I don't think that's so bad. Those prices will probably hold up for a long time.

Absolutely not. When I bought my D810, I hadn't bought an SLR of any kind since a Nikon FA film camera in the 80s. I was still using the Nikon FTn my father bought me for my graduation from high school until approximately the year 2000 when I switched over entirely to the FA. I started using digital compact cameras in 2005. I gave up on film entirely in 2007. Nearing retirement, I decided to get more serious about photography again and bought the D810. It's as much camera as I want or need. I enjoy it. I'm upgrading some older lenses that don't meet my expectations, and that's it. I can't say that I'll never upgrade, but it won't be any time soon.

Which lenses? Where did you go to find out what they're worth?

High sales volume keeps prices low. We should thank the people who buy a new camera every couple years. I did buy a D810 a couple of years ago. I hadn't bought any sort of SLR since a Nikon FA in the 80s. At the rate I upgrade my equipment, I may never buy another one, but if I do, I hope the model is selling like hotcakes.

The goal of the picture wasn't to take a photo of sheep. At the time, I was on vacation, standing on an overlook near Hadrian's Wall in Northern England, and simply recorded what I saw to remember it. Some would call it a "snapshot." What I intended to show with the crop was the ability to crop heavily without the picture deteriorating into pixels. That's the advantage of 36 megapixels versus anything less.

I've been on this forum for a couple of months, and I haven't seen any discussion about Canon's 50 megapixel cameras. I have too much invested in Nikon equipment to even consider buying one. I've also seen the sensor criticized for inferior dynamic range and higher noise at high ISO versus the D810. Perhaps this isn't the right place to bring up the subject of 50 megapixel cameras :-)

Which 70-200 f4? The most recent version with autofocus and VR is 100% compatible with your camera. If you're talking about the much older manual focus lens, you'll need to enter data about the lens into the camera through a menu (no chip in the lens), You will also have to focus manually.

I have posted these pictures before. The full frame picture was taken with my Nikon D810 handheld at 1/1000 and f11 using a 50mm f1.4 AF-D lens at ISO 400. I have reduced the size of the picture considerably because I can't upload a 27 megabyte file to this site. I just want you to see where the crop came from.

There are many reasons why this picture could have been sharper. I could have used a tripod. I could have used the native ISO of the camera. I could have used a larger f stop. Yes, I'll admit that diffraction is probably a factor at f11. But I want to make a point. You say that at f11, you're only going to get 14 megapixels of information in a picture taken with this camera and any lens you attach to it, so why use a 36 megapixel camera to take the picture? I'll tell you why it matters. More pixels gives you a greater ability to crop without your enlargements just becoming pixels. If this same picture were taken with a 14 megapixel camera (Why use more, according to your logic?), then the same crop, instead of showing clearly recognizable sheep would just be a blur of pixels, especially at the same magnification. So if the shot of a lifetime calling for a telephoto lens comes along, but I've only got my 50 with me, I might be able to get a usable picture out of it by cropping heavily. Not ideal, but not terrible either. The d750 is an awesome camera. Don't get me wrong. I came very close to buying one initially and then when the price dropped to a crazy level a few weeks ago. But if you think that you can get the same flexibility out of it with fewer pixels, you're wrong.

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If all of my cards fail, I won't lose any images. I have every one backed up in two places. I just don't reuse the cards. Perhaps this is irrational, but I can afford the cards. It's just a gut feeling that I shouldn't discard what's on them, and yes it's a third backup, but not one I will go back into unless something catastrophic happens to my other backups, which is unlikely. Makes me feel better to have them.

I use my free Google drive for sharing photos with others. 15 gigabytes is too small for permanent storage. The cards I use in my camera are larger than this.

I understand. I just don't reuse them. I don't touch them once they're taken out and put away. I may never touch them again. I work with my external hard drives when I want to go back into my saved pictures.

Honestly, I don't know. I keep them all in one small box, and not in the same place as my hard drives, and I don't keep those together either. I'm going to guess 20-30, which will seem very low to some, but I don't take pictures on a daily basis like some. Memory cards do cost much more per gigabyte than hard drives but a "casual photographer" would typically only buy a few at a time. You can't do without them. If you retire them rather than reuse them, the expense is spread out over time. I suppose that if your thing is photojournalism where you're snapping off thousands of pictures a day at 10 frames per second, then this approach could be quite expensive. If you do decide to just save your cards as I do, don't forget to back up the pictures to something else as well.

Agree with this. I do the same. I take the full cards out of my cameras and put the cards away. The photos on the cards are copied to two external hard drives more or less as they are taken. I have three copies (and sometimes more) of every digital photo and video I've ever taken. Having the original cards is the ultimate fail safe, as unlikely as it is that I'll have to resort to that.

This same discussion has been repeated in the past and ends up nowhere. My parting request is to ask everyone to consider buying the D810 or the camera that replaces it. It will help Nikon recover the cost of development and manufacturing and keep prices down for those who might actually need a high resolution camera.

I can actually feel my Nikon D810 move when the shutter trips. I don't mean vibrate. I mean move. It is especially obvious with a short, light prime lens mounted. There is a gentle up and down rocking with the mirror actuation. This kind of motion can only be defeated by a heavy tripod. Of course, a camera like this has several tricks to eliminate this mirror movement as well as other vibrations, but if you're going to stick a camera like this on a tripod and do nothing else, make sure it's a heavy one.