bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

Thanks for the input! It came with the battery grip and extra battery. Kinds of adds to the bulk of the camera though, but I don’t have to use it I guess.

I’ll have to do some shooting with it today. Thanks for everyone’s input!

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Although I agree with your assessment completely, that has absolutely nothing to do with the OPs question! Best of luck.

lensmaster Loc: Chicago

I have Nikon D800's. both are my Go-To bodies for studio work, and they are terrific on location.
Large file size is a Plus. Greater tonal range than the Canons, incredibly sharp image files.

Camera 'movement"? Not if you hold it steady, use a tripod or monopod.

The Nikon D800 is not really great for SPORTS unless you just shoot in JPEG mode. RAW files will fill the buffer/cache up fast if you are shooting a lot of frames quickly. 20-30 frames in rapid succession will force the camera to pause while all the files are processed. I've tried it and I speak from experience on this.

$500 for the body is a gift and 40k exposures is nothing since the shutter is rated for over 200,000.
I would have it checked out by a Nikon Repair (authorized Nikon Repair is just fine), and have it completely cleaned once you get it.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Still have and use one of my D800s regularly. If you want the resolution of a D800, files will be large. Slight movement makes any camera take blurry images. Downsampling (taking a full 36mp image and resampling it to 12 mp, like a D700 or 24 mp like a D750) will reveal things about noise and blur that are not immediately obvious. It shoots 5 fps which is probably twice as fast as the last motor driven SLR I had.

The one thing you didn't mention was lens quality. The D800 was a game changer. Until then cameras had much lower resolution and were generally ok with less-than-optimal lenses. A lot of lenses that were fine on a 12 mp D700 often couldn't cut it on a 36 mp D800.

That cuts both ways. To get the most out of a D800 (or higher MP camera), one must get the sharpest lenses. The obvious benefit there is that your pictures will be sharper. . .

lensmaster Loc: Chicago

ABSOLUTELY. LENS CHOICE and quality make big differences with a camera like the D800.

You want to use the best glass you have, or can get. Any major lens brand: NIKON, TAMRON, SIGMA will perform perfectly and give excellent results. Low end glass will work but the results could be sub-par due to the high resolution and file size of the chip in the camera. If you shoot RAW you really need the best glass you can afford.

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

I got the camera and it looks very clean. It came with the extra battery grip, Tamron XR Di 38-75 2.8 lens, charger and 8g cf card. The fellow said he bought an 850 and didn’t need this one any more. I believe that was a pretty good buy. He knew all about the controls and other specifics, so I believe he was on the up and up and it wasn’t stolen or anything. And it is a US model.

Been working on my shop addition right now and haven’t had a chance to shoot it outside of the house. I need to take it for a test run!

And what’s the difference between the SD and CF cards other than physical shape and cost? Is one better to use than the other? Thanks!

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

I pre-ordered the D800E when the pair were first announced. I was blown away by its images immediately. After 6 months I bought a D800 as a backup and the image quality was well below the E model so I sold it with under 1000 clicks. It wasn't until the D850 that I saw any imporvements over the D800E in ANY camera model. I shoot the Z7 and Z9 bodies now, but never leave home without the 800E and 850 in tow.