super high resolution Nikon D800 sensor. Because the sensor has such a high resolution, it can show much more details and hence resolution capabilities of lenses. Let’s see how both lenses fare on the D800 wide open:

As you can see, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G still seems sharper than the 85mm f/1.4G. But now we can see why – the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G has more visible chromatic aberration wide open. If it wasn’t for CA, the 85mm f/1.4G would have looked as good or better – the resolving power is very good on a high resolution sensor of Nikon D800. What about sharpness performance when both are stopped down to f/2.8:

The 85mm f/1.4G seems to be a tad sharper, now that it has a lot less chromatic aberration issues, but it’s not completely gone. Still, the resolving power of the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G seems to be a little better than on its younger and much cheaper sibling. Let’s stop both down to f/4:

Now the difference is pretty much gone, although I still prefer the 85mm f/1.8G performance here due to less CA.

Finally, stopped down to f/5.6 or smaller, both lenses seem to perform about the same.

The corners have a slightly different fate though – the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G shows better performance and resolution overall.

15) Nikon 85mm f/1.8G vs Nikon 85mm f/1.4G Conclusion

As you can see from the above comparisons, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G shows slightly better performance wide open than the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G. While the 85mm f/1.4G needs to be stopped down to f/1.8 in the center to match the performance, the corners on the f/1.4G do not look as good until f/2.8. So sharpness-wise, the situation with this lens is very similar to that of the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G – it performs better than its much more expensive f/1.4G brother. Vignetting-wise, both seem to have about the same amount of it throughout the frame, completely disappearing at around the f/4 mark. Where the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G shines is at distortion – it has no visible distortion, while the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G definitely has some. Also, when shooting against the sun, the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G performs better with less ghosts and flares, most likely because of its Nano-coated glass elements and more complex lens design. Bokeh-wise, both have their leads at different apertures, although the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G can render bigger and smoother bokeh wide open at the same distance, thanks to its larger aperture. AF speed and accuracy is about the same on both lenses. Lastly, the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G shows less signs of chromatic aberration, especially of the longitudinal (LoCA) type.

Overall, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G proves to be a superb alternative to the 85mm f/1.4G. While the latter is more than three times more expensive, it is surely not three times better from a technical standpoint.

Let’s move on to a comparison to the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G macro.

Compared to Nikon 105mm f/2.8G Macro

I was not planning to compare the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G to the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G due to differences in focal lengths, but some of our readers asked us to do it. While the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G is a macro lens, it is a very popular lens among portrait photographers, because it renders beautiful bokeh and has exceptionally sharp optics. Please bear in mind that the below comparison is not an apples to apples comparison, because of difference in both focal length and maximum aperture.

16) Nikon 85mm f/1.8G vs Nikon 105mm f/2.8G Center Frame

Let’s see what happens when we compare both lenses wide open (Left: Nikon 85mm f/1.8G @ f/1.8, Right: Nikon 105mm f/2.8G @ f/2.8):

Surprisingly, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G seems to slightly outperform the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G wide open. Here is both stopped down to f/2.8:

The difference at f/2.8 is pretty obvious – the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G is clearly much sharper! Let’s see what happens when we stop down to f/4.0:

Again, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G is sharper. Now down to f/5.6:

Nothing has changed, the 85mm f/1.8G is still sharper.

Even when stopped down to f/8, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G shows more resolving power.

17) Nikon 85mm f/1.8G vs Nikon 105mm f/2.8G Corner Frame

Let’s now see what happens in the corners with both wide open (Left: Nikon 85m f/1.8G, Right: Nikon 105mm f/2.8G):

The Nikon 105mm f/2.8G seems to do worse than the 85mm f/1.8G in the corners (but still a little better than the 85mm f/1.4G). The difference is visible, which is partly the fault of chromatic aberration of the macro lens. Let’s see how both compare at f/2.8:

This time, the difference is huge – the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G improves much better at f/2.8 than the 105mm f/2.8. Let’s stop both down to f/4:

Again, the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G cannot quite match the 85mm f/1.8G in terms of sharpness. How about f/5.6:

Now the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G looks even better, but still not sharper than the 85mm f/1.8G, mostly thanks to chromatic aberrations.

Stopping down to f/8 does not seem to change anything in the corners.

18) Nikon 85mm f/1.8G vs Nikon 105mm f/2.8G Conclusion

It is clear from this comparison that the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G shows better sharpness/resolution performance than the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G macro lens, both in the center and in the corners. It outperforms the 105mm f/2.8G wide open and stopped down to f/2.8 produces much sharper results with more contrast. Where the Nikon 105mm seems to be a little better is when rendering bokeh – at maximum aperture the 105mm f/2.8G produces more pleasing background blur, with almost undefined shapes. Different lens design and longer focal length definitely make their contribution here. The 105mm is worse at dealing with ghosting and flare though, despite the fact that it also has Nano-coated glass. It also seems to show a lot more chromatic aberration, especially at the extreme corners. The one big advantage of the 105mm f/2.8G lens over the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G and f/1.4G, without the obvious 1:1 macro capability, is that it has Vibration Reduction (VR), which can be quite helpful in low-light situations.

19) Summary

Similar to the excellent Nikon 50mm f/1.8G, the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G seems to be an excellent performer that competes with its much more expensive, bulkier and heavier brother, the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G. While it does not have the same complex optical design of the 85mm f/1.4G, it very closely rivals it in terms of colors and bokeh. It shows exceptional resolution and contrast performance at all apertures, especially wide open. This can be clearly seen in sharpness comparisons to the Nikon 105mm f/2.8G VR macro lens, which cannot match the performance of the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens at all apertures, from center of the frame to the extreme corners even when stopped down to f/5.6 and smaller. It has a couple of weaknesses such as distortion, ghosting and flare and some heavy LoCA, but those issues are present in pretty much all fast prime lenses and most of them can be fixed during post-processing. Adobe has already built a lens profile for the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G, so if you are using the latest version of Lightroom, you should be able to correct most optical issues by clicking “Enable Profile Corrections” and “Remove Chromatic Aberration” within the “Lens Corrections” module.

