Nikon D810 Highlight Priority Metering, Pentax 645Z notes, Leica T

Up in the mountains field shooting, writeups follow when I’m back in a week or so.

I’ve now studied the new “highlight priority” metering in the Nikon D810 and I have plenty to say (and show about it).

In a nutshell, Nikon D810 highlight priority metering works great sometimes and works worse at other times (as in a bug). And sometimes absolutely awful as in blowing out the image. Not ready for prime time, and most definitely not a replacement for expert manual exposure, and maybe too unreliable to rely on in any case.

Other brief notes:

• In the space of 20 minutes, I found 20 issues with the Leica T, ranging from bugs requiring power-cycling to severe usability problems to “who could have thought that up as making sense?”. A few nice things too, but with grating behavioral flaws that undermine it. I felt my frustration level steadily building as I used it. With a few (obvious) changes, it could work a lot better. It’s baffling how this software gets out the door.
• The Pentax 645Z offers awesome dynamic range in the field. It does have some minor time-wasting behaviors for field use that could be eliminated with a firmware update, but these are relatively minor in the scheme of things, the image quality is outstanding.
• The Nikon D810 Live View (with Zacuto) is unequivocally the best experience I’ve ever had in a camera, and I definitely prefer it over the EVF on the Sony A7R. Not just a practical time saver but a hit rate improvement for focus, snapping in and out obviously. Awesome. I investigated Picture Profiles in some detail, and will be posting the one I prefer for Live View use.