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Portrait Photographer Asks: D800 or D800E or D3s or D4?

John of John Kraus Photography writes:

I've been valuing your continued testing on the D800/ D800E and have been suggesting to folks to go and subscribe to your site to get the answers they seek. Hopefully some have.

As mentioned before I've been wrangling the decision whether to add the D800E to my D800. I shoot people, both hi-end portraiture and events. Was happily settled into getting one of each but I've been running in circles trying to solve the file size question when shooting at high ISOs at events- the downsizing is fine but if you have 1,000 files to downsize it becomes an issue. At least until my new computer comes in. And ditto with added storage when I don't need it.

Some things I've solved, perhaps useful for you to share—

  • Using the cropped frames is a hidden treasure with the D800 when for workflow reasons you want to minimize file size. Due to the huge file size, a 1.5 crop is a real option in terms of the remaining large file. And 1.2 is often great to work with. However.... this works least well at high ISO, where the crop will present higher noise levels more clearly.
  • Shooting in 12- bit is another option. Saves 25% or so of file space. Depends what you're shooting but often the difference is subtle.
  • D800 JPEGs look great, though I still worry about not having RAWs as insurance. Though if exposed properly and color is in the ballpark, I seem to see more headroom than in the past in terms of bringing back details in highlights and shadows and correcting color. The tiniest details can suffer, but so far it looks like a PP thing and not a print thing.
  • I have one client who wants RAW files for events, and that's a big reason I've been trying to figure this out. Almost solved with the cropping and 12 bit RAW options, but not solved for low light. I've suggested to Nikon that they add sRAW but so far Nikon Corporate has declined.
  • One option other than that one client is to shoot JPEG and RAW, and for those low light hundreds of frames moments save the RAWs for emergencies and work with the JPEGs.
  • In terms of the D800 I could keep the D800, or switch out for the D800E. I've seen just about every test, and don't think moire on clothes is a big part of the issue- one is a little more, one a little less. The question for me as none of you have tested yet, is just how much added noise will I get at high ISO with the D800 over the D800E, where I'm trying to keep it as noise-free as possible. Really noticeable or a little?
  • The other option is to keep the D800, and keep my D3s, or switch to a D4. If money weren't an issue I'd upgrade to the D4 in this scenario for but from friends of mine who have upgraded- there's good improvements, but IQ wise the 4 is just slightly better, they say, to 12,000, and then the D3s is much better.
  • One fly in the ointment- I really love staying in Aperture. Do you think with the proper use of edge sharpening and detail I can approach proper sharpening and micro-contrast to get the most out of the D800 files? To my eye on first test it's surprisingly close at .84/.14/.69 at edge sharpening, Definition at .18.

So there you have it. My heart is saying to keep the D800 and get the E, that way I have matching bodies and can take advantage of the subtle differences of each. But my head is saying perhaps it's really smartest shooting the range of assignments I do to keep what I have- the D800 and the D3s. Though I do LOVE the look of the D800 file more, even at high ISO- less DR but nicer grain and more detail.

DIGLLOYD: this is an excellent case study of the realities of job-specific and workflow-specific requirements. My take here is stick with the D800 and D3s combination, deferring further upgrades for another year or two. A D800E might offer slightly better noise performance than a D800 (since lower sharpening is needed), and might have a nice extra touch of fine contrast detail especially at very wide apertures, but I don’t think it has much to add for portraits over a D800.

Cropping makes a lot of sense; if one only needs a 4:3 format or similar, no need to shoot 3:2. On the other hand, if the background is dropping out (blurred or dark), little additional file size results anyway (it gets compressed to little space usage), so I don’t think it’s worth the bother.

As for JPEGs, I’ve never been happy with Nikon’s in-camera JPEGs, though I have not specifically evaluated those from the D800 or D800E. Seems rather pointless to shoot a 36MP camera, then discard the finest detail with mediocre sharpening and the blurring of JPEG compression (though JPEG does have a noise reduction effect as a side-effect also). But if the lens or focus is limiting the quality, many of these points are moot. I see RAW as more of a dynamic range and white balance issue (and sharpening), though with care one can use the various camera settings to produce JPEGs that are reasonably good for post-processing.

PLUS, either sRGB or AdobeRGB color space will CRUSH THE REDS. Seriously.Bad news for a Chinese wedding. JPEG does not allow choosing a wide-gamut color space.

I don’t see the file size as an issue. We have 4TB hard drives at reasonable cost. And batch workflow with ACR in Photoshop can do a pretty rapid job of converting 36-megapixel D800 files to 18 or 24 megapixel output JPEGs with very nice sharpening (forget the time-wasting Import nonsense of Aperture and Lightroom).

Get an MPG Pro Workstation properly outfitted as a 6-core 3.33 GHz with 48GB memory and a dedicated Accelsior PCIe SSD for job processing.

Sharpening can probably be handled just fine with Topaz InFocus (what I use after resizing), and since workflow efficiency is so important, that would be my advice— stick with Aperture (in this case) and add a better final sharpening tool like Topaz InFocus (Nik Software also has sharpening tools that I hear are very good, and they might have a plugin for Aperture also).

Image used with permission — Copyright 2012 John Kraus Photography

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