I have been shooting with the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens for over a month and I have been enjoying it a lot. It is a light and compact portrait lens that balances really well on any modern Nikon DSLR. It produces beautiful images with plenty of sharpness, contrast and colors – exactly what portrait photographers look for in portrait lenses. Its AF performance is impressive and the lens delivers accurate results when mounted on both top of the line DLSRs like Nikon D800 and on entry-level DSLRs like Nikon D5100. And best of all – with its low price of $499, this lens is a steal, especially when compared to the not-much-better Nikon 85mm f/1.4G! Clearly it is the better choice price/performance wise for many photographers, except those who really need f/1.4 aperture and know how to use it to the fullest.

20) Where to buy and availability

B&H is currently selling the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens for $499.95 (as of 04/19/2012).

21) More image samples

All Images Copyright © Nasim Mansurov, All Rights Reserved. Copying or reproduction is not permitted without written permission from the author.

Was the Nikon D800 worth the wait? There has been a lot of buzz about the D800 before and after the camera was announced. One of the main reasons is the popularity of the existing Nikon D700 camera and the sheer number of people, especially part-time and full-time pros, who were dying to upgrade their aging cameras. In addition, the D800 delay further fueled the heat and spiked up the interest from the photography community that was getting rather impatient, wondering what Nikon would bring to the table for the next several years in the full-frame arena.

As you will see further down in this review, I consider the Nikon D800 to be a breakthrough camera, something we have not seen since Nikon introduced its first full-frame D3. While we have seen some amazing products from Nikon, they were all evolutionary, with minor upgrades, tweaks and changes here and there. The Nikon D800, on the other hand, is a revolutionary product that once again raises the bar on image quality, dynamic range, autofocus and even noise performance – all without the high price tag of a pro camera attached to it. Sure it has its share of problems with its rather slow speed (FPS) and average battery life, but these problems are rather insignificant, given what we are getting as a total package. Think of the D800 as a beefed up D3X, just in a smaller body, at 2.5 times less the cost. How is that not revolutionary? And the D800 just happens to set a new world record in full-frame resolution.

But wait, what about all those photographers that anticipated a camera with the same sensor as on the Nikon D4, the ones that do not particularly care for high resolution? Did Nikon leave them all out with the D800, forcing them to jump to the expensive D4? Before I answer this question, let me first give a brief history of the D800, along with my analysis on why Nikon decided took a different route with its full-frame line this time.

1) A Brief History and Analysis

I remember the day when I first read the rumor about the D800 and its 36 MP sensor. I quickly dismissed it, because it sounded completely unrealistic to me. With Nikon putting so much focus on image quality in its full-frame line with the D700, D3 and later D3s, and keeping the megapixel count low at just 12 MP (while the competition had been only increasing the number of megapixels in their new cameras), I only pictured the D700 replacement to be a very modest update in terms of resolution. Maybe something similar to the D7000, with a 16-18 MP sensor. Plus, a 36 MP full-frame sensor just did not fit in with the existing super expensive D3X that was specifically targeted for high-resolution applications.

As you may already know, the Nikon D700 was announced about a year after the D3 came out in 2007. Nikon did not have the time and resources to create a separate product line like Canon did with its original 5D, so it decided to borrow the sensor along with most features from the D3. Aside from the slower fps speed (that you could increase with a grip), smaller body & battery and 97% viewfinder coverage, the Nikon D700 was almost the same as the Nikon D3 – some even dubbed it “the D3 brother”. Needless to say, the Nikon D700 was an instant success.

100% crop from the center of the frame:

On the grand scale, however, the D700 became a problem for Nikon – it heavily cannibalized the D3 sales. Why spend $5K on the D3, if you could get a smaller and lighter camera with almost the same features for $2,000 less? And if you really wanted, you could push the D700 to be almost like the D3 by adding a grip and D3 batteries. Consumers were quick to react to this opportunity and Nikon soon realized that it made a mistake by letting one product line compete head to head with another. But it was too late – the D700 was already too popular. Nikon released the 24 MP D3x shortly thereafter, which proved to be a marketing failure due to its inflated price (despite being a superb camera for high-resolution work). Nikon’s professional line suffered all the way until the Nikon D3s was released in October of 2009, which finally created more demand for the top-of-the-line professional cameras once again. With the highly successful D700, well-performing D3s and failed D3x lines, it was clear that Nikon had to come up with a better strategy for positioning and pricing its full-frame cameras.

In January of 2012, the Nikon D4 was announced with a 16 MP sensor, which seemed in line with what I was expecting in terms of resolution. A very modest update in megapixels, different ergonomics and plenty of new features including a revamped autofocus system that works at f/8. We all knew the D800 was around the corner, but still, the biggest question remained – would it have D4′s 16 MP sensor or the rumored super high-resolution 36 MP sensor? Within a month from the D4 announcement, Nikon finally announced the Nikon D800 with a 36.3 MP sensor. Why did this happen and what caused Nikon to change its direction in this full-frame line?

As I have already explained in my “benefits of a high-resolution sensor” article before, I believe Nikon made a smart move in positioning its current and future full-frame (FX) lines. Rather than offering three or more product lines with different performance characteristics and features, it makes a whole lot more sense to have just two distinct cameras – one general-purpose, high-resolution camera (D800) and one advanced high-performance camera specifically targeted for sports, news and wildlife photography (D4). This move obviously eliminates the D3x line and sends a message that we might never see another high-end, high-resolution full-frame camera from Nikon. But in fact, I believe this could actually lead to an introduction of a medium format camera from Nikon in the future… But that’s a whole different topic of discussion.

Traditionally, DSLR cameras with very high resolution have been categorized as specialized tools for landscape, macro and studio photography. With the introduction of the D800, many photographers thought that Nikon is specifically targeting one group of photographers, while completely ignoring others. In fact, as you will see later on in this review, it is actually not the case. There is a reason why I called the Nikon D800 a “general-purpose, high-resolution” camera – because it can be effectively used for any sort of photography. There is a common misconception among the photography community about the size of pixels and their impact on image quality and noise, especially when comparing one sensor to another. If a sensor packs a lot of pixels, it is often assumed that it will perform much worse in low light at high ISO when compared to a sensor with less and bigger pixels.

