My Nikon D800 arrived to Kuwait a few days ago and I picked it up yesterday night on my way back home from the airport. I was hoping to have the camera with me when I went to Lebanon so I could take some pictures while I was there but the camera ended up arriving after I had already left. First impression… I’m in love. Going from the Nikon D90 to the D800 is a huge jump and it’s not because the D800 is larger and much better built or the fact it’s a 36MP full frame camera. The thing that has excited me the most so far is all the customizable options in the camera. EVERYTHING can be customized, there are just menus and menus of options and I’m loving it.
I’m going to be taking pictures all this weekend and should have a better first impression to post sometime next week but for now I’ll leave you with one picture to demonstrate how huge 36MP really is. Below is a photo I took today with a 24mm lens (thats why the image has some distortion) and below that is a 100% crop of the same image.
The amount of details the camera captures is ridiculous and each uncompressed RAW file is around 80MB in size. If you want to view the image above in full res click [Here]
I originally pre-ordered the camera from both BHphoto AND Amazon but they both had a long list of pre-orders (BHphoto I read have nearly 5000 pre-orders) but they both didn’t receive a large shipment of cameras (BHphoto supposedly got just 50!). So I decided to find a smaller less popular retailer and ended up pre-ordering from Electronic Express. I was the only one that had pre-ordered from them and around 5 days after placing my order they received just one D800 and shipped it to me. I was super lucky since there are thousands and thousands of people who’ve pre-ordered from early February and still have no idea when they’ll be getting the camera. The local Nikon dealer and AAB Photo both have the D800 in stock right now but due to the world wide limited availability their prices are still very high (around KD1,300). So your best bet right now if you want a D800 is to find a small online retailer and order it from them or pay a premium and pick it up locally.
29 replies on “Nikon D800”
Mabrook!
1200kd for a camera?! loooool
What lens did you use to take the second photo? Are those the true dimensions straight out of camera?
The lamp? Took that with the 50mm f/1.4 with minor post giving it a slight blue tint since it was more of a greyish than blue.
Canon’s reply to this? nothing :/
The 5D Mark III
+1
geez.. they even named it after you and you still went and got one from their competitor?
Congrats !
Since I own the Iphone4 I began to forget about my cameras
all I need is there with me all the time , Taking a good pictures
doesn’t have to be with a professional equipment and holding
heavy stuff all the time on you . Iphone is enough and then you
could transfer your pic for editing if you like , The only thing that
you’ll miss is the zooming !
The iPhone is a great camera and it’s replaced my point and shoot camera actually. Past two vacations all I shot with was the iPhone and I don’t even miss the zoom since I don’t use zoom lenses on any of my cams 🙂
Neither do I , not a big fan of zooming I was just wondering
since I saw that zooming picture on the post .. Sure IPhone
makes it so much easier , Thanks
That’s not a zoom, it’s the same picture
I can easily imagine this being the standard gear on CSI – and the rallying cry of Enhance, Enhance!.
CSI seems to bend reality. They take a 2 megapixel shot of a car from a mile away and somehow enhance till they can read the numbers.
Yes sorry my bad didn’t read the whole post carefully 🙂
errrr..you miss a bit more than zooming, but as long as you are happy with the pictures that you take from your iPhone, that is all that matters.
Ofcourse there is a list of what you are missing if your shooting with an iphone but to me the most important one would be ISO and the ability to shoot in the dark and still get good results specially if using the D800 or D3s.
There are disadvantages of course to the iPhone but the iPhone has one big advantage, actually two.
1) It’s actually with you the whole time
2) It’s much less intimidating and doesn’t stick out
More important that the ISO would be the ability to get shallow depth-of-field to isolate the subject – because that is what makes photos (especially of people) more pleasing.
Nice and congrats!!.
I am expecting to pick up mine next week for an equivalent of KD 750/- from India (Rupees 1,37,500/-).
Nikon India official price is Rs. 1,45,000/- (cheaper than Amazon), but the dealers give some additional discount.
Congratulations Mark!
I guess you beat Cajie after all 😛
Some of the guys on DPreview.com were saying the D800 owners will probably have to upgrade their computers coz processing an 80MB 36MP RAW file is gonna take some serious processing power and plus some decent storage space.
How did you feel editing the RAW file on your existing setup?
Didn’t feel bad or slow at all in Lightroom 4 on my MacBook air. Plus I just set it up so my raw files are 12 bit instead of 14 and compressed instead of lossless so file size is down to around 40mb which isn’t too bad. I can fit around 340 pics on a 16gb card
Congrats Mark… photos taken by your new Nikon D800 is amazing! 🙂
Very cool! Congrats! Looks like you will be snapping a lot of pics with this lovely machine!
Fyi if even you gave me the camera with the lenses I still wouldn’t give you my Jumaroo….
Isn’t it mine since I won the bet?
Mabrook Mabrook Mabrook !!! where is the party ? 😛
Congrats dude and enjoy breaking it in hehe 😛
Hi Mark,
Thank you very much for giving a brief description about the Nikon digital SLR camera D800 and do appreciate about the pictures you have taken from it and posted in this blog.
I beg to differ that AAB or any other does have D800 camera in Kuwait, as you have mentioned in your blog. We had received few units and same have been sold out, you had already bought from online stores
Please be informed that Nikon Corp. strictly recommend their customer to buy Nikon products from their local authorized distributor or the dealers recommended in their country to avail the warranty and guarantee.
I beg to differ that your recommendations to customers to purchase online will result in service and warranty issues as these professional cameras do not have an international warranty and in-case of any problem arising the customer may have to pay additional charges which may work out to be more than the difference in price between local distributor and online store
For further details of issues of grey market please visit our website: https://nikonasia-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4733/theme/kw.
Thank you once again for your support to Nikon products.
Regards!
Babu.A.S.
Technical Sales Support Officer (Nikon-ATO: Kuwait)
Ashraf & Co. Ltd.
Kuwait
If the camera runs into any problems I can always mail it back to Nikon US for repairs under warranty. In any case I recommended people buy it online if they want to pay 850kd for it. If anyone wants to pay 1200 they can buy it locally of course and have the added benefit of local warranty 🙂