Having been on the waiting list for a D800 since before it was announced, I was excited to get it just before a trip to South Africa in June. I decided to go with the D800 rather than the D800E variant to avoid possible moire issues with plumage. When it had been announced as a 36 MP , 4fps body I had been skeptical as to how useful it would be for birds as I had got used to the 8fps of my D700/D300 and 9fps of my D3 and suspected that the D800 would end up mainly being used for landscape and studio work. As always with a new body I used it for everything initially to get a feel for how it worked in various situations. I found that despite the lower frame rate I was getting some really good flight shots and found that the high resolution sensor was allowing me to crop in a lot more and still get really good image quality. With birds, reach is always an issue and this ability added significant flexibility in some of my regular shooting spots. I programmed my one function button to allow rapid changes in crop mode as I found the 1.2 crop and even the 1.5 crop useful for static birds and this helps limit file size. For birds in flight I tend to stay with the full frame and crop in post. File size is a significant change and has altered the way I edit to an extent. Previously I would do an initial edit deleting all obviously bad images then selecting definite keepers to process. I now edit harshly on the first pass and only keep images definitely deserving of post processing and as a result end up keeping fewer megabytes worth of images. I was lucky enough to get a battery grip even though they were in short supply and by using AA Eneloops was able to get 5fps in the 1.2 crop mode which regained some flexibility in terms of frame rate but an increasingly finding that unless I am specifically at a venue for birds in flight I tend to choose the D800 for the cropping flexibility it offers. The attached images all are quite usable up to 8×12 print size and if taken with a lower resolution camera would not be. The updated autofocus that works down to f8 is another bonus adding to reach by allowing easier use of 1.7x and 2x teleconverters with f4 lenses that previously were limited to the 1.4x teleconverter.

The high resolution files are gorgeous to work with, revealing previously unappreciated detail in plumage. The benefit of this is entirely dependent on what the files are to be used for though. If a full frame image is only going to be used for web it is entirely wasted as vast amounts of data is thrown out when downsizing and I have grown quite frustrated at the loss of detail in web res images when compared to the full size originals. Large prints on the other hand really showcase the details.