In fact, it all depends on how you perform this comparison. When a high-resolution image is down-sampled to a lower resolution, its noise characteristics can actually improve dramatically (see my articles on down-sampling). So when comparing a 36 MP image to a 12 MP image, why would you look at both at 100%? Clearly, the 36 MP image would print much larger in size, so it is only fare to compare sensors at the same print size. See this example of just how much bigger the 36.3 MP image is from the D800 in comparison to the 12.1 MP image from the D700:

By down-sampling 36 MP to 12 MP, you would not only reduce the amount of noise, but you could also make the image appear sharper. As I reveal in the following pages of this review, the down-sampled Nikon D800 images look exceptionally good, even when compared to the high-end Nikon D4. There is a reason why the Nikon D800 sensor is rated as #1 by DXOMark among all sensors produced to date. In addition, a high-resolution image has a lot more room to work with for cropping and can produce exceptionally good-looking images at low ISO levels, perfectly suitable for huge prints. Hence, when looking at the Nikon D800, one has to be fully aware of the many advantages of a high resolution sensor and the benefits of the down-sampling process.

Let’s move on to the camera details!

2) Nikon D800 Specifications

Main Features and Specifications:

1. Sensor: 36.3 MP FX, 4.8µ pixel size
2. Sensor Size: 35.9 x 24mm
3. Resolution: 7360 x 4912
4. DX Mode: 15.3 MP
5. DX Mode Resolution: 4800 x 3200
6. Native ISO Sensitivity: 100-6,400
7. Boost Low ISO Sensitivity: 50
8. Boost High ISO Sensitivity: 12,800-25,600
9. Processor: EXPEED 3
10. Metering System: 3D Color Matrix Meter III with face recognition and a database of 30,000 images
11. Dust Reduction: Yes
12. Weather Sealing/Protection: Yes
13. Body Build: Full Magnesium Alloy
14. White Balance: New White Balance System
15. Shutter: Up to 1/8000 and 30 sec exposure
16. Shutter Durability: 200,000 cycles, self-diagnostic shutter
17. Camera Lag: 0.012 seconds
18. Storage: 1x CF slot and 1x SD slot
19. Viewfinder Coverage: 100%
20. Speed: 4 FPS, 6 FPS in DX mode with optional MB-D12 battery pack
21. Exposure Meter: 91,000 pixel RGB sensor
22. Built-in Flash: Yes, with Commander Mode, full CLS compatibility
23. Autofocus System: Advanced Multi-CAM 3500FX with 51 focus points and 15 cross-type sensors
24. AF Detection: Up to f/8 with 9 focus points (5 in the center, 2 on the left and right)
25. LCD Screen: 3.2 inch diagonal with 921,000 dots
26. Movie Modes: Full 1080p HD @ 30 fps max
27. Movie Exposure Control: Full
28. Movie Recording Limit: 30 minutes @ 30p, 20 minutes @ 24p
29. Movie Output: MOV, Compressed and Uncompressed
30. In-Camera HDR Capability: Yes
31. Two Live View Modes: One for photography and one for videography
32. GPS: Not built-in, requires GP-1 GPS unit
33. Battery Type: EN-EL15
34. Battery Life: 900 shots
35. USB Standard: 3.0
36. Weight: 890g
37. Price: $2,999 MSRP

A detailed list of camera specifications is available at NikonUSA.com.

3) Nikon D800 vs D800E

For the first time in Nikon’s history, a DSLR camera is offered in two variants – one that is specifically targeted for landscape and macro photography (Nikon D800E), and another for everything else (Nikon D800). In the past, Nikon only offered one single model that could be used for all types of photography. While the specifications, body shape, size and ergonomics are all identical, there is only one difference between these two models – one has an anti-aliasing filter in front of the camera sensor that is designed to blur fine detail, while the other has a modified version of an anti-aliasing filter that retains all the details. Here is an illustration of how this filter works on each model:

You might be wondering about why this sort of filter is needed on a camera, so I highly recommend to read my “What is Moire?” and “Nikon D800 vs D800E” articles, where I explain this topic in much more detail.

4) Nikon D800 vs D700

While a detailed comparison specifications comparison between the D800 and D700 can be found in my Nikon D800 vs D700 article, there is not much info there about how both cameras compare side by side in terms of fps (frames per second) and camera buffer. In the below video, I show the performance of both cameras when shooting 14-bit Lossless Compressed RAW images with very fast SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB compact flash memory:

As you can see, the Nikon D800 is slower than the Nikon D700 with its 4 fps speed versus 5 fps on the D700. It also lasts about half a second shorter than the D700 before its buffer gets full at around the 4 second mark. Nikon’s estimates for the D800 and D700 (see D800 and D700 brochures) are 17 images for the D800 and 20 images for the D700 before memory buffer gets full and fps slows down. My tests are a little off, because the D800 should be a little faster according to Nikon – 17 / 4 fps is 4.25 and 20 / 5 fps is 4. Interestingly, the same thing happens when both cameras are set to 12-bit RAW – the D700 still lasts longer. Note how much longer it takes for the D800 to complete its write from the camera buffer into the memory card – now that’s one huge buffer! I bet it is at least 4 times larger than the one on the D700. Lastly, note that the D800 shutter sounds very different than the one on the D700.

Some people have been reporting memory compatibility issues with the D800. I have not seen any issues so far with any of the SanDisk & Lexar cards I have (I have been using SanDisk and Lexar cards for my cameras exclusively), so I believe memory card issues are happening with cheap third party memory cards only.

5) Camera construction and handling

Similar to the D700 and other higher-end Nikon DSLRs, the Nikon D800 has a full magnesium-alloy frame. The camera is built tough and will last a long time, if it is properly taken care of. While I have not had my D800 long enough to see how it will survive in different conditions, I have no doubt that it will not do any worse than the D700. So far I have taken it up to mountains and have shot some images at below freezing temperatures and the camera worked just fine. I am planning a couple of trips to southern US within the next month, so I will see how it will do in dusty and windy conditions. Will update this section with my findings later.

Handling-wise, the D800 is superb – definitely better than the D700 I have been so used to. Although the ergonomic changes to the camera might seem small when comparing the D800 to the D700, there are a few big changes that I really like on the D800. First, the old C/S/M switch on the front of the D700 has been replaced by the one from the Nikon D7000. Now we just have the “AF” and “M” switch options with a button on top of the switch, so changing the focus mode from AF-S to AF-C and vice-versa is accomplished by depressing the button and rotating the rear camera dial. Rotating the front camera dial changes AF focus mode: Single, Dynamic (9, 21, 51), 3D or Auto. Much better and faster to get to than trying to use the switch on the back of the D700 then messing with the “Dynamic AF Area” custom setting menu option. I really liked this feature on the D7000 and I am glad that Nikon ported this change to the D800 as well.

Another big and welcome change is the enhanced rotating dial on the top left side of the camera. Instead of the thin rotating base with the letters on top, we now have a much larger base with the letters on the side. Because of this change, the full surface of the top of the dial is now available, so we now have 4 buttons instead of 3 – QUAL (changing image size and format), BKT (bracketing), ISO and WB (white balance). Now you can access bracketing options without going into the menu or assigning a custom button for bracketing.

The grip went through some changes as well and it feels more comfortable on the D800. While the shape of the grip handle stayed the same, the spacing between the two function buttons and the handle has been increased. When holding the D700, my fingers occasionally touch the function buttons, so it is nice to see this small, but important ergonomic change. People will bigger hands will find the D800 to be better to hold, especially with a battery grip. Speaking of which, I do not understand why Nikon wants to rip people off with a $450 battery grip (MB-D12 is listed for $616 on NikonUSA.com). Considering the battery life of the camera (more on that below), I think they are expecting plenty of photographers to buy the grip, so the intentions here are pretty clear. I won’t be buying the MB-D12; it is just a matter of time until much cheaper alternatives are released by other manufacturers. On the other hand, I am happy to have a $3,000 D800 with a $450 grip than a $3,500 D800 with a $250 grip…

Back to camera handling. The shutter release area of the camera has also been redesigned. Now the shutter release is angled a little lower, which certainly adds to the comfort in my opinion. The “MODE” button has been moved a little further away from the shutter to make space for the smaller video record button, as shown on the image.

One more welcome change is the harder plastic access door to the camera ports such as USB and HDMI located on the left side of the camera body. The door on the Nikon D700 opens up too easily after several years of heavy use, which is kind of scary when using the camera in dusty and wet conditions. Looks like the Nikon D800 will be protected better in that regard.

The buttons on the back of the camera stayed the same, except the Zoom In/Out buttons are now reversed. I agree that it is a good ergonomic change, but it should have been done a long time ago in Nikon’s first DSLR camera bodies. I got too used to having the zoom button lower, so I keep on messing up for now. I guess it will take time to get used to this change.

Oh, and for whatever reason, Nikon decided to flip the (+) and (-) signs on the camera by default. If you are used to the normal way of changing exposure compensation or your shutter speed, then go to Custom Setting Menu, f9 Customize Command Dials and f12 Reverse indicators and change the orientation to (+) being on the left and (-) on the right. This will make the D800 behave like D700 and other older Nikon DSLR cameras.

The AF Area Mode Selector has been replaced by the Live View switch/button. The switch allows choosing between image and movie modes, while the “Lv” button in the center is for getting in and out of the Live View mode. Lastly, the “AF-ON” button on the D800 now triggers VR to get activated. I tested this with a couple of VR lenses and VR started to engage as soon as I pressed the AF-ON button on the back of the camera.

Other than these and a couple of other minor changes, everything else stayed the same.

6) Camera Sensor

Without a doubt, the most important feature of a digital camera today is its image sensor. You could put the most advanced autofocus and metering systems with a boatload of great features into a camera, but at the end of the day, they are all more or less secondary – the sensor performance is still looked at first. Things like resolution, dynamic range, diffraction, color depth and ISO performance are all tightly related to the sensor and its physical size. When I talked about the D800 being “revolutionary”, I mostly referred to the phenomenal sensor technology Nikon incorporated into the camera.

The Nikon D800 features the highest resolution full-frame sensor produced to date by Nikon. With a pixel size of 4.8µ, it is comparable to the excellent sensor on the Nikon D7000, except it is physically more than twice bigger in size. Nikon tweaked the output of the sensor even more with a better image processing pipeline, giving us even better dynamic range and colors tones. As I have recently pointed out in this article, folks at DXOMark made some scientific measurements of sensor performance on the D800 and they found it to beat all other sensors they have evaluated to date, including some high-end medium format cameras. The Nikon D800 topped all cameras in dynamic range, as can be seen below:

In terms of color depth, it came third, right after Phase One IQ180 and Phase One P65 Plus, which is also very impressive (considering that Nikon D7000 is 23rd on the list). But the biggest surprise for a lot of people was the high ISO performance of the Nikon D800 that DXOMark shows. Take a look at this ranking chart:

At first, it mind sound crazy that the D800 could have almost as good of ISO performance as the new Nikon D4, especially considering that the pixels on the D4 are much bigger in size. But as I have already explained at the very beginning of this article, the massive 36.3 MP resolution is what makes this score. When the 36.3 MP image is down-sampled to match the D4′s 16.2 MP image, the high ISO noise performance is greatly reduced. Take a look at the below chart:

As you can see, noise performance on the Nikon D800 is almost identical to the D4 and D3s all the way to ISO 12,800 – it only falls behind at ISO 25,600 at which point it is maxed out (the Nikon D4 and D3s continue at much higher ISO levels). On a pixel level, anything above ISO 12,800 is too noisy for my taste on the D4/D3s cameras, so I do not particularly care about extremely high ISO levels. My working range on my Nikon D3s is ISO 200 to ISO 3200 mostly, with occasional ISO 6400 and rare 12,800. I never go past ISO 12,800, since there is too much color and detail loss. So when evaluating sensors, I do not particularly care for anything above ISO 12,800. If you find yourself shooting at extremely high ISOs above ISO 12,800, then you will surely be better off with the D4 or the older D3s.

Are the DXOMark measurements accurate? Yes, they are and I believe they have a solid sensor testing methodology. I performed my own tests of high ISO performance between the Nikon D4, D3s and D3 and my test data closely matched the DXOMark results. And this is not the first time when it happens. See the second page of this review to see the actual comparisons between the D800 and the D700 and you will see that they also closely match the DXOMark data.

I do not think we will see a camera that will even remotely match the D800 sensor performance for the next couple of years at least. The Sony A99 will have the same sensor as on the D800, but I doubt its image quality will be the same for two main reasons. First, Nikon has a better image process pipeline than Sony (especially in dealing with noise at RAW level at high ISO levels). Second, Sony’s translucent mirror blocks 1/3 of a stop of light from reaching the sensor, which means that the A99 ISO output will have to be boosted further up, resulting in slightly noisier images.

Click here to download the above photograph in high resolution (8 MB JPEG).

7) Autofocus Performance

Before the Nikon D4 was announced, I wondered what Nikon would do with its autofocus system. The legendary Multi-CAM 3500FX system used on all professional Nikon cameras has been extremely reliable, so what else could have Nikon done to improve it? I was hoping to see more focus points and have them spread out on a larger area of the viewfinder. Unfortunately, Nikon did not give us an all-new AF system with more focus points on the D4 and D800, but we did get an updated version of the AF system called “Advanced Multi-CAM 3500FX” that does something no other DSLR AF system can do, which is ability to focus all the way to f/8. While autofocus is limited to only 11 cross-type focus points at f/8, it is still very impressive that it actually works. I tried mounting the TC-20E III on both the Nikon 200-400mm f/4 and the Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S and I was able to acquire focus at maximum aperture of f/8. AF is not ultra fast at such a small aperture, but it does work, which is great news for wildlife photographers (read more on this below).

If you shoot in indoor/low-light environments, you will be surprised by just how well the new AF system works in poor conditions. I took the D800 for a short tour with me to Denver downtown at night and I was surprised by how well the AF system worked in street light. Take a look at this portrait taken with the new Nikon 85mm f/1.8G in street light at night (1/60, f/2, ISO 3200):

The image had a little grain that I cleaned up right in Lightroom 4, then exported right out of Lightroom with 1024 pixel wide dimensions and “High” sharpening applied upon export. No other edits were performed in Lightroom. White Balance set to “As Shot”. That’s impressive, definitely much better than what I can do with the D700 or the D3s. I was obviously using the center focus point to focus (it is the most accurate of them all), which is why the subject is in the center of the frame. Previously, I would have to stop my fast lenses down to f/4 or smaller to get larger depth of field and re-focus continuously in hopes to get my subject in focus. Now I no longer have to do that anymore – the system is very good at acquiring focus in low light even when shooting wide open. I am very impressed by this new Advanced Multi-CAM 3500FX, it certainly does make a huge difference.

Here is another image sample at ISO 3200 taken 30 minutes earlier after sunset (1/200, f/2, ISO 3200):

Again, no edits were performed in Lightroom!

8) AF Performance for Sports and Wildlife Photography

While the Nikon D4 is the proper tool for sports and wildlife photography due to its faster speed and extreme ISO capabilities, many photographers are also looking at the Nikon D800 for sports and wildlife photography. First, the high-resolution sensor could give some “reach” opportunities with plenty of options to crop in-camera (DX mode) or in post. Second, the AF system on the D800 is identical to the one on the D4 (Advanced Multi-CAM 3500FX, as highlighted above). And lastly, noise characteristics of the D800 are very similar to the D4 when images are down-sampled to 16 MP (down-sampling can also result in increased sharpness). The biggest disadvantage is the slow 4 FPS speed of the D800.

Since many sports and wildlife photographers have been asking me about the D800 AF performance, I decided to share some information on it that I have collected so far. First of all, the f/8 focusing capability is not a myth – it definitely works, as I have already pointed out above. This means that the Nikon 500mm f/4 and 600mm f/4 lenses will also autofocus with the TC-20E III teleconverter and you are not just limited to very bright shooting conditions. I will have to do some more in-depth digging with the TC-20E III and other long lenses, but so far I am impressed by the updated AF system.

What about the TC-17E II that I have been avoiding when shooting with f/4 lenses? Surprisingly, the D800 made my TC-17E II usable again. Take a look at this image, shot with the Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S and TC-17E II:

While this is not a good image sample, this is actually a 100% crop shot at 510mm, 1/1000, f/8 and ISO 250 (click to open the full-size 100% version). I exported the image with default Lightroom settings (my sharpening default is set to Amount: 50, Radius: 1 and Detail: 50) without any sharpening applied upon export. Down-sampling the image by a little and then sharpening it would yield superb results – look at all the feather details.

And here is another sample image that is down-sampled and sharpened:

If you shoot at higher ISO values, you might want to run some noise-reduction before you down-sample the image to get the best results.

Overall, I am quite impressed by what the D800 can offer to sports and wildlife photographers, as long as you do not mind the slow fps speed.

9) Camera Shake and Hand-holding Technique

If you want to have sharp images at 100% view, then you need to be more careful with camera shake and you need to learn proper hand-holding techniques. Similar to the Nikon D7000, the D800 is more prone to any sort of movement that causes blur than the D700. While down-sampling will yield very similar results as the D700, even with a little blur in your images, if your intent is to print large, then you should take this account. If you shoot with longer portrait/telephoto lenses and want to have tack sharp images, you should consider increasing your shutter speed even more. I quickly learned that shooting at the shutter speed that is equal to the focal length often produced slightly blurry images at 100% view, so I had to use faster shutter speeds to get the maximum resolution out of my lenses and the D800.

One more important feature I discovered on the D800 that now finally works (did not work on all previous Nikon DSLR models) – you can use “Exposure Delay” (d4 in custom setting menu) in conjunction with “Self-Timer”. For example, you can set the self-timer to 5 seconds and turn “Exposure Delay” on. Once the shutter button is pressed, the camera will wait for five seconds, raise the mirror, wait for a second, then open and close the shutter, then put the mirror back down. This will prevent pretty much any sort of camera shake – equivalent of using mirror lock up (MLU) mode with a cable release.

10) Lens Selection

Our readers have been asking me a lot of questions in regards to lens performance on the Nikon D800. For some reason, many photographers seem to think that their old lenses will be no good on the D800. I have received links to forums and other sites, where some photographers say that only the best pro-level glass should be used on the D800 and everything else is going to look awful. While some of this is true and the D800 surely does put some burden on lenses, do not forget that the pixel pitch on the D800 is the same as on the D7000. Your f/4 lenses will perform just fine on the D800, maybe the extreme corners might suffer a little. I have not yet performed detailed sharpness tests with different lenses, but I have tried the Nikon 24-120mm f/4 VR and it worked great, with plenty of resolution throughout the frame. Fast primes like the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G and the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G also worked great, as can be seen from the image samples posted in this review. Optical defects like chromatic aberration are definitely more visible at 100% view, but that’s expected – after-all, we are dealing with 36 MP images here. In most cases, you will find camera shake to be the cause of blurry images, not lenses.

Now if you are a sharpness maniac and you need the best lenses for the D800 so that you could make those gigantic prints of sweeping landscapes with extreme detail from center to corners, then I will be publishing a separate post on the best lenses for the D800. I am planning to do some through sharpness tests to see which lenses perform best on the D800. I suspect some of the primes like the 24mm f/1.4, 35mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.4 and the zoom trinity (14-24mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm) will be superb, along with some exotic Zeiss lenses.

11) Metering and Exposure

Both the Nikon D4 and the D800 feature a brand new and sophisticated 3D Color Matrix Meter III exposure metering system with a 91,000-pixel RGB sensor, face recognition and a database of 30,000 images. Compare that to the 3D Color Matrix Metering II system with only 1,005-pixel RGB sensor on the Nikon D700! The new metering system is excellent. I have been shooting in aperture priority mode for about a week now and I have had very few occasions when I wanted to dial in exposure compensation – the exposure was spot on, especially when photographing people. In comparison, the D700 gets confused by different lighting conditions very easily and I find myself occasionally dialing between -2 to +2 EV. In fact, the Nikon D700 constantly overexposes in matrix metering mode, so I have mine set to -0.7 EV by default. The Nikon D800 does not seem to have any of these exposure problems. I started with 0 EV in matrix metering mode and the camera pretty much nailed the exposure every time. I have not performed extensive tests photographing people yet, so I will update this section soon with more information.

12) Shooting Speed (FPS) and Battery Life

One of the biggest complaints by photographers when the Nikon D800 was released was its slow speed of 4 fps (frames per second). Since the Nikon D700 is capable of shooting at 5 fps and can go all the way to 8 fps with the MB-D10 battery grip, many photographers were bummed by the 4 fps limit of the camera and only a small increase to 6 fps with a battery grip attached. What’s bad is that not only do you have to get the MB-D12 grip to get 6 fps, but you are also limited to less than half resolution in DX mode! I personally find this feature quite useless, but those that really need the speed and do not care about resolution as much might consider it as an option.

Why is the D800 limited to 4 fps? The main reason are the massive 36.3 MP files that the image processing pipeline has to process and send to the camera buffer. Even the pro-level Nikon D3x is limited to 5 fps and that’s with much smaller 24.5 MP files! So the 4 fps limit is not something Nikon is artificially limiting the camera to in order to differentiate it from the D4 – it is the amount of data coming out of the sensor, time it takes to process the data and then the buffer limit to keep those files temporarily before saving them to external media. I have a suspicion that the whole 6 FPS battery grip requirement is an attempt to make more money by Nikon. When shooting in DX mode, the camera surely does not need a battery grip to get faster frames – more than half of the sensor data is chopped off, which the camera should easily be able to deal with. In fact, Nikon should allow us to go all the way to 8 fps in DX mode.

As for the battery, the bad news is that D300/D300s/D700 owners will have to replace their EN-EL3e batteries with the new EN-EL15. Unfortunately, Nikon had to replace the old battery due to new battery regulations in Japan. The good news is that the EN-EL15 battery is used by a few current DSLRs like Nikon D7000 and Nikon 1 V1, so if you already have those cameras you will not need to worry about purchasing spare batteries. The upcoming Nikon D400 camera will also use the same EN-EL15 battery.

One bug that I have discovered so far with the D800, which I have not seen on the D4 yet, is the memory read/write halt. Every once in a while, perhaps once in several hundred shots, the camera freezes up while trying to either read from or write to the memory card. This freeze lasts between 5 to 10 seconds and during this time, the memory write light is constantly turned on. Turning off the camera does not help, so it is best to just wait it out – I did not feel like removing the battery while the light is turned on. I first thought that my memory card was bad (I was using a 16GB SanDisk Extreme Pro card), so I swapped the card to another one and it happened again. I have never seen this sort of behavior on any of the Nikon bodies I have used to date, so it might be a firmware bug.

The battery life of the Nikon D800 is definitely worse than on the D700. Again, more resolution and larger files certainly take their toll on the battery, since memory read and write operations are greatly increased. In addition, the new EN-EL15 battery does not seem to be as efficient as the older EN-EL3e batteries.

13) Shooting in DX Mode

After I published a few articles on the Nikon D800 and D800E, I received a number of comments from our readers that indicated interest in the DX mode offered by D800. Some even said that they were planning to shoot in DX mode exclusively, since they did not need the full 36 MP resolution and they were fine with just 15 MP. Many are too scared to deal with the large file sizes, especially RAW. Others complain about 36 MP files requiring much more processing power and slowing down their PCs/Macs, etc. I responded to a few comments about shooting in DX mode and here is my take on it. Shooting in DX mode is a waste. You are throwing away more than half of the data just because you do not want to deal with large files. It is like putting a cap on a Ferrari so that it does not go over 30 mph on a 60 mph highway. If you are thinking about shooting in DX mode, why bother buying the D800? Get the Nikon D7000 instead – it will give you 16 MP files and the RAW files are twice smaller. If you already own a Nikon D700 and you are planning to shoot in DX mode, you will be disappointed by what you will see from the D800 in terms of image quality, especially at anything above ISO 800. It is almost equivalent to downgrading a full-frame sensor to a cropped-factor sensor, since you would no longer have the down-sampling advantage.

If your PC/Mac is too slow, it might be time to upgrade it (see below). If you have DX lenses from your legacy DX camera, it might be time to replace them with full-frame lenses. If you are worried about storage and larger memory cards, it might be time to buy bigger storage and memory cards. But don’t shoot in DX mode just because you are not ready to deal with the D800. If you are not ready for large RAW files, I suggest buying a different camera.

14) Cropping Options

When I say do not shoot in DX mode, you will quickly see what I mean in this section. The Nikon D800 gives cropping opportunities like no other full-frame camera on the market today. It had better, with its 36 MP sensor! When shooting large 36 MP images, you will have a lot of flexibility to crop your images – something the 12 MP sensor from the D700 was not very good at. Take a look at the below image that I shot with the D800:

Now take a look at what I was able to do with a little cropping:

Impressive, isn’t it? So much detail! The above image is 2500 pixels wide and has incredible detail at 100% view.

15) PC/Mac Requirements

You might be wondering whether your old PC or Mac with a single core processor and 4 GB of RAM is going to suffice for the D800 or not. If your PC/Mac is more than 3-4 years old, then I would recommend to upgrade it to be able to work with those massive 40+ MB NEF files. If you don’t, you will surely suffer. Opening up the RAW files in Lightroom takes twice longer and Photoshop will need more memory to work with the 36 MP files, especially once you start working with multiple layers at the highest resolution. Here is the configuration I recommend:

1. PC or Mac with a dual-core Intel Core i5/i7 (quad-core preferred)
2. 8 GB of RAM (16 GB preferred)
3. Solid State Disk (SSD) drive to store Lightroom catalog and Photoshop cache files
4. 1+ TB of HDD space to store high-resolution RAW files

16) Live View

As I have already pointed out, the Nikon D800 comes with two live view options – one for photography and one for videography. You can switch between the modes by moving the live view lever on the back of the camera. The photography mode is similar to the previous “tripod” mode on older DSLRs – you cannot record video or audio, but you can zoom in and out, track objects / faces and acquire focus using contrast detect. The video mode is used for recording video, so you will see microphone record levels and other video-related features.

While the camera has an impressive live view implementation with more features than on any previous DSLR, there is one very disappointing news – the magnified view on the D800 is not 1:1 pixel level. If you have ever used live view on the Nikon D5000 or D90, you might remember how bad those cameras were for precise manual focusing. The Nikon D800 is very similar in this regard. Because it interpolates the image instead of showing 1:1 pixels, the image appears with much less detail. I noticed this while testing lenses and it was a very annoying problem, making it difficult to see if the focus is accurate or not. I was really hoping to use the Nikon D800 for our Nikon lens reviews, but with a problem like this, I might need to go back to testing lenses on other Nikon DSLRs. I thought that there might be a menu setting in the camera to change this behavior, but I could not find it anywhere…

17) Dynamic Range

As I have already stated, the dynamic range on the D800 is phenomenal – even better than most medium format cameras. While I have not done any scientific measurements to evaluate the dynamic range of the D800, I trust DXOMark when it says that the D800 can go as far as 14.4 EVs. I have tried recovering shadow details from RAW files and I was amazed by how much I can pull out of them. There is so much information stored in those 14-bit RAW files, that you can easily restore overexposed and underexposed parts of the image, as long as they are not completely blown out. Dynamic range is the highest at ISO 100 and gradually goes down as you increase ISO. My field tests are showing that shooting between ISO 100 and 800 is quite acceptable without heavy loss of dynamic range. Anything beyond ISO 800 will decrease dynamic range dramatically.

Here is an example of shadow recovery that I performed in Lightroom. This is what the image looked like when I took it:

And this is how it came out after I tweaked a couple of settings in Lightroom:

Here is one more set of before/after images that show dynamic range recovery options:

See the next page to see more examples of D800′s ISO performance, along with comparisons to Nikon D700, Nikon D3s, Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 5D Mark III.

18) ISO Performance at low ISOs (ISO 200-800)

Some technical junk:

1. White Balance: Auto, changed to Custom, Temp: 4300, Tint: +25
2. EXIF information is preserved in the images
3. Focusing was performed through Live-View Contrast Detect
4. Long exposure NR: Off
5. High ISO NR: Off
6. Image Format: RAW
7. Imported images into Lightroom 4 and normalized to 12 MP resolution
8. Lightroom export: sRGB JPEG Quality 80

Here is the full image, showing which area of the image I cropped below:

Let’s take a look at how the Nikon D800 performs at low ISOs. Here are some crops at ISO 100, 200, 400 and 800 (down-sampled, full 100% view images will be provided shortly):

The images look very nice with no noticeable noise between ISO 100 and ISO 800 when down-sampled. The only exception is the 4th DVD from the top in blue that seems to lose the striped color marks on it.

19) High ISO Performance (ISO 1600-6400)

High ISO performance is a very important measure of DSLR sensor quality for low-light photography. Here is how the Nikon D800 performs at high ISO levels between ISO 1600 and 6400:

Every step up in ISO adds a slight amount of grain. Shadow areas start to get impacted at ISO 3200 and quite a bit of noise is added at ISO 6400. Getting rid of noise at very high ISO levels would require a more selective noise reduction algorithm, so software like Noise Ninja or Nik Software Dfine would have to be used for best results. See my “Photo Noise Reduction Tutorial” for examples of selective noise reduction.

20) High ISO Performance “Boost” (ISO 12800-25600)

Nikon D800 has two extra ISO “boost” levels – ISO 12800 and ISO 25600 for extreme situations. Take a look at these:

ISO 12,800 adds quite a bit of noise compared to ISO 6,400, but thanks to down-sampling, the detail level is still pretty high. Even at noisy ISO 25,600 there is still plenty of details to work with, although the shadows look pretty bad to me with large grains and artifacts all over the image.

21) ISO Performance Summary

The Nikon D800 yields very impressive results at all ISO levels, even at boosted ISO 12,800 and 25,600. Given how little noise there is, I would not hesitate to use it at ISO 3,200 and could even push it as high as ISO 6,400. Now bear in mind that these are down-sampled images at 12 MP – I had to normalize the output in order to compare the camera to the D700 and D3s. Images at 100% view will be provided shortly for you to see the noise levels without a comparison.

It is hard to judge the performance of the Nikon D800 without direct comparison against other professional cameras, which is why you should definitely check out the below comparisons as well.

Compared to Nikon D700

Let’s see how the new D800 compares to the older D700. Below you will find image samples normalized to 12 MP by down-sampling.

22) Nikon D800 vs D700 ISO Comparison at low ISOs

Take a look at the below crops at ISO 100, 200, 400 and 800 (Left: Nikon D800, Right: Nikon D700):

At ISO 100, which is “boosted” ISO for the D700, there is no difference in noise. One interesting detail to note, however, is that the D700 does not see the lines on the 4th disk from the top at all. A higher resolution sensor from the D800 can resolve those details, but the D700 cannot. Look at the letters on the disks – the D800 sees a lot more details and as I have already pointed out before, down-sampling is responsible for this, as it makes the images appear sharper.

I cannot see any difference at ISO 200, ISO 400 or ISO 800 either.

23) Nikon D800 vs D700 High ISO Comparison

What about high ISO levels above ISO 800? Let’s take a look:

Again, ISO 1600 looks very similar on both cameras. Little noise here and there, but otherwise very comparable.

At ISO 3200, we are starting to see some noticeable differences. The D800 has smaller grain, especially in the shadows.

At ISO 6400 the Nikon D700 is clearly worse now – grain is much bigger and we are now seeing all kinds of artifacts in the shadows.

Pushed to ISO 12,800, the D800 is clearly leading the game, with close to a full stop of difference.

And ISO 25,600 cannot even be compared – the image from the D700 looks horrible in comparison.

24) Nikon D800 vs D700 Summary

As I have already pointed out before, a high resolution sensor clearly has advantages over a lower resolution sensor when the image is down-sampled. While the Nikon D700 shows very clean ISO performance at low ISOs, the Nikon D800 easily matches it and produces noise-free images. In addition, due to having a much higher resolution, the D800 can resolve a lot more details at low ISO levels – take a look at the small letters on the DVDs and see for yourself.

As expected, the Nikon D800 takes the lead when the image is pushed to higher ISO levels above ISO 1600. Starting from ISO 3200, the difference gets almost as big as a full stop at ISO 12,800 – compare ISO 6400 from the D700 to ISO 12800 from the D800 and you will see that they look pretty darn close.

Compared to Nikon D3s

What about comparing the D800 to the low-light king, the Nikon D3s? Let’s take a look.

25) Nikon D800 vs D3s ISO Comparison at low ISOs

Same deal with the D3s – it shows almost identical performance at low ISO levels:

Again, note how the D3s cannot resolve the texture detail on the 4th disk. The letters also appear less detailed as a result.

26) Nikon D800 vs D3s High ISO Comparison

Let’s see what happens when both are pushed to ISO 1600 and above:

Once again, ISO 1600 is very comparable.

And the same at ISO 3200.

At ISO 6400 the shadow area of the image on the D3s looks cleaner.

The same at ISO 12,800.

When pushed to ISO 25,600, the Nikon D3s is cleaner and retains colors, while the D800 still shows more details. D3s clearly retains more dynamic range at this ISO level.

27) Nikon D800 vs D3s Summary

Unlike the Nikon D700, the D3s is a worthy competitor to the D800. At high ISO levels the Nikon D3s definitely shows better ISO performance in the shadows, mostly because of higher dynamic range. This is clearly visible at ISO levels 12,800 and 25,600. At the same time, the Nikon D800 still resolves more detail at high ISO levels, thanks to lots of resolution and the down-sampling process.

Compared to Canon 5D Mark II

Let’s see how the old Canon 5D mark II fares against the Nikon D800.

28) Nikon D800 vs Canon 5D Mark II ISO Comparison at Low ISOs

I won’t talk about differences in colors here, because it is expected when comparing cameras from different brands. Let’s just look at noise and details here:

Both images are noise-free, but again, the D800 resolves more detail in comparison.

Noise level all the way to ISO 800 looks about the same to me, with very slight differences.

ISO 800 is a little noisier on the 5D Mark II – take a look at the same 4th DVD from the top and note the shadow areas.

29) Nikon D800 vs Canon 5D Mark II High ISO Comparison

Boosted to higher ISO levels, the difference in sensors is even more apparent:

You can see more noise on the 5D Mark II throughout the image, especially in the shadows.

ISO 3200 looks even worse on the 5D Mark II, which seems to be losing some colors as well.

And ISO 6400 is a lot worse for the 5D Mark II, which shows close to a full stop of difference.

30) Nikon D800 vs Canon 5D Mark II Summary

As expected, the Nikon D800 performs better than the 4 year old Canon 5D Mark II. The difference is not so obvious at very low ISO levels, but pretty clear from ISO 800 and onwards. The D800 also shows resolution advantage, just like when compared to the D700; again, down-sampling is to blame for this. The Canon 5D Mark II is worse by up to a full stop at ISO 6400.

Compared to Canon 5D Mark III

Let’s see what the new Canon 5D Mark III brings to the table.

31) Nikon D800 vs Canon 5D Mark III ISO Comparison at Low ISOs

At base ISO, both are very clean, with very similar output and detail.

Unlike the 5D Mark II, the new 5D Mark III shows impressive performance at ISO 800, matching that of D800.

32) Nikon D800 vs Canon 5D Mark III High ISO Comparison

Let’s see what happens at high ISO levels above ISO 1600:

Looks like the D800 is a tad cleaner in the shadows, otherwise both show very good performance.

ISO 3200 is clearly noisier on the Canon 5D Mark III, as can be seen from the above image.

And even more so at ISO 6400 – look at the shadows.

The grain throughout the frame is bigger on the 5D Mark III at ISO 12,800, although not a huge difference. I would say between 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop max.

Pushed to ISO 25,600, both are pretty similar, although the Canon 5D Mark III still shows larger noise artifacts. Again, down-sampling does the magic for the D800 here!

33) Nikon D800 vs Canon 5D Mark III Summary

As you can see, the Nikon D800 sensor has no competition, even from its biggest rival, the Canon 5D Mark III. Although the Canon 5D Mark III shows impressive levels of noise at lower ISO levels, it still cannot quite match what the D800 can do. Don’t forget that there is also a big resolution difference between the two – the Nikon D800 is 36.3 MP, while the Canon 5D Mark III is 22.3 MP. So at base ISO levels, the Nikon D800 is going to have a resolution advantage for landscape and fashion work.

I have not performed any dynamic range comparisons between the two, so stay tuned for more comparisons!

34) Summary

As you can see from this review, the Nikon D800 is a very appealing camera. With its impressive 36.3 MP sensor, which is currently the highest resolution full-frame sensor on the market (as of May 2012), the Nikon D800 delivers stunning images in terms of dynamic range, colors and details. While it is slower than its predecessor, the Nikon D700 in fps (frames per second), one has to keep in mind that the camera has to process a lot more pixels. In addition, it produces massive JPEG and RAW files that take up a lot of space in the camera buffer, so it also takes longer time to transfer files from the buffer to a memory card (as shown in a video on the first page of this review).

The slower speed, along with a few other annoyances are far outweighed by the many advantages the Nikon D800 has over the D700 – from better ergonomics, dual card slots, 100% viewfinder coverage and movie recording capabilities, to improved autofocus and excellent metering. Above all, the image quality of the D800 sensor is simply phenomenal, with no other full-frame DSLR on the market that can match its performance. As you can see on the third tab of this review, the Nikon D800 performs better than both the Canon 5D Mark II and the new Canon 5D Mark III in high ISO when the image is down-sampled. As a result of the down-sampling process, images from the Nikon D800 also show more sharpness and details.

Overall, I am very impressed by the Nikon D800. Coupled with some pro-level Nikkor prime and zoom lenses such as the Nikon 24mm f/1.4G and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G, the Nikon D800 will become the camera of choice for my photography needs.

35) Where to buy and availability

B&H is currently selling the Nikon D800 body only for $2,999.

36) More image samples

All Images Copyright © Nasim Mansurov, All Rights Reserved. Copying or reproduction is not permitted without written permission from the author.