Nikon D800 or EOS 5D Mark III

L

Lor

Well-known member
I'm thinking about purchasing the Nikon D800 since all of my existing lenses (mostly primes) are Nikon lenses. Is the Canon 5D Mark III good enough of a HDSLR that I should seriously consider switching to Canon? What about lenses between Nikon and Canon? Which is better or are they about the same quality?
 
Thanks for the post. From what I gather, the Canon is a bit better with video especially in less light. However, my other question is, is it worth switch over and what about the lenses?
 
Personally, I'd stick to the system you've invested in. For video purposes, you can use the Nikkor lenses on a Canon body with an adapter. I might have looked at the D800 if I wasn't so invested in glass already. You'll likely take a hit by making the switch and for a marginal increase in quality (which is currently subjective). If you need high ISOs, hands down...make the change.

Kegan
 
Thanks for the input. That's exactly why I'm hesitant to switch because I have quite a few Nikon lenses already.
 
those two video reviews include most of the info flying around right now
for video, the 5D3 seems better, but for stills the D800 is clearly superior; do you shoot many of those? it could be another factor

to me, the key is to know how easily aliasin/moire appear on the D800, and how good is its codec (this, given I already know the 5D3 is better at high ISO, and the D800 has over a stop higher DR in video mode)
 
As other posters have said - if you have a significant investment in Nikon glass, or you absolutely need 36MP stills, get the D800 - and get a Mosaic Engineering anti-aliasing filter as soon as it becomes available.

If you have a significant investment in Canon glass, or you absolutely need clean low light video, get the 5DMarkIII - and sharpen your images in post.

Good luck with your decision!

Bill
 
but for stills the D800 is clearly superior; do you shoot many of those? it could be another factor
Click to expand...

I disagree, it really boils down to what type of still shooting you do. If you do fast burst sequences for sports, redcarpet events, ect... the Nikon has a major flaw, it takes the camera 2 minutes, yes no mistake, it you burst shoot, it will need a full two minutes to buffer and save the photos, and while buffering, the camera is non responsive, NOTHING WORKS until finished. So anyone that buys this cam for stills should keep that in mind. But in 2012 to have a cam take two minutes to buffer is silly. The Canon slows down but never stops taking pics, and thats the difference between the money shot and NO shot.
 
^ that's a very big flaw indeed, I knew about it but didn't consider it because it doesn't affect my shooting style (and I hardly do stills anyway) - I guess it's one of those things that could be solved with a firmware update?
 
Samuel H said:
^ that's a very big flaw indeed, I knew about it but didn't consider it because it doesn't affect my shooting style (and I hardly do stills anyway) - I guess it's one of those things that could be solved with a firmware update?
Click to expand...

Nah, it's the sort of stupid cripple that Nikon intentionally puts into place to differentiate from other models - in this case, they want high-speed still shooters to buy the D4.
 
A much better test here https://vimeo.com/42381520 from nofilmschool. I applaud the tester who went back and did some comparison between the two in low light. The biggest gripe was that the Iso setting between the cameras are completely different. At same ISO the Nikon is clearly at least 2/3 stop brighter (I the latest test I would say 1 stop) than the Canon 5d. So you have to compare Nikon ISO 1600 to Canon 2500 to 3200. The second thing is dynamic range, you can clearly see much more in the shadows than the Canon which crushes the shadows and thus hides more of the noise.

The last thing is detail. The D800 has much better resolution than the 5d3 which look out of focus when you put it side by side. So if you trade off a little of this rez with noise reduction like he did in the last part with neat image you get much closer to the 5d3. Some would say that the ISO 5000 d800 test at 200% is still brighter (I think he should have use a 3200 to 4000 ISO sample) and more resolute that the 5d3 at 6400 (In the 200% test). The

So in the end they are much closer than what you would think because many so called test as above just assume things like the ISO rating are the same from each manufacturer while they are so far from it. So now the d800 is getting the reputation that it is not a great low light camera because Canon as overestimated its ISO by nearly a good stop and use much more aggressive in camera NR.

Unfortunately we don't have a system like DXOmark in the video world.

 
brunerww said:
As other posters have said - if you have a significant investment in Nikon glass, or you absolutely need 36MP stills, get the D800 - and get a Mosaic Engineering anti-aliasing filter as soon as it becomes available.

If you have a significant investment in Canon glass, or you absolutely need clean low light video, get the 5DMarkIII - and sharpen your images in post.

Good luck with your decision!

Bill
Click to expand...

It's likely that I'll buy the D800 since I have many Nikon lenses already; however, I'll have to check out those "mosaic engineering anti-aliasing filter". Are these filters the same or works similar to what Philip Bloom was showing in his video above in this thread?
 
maranfilms said:
I disagree, it really boils down to what type of still shooting you do. If you do fast burst sequences for sports, redcarpet events, ect... the Nikon has a major flaw, it takes the camera 2 minutes, yes no mistake, it you burst shoot, it will need a full two minutes to buffer and save the photos, and while buffering, the camera is non responsive, NOTHING WORKS until finished. So anyone that buys this cam for stills should keep that in mind. But in 2012 to have a cam take two minutes to buffer is silly. The Canon slows down but never stops taking pics, and thats the difference between the money shot and NO shot.
Click to expand...


That´s bullshit. You´ve probably seen that on a youtube review.
The truth is that once the buffer is full the camera goes on taking photos at about 1fps, same thing that happens with a 5D. Same as happens with most DSLRs. The camera never freezes for 2 minutes.
 
I think the guy that did this test was using some old SD or CF card. That is terrible when someone is doing a public test and puts some old card in the latest $ 3000 pro camera.
 
that bit of info comes from the Dave Dugdale review, which, apart from this, was a very nice review with lots of interesting info
I don't know if it's the card, but he was getting that nasty behavior

the dpreview article says:
"Crucially, you can still shoot single images as well as access all of the camera menus and shooting options while data is being written to the card."
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d800-d800e/14

and other people are finding this too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1r8ZqXjSOg
 
"from nofilmschool"

Sorry, Nikon. The colors are dull and yellow. The noise is almost unusable at 1250 ISO -- this was cleaned up with Neatvideo no?

The Canon skintones are just superior, and the noise level too.

But, the clear winner at this price point is going to have to be... Blackmagic! (I'll use lighting if necessary, rather than shoot by candles.)
 
They are both great cameras but I like the image from the d800 better, looks crazy good. 5d wins on the high iso, but the images I'm seeing off the d800 are really wowing me in DR and tones. Once mosaic ships that Olpf filter for the d800, it's really going to be a great little foolproof camera. I'm just nit picking though, I don't think you would go wrong with either.
 
mail4joeg said:
"from nofilmschool"

Sorry, Nikon. The colors are dull and yellow. The noise is almost unusable at 1250 ISO -- this was cleaned up with Neatvideo no?

The Canon skintones are just superior, and the noise level too.

But, the clear winner at this price point is going to have to be... Blackmagic! (I'll use lighting if necessary, rather than shoot by candles.)
Click to expand...


I think we can agree to disagree on the skintones, what many feel that the colours are dull is that they don't understand dynamic range, which is superior in the case of the Nikon. This can be remedied very rapidly with just a little curve adjustment. But try to do the contrary in a contrasty lighting situation, that is get back shadow or highlight detail when one is either blown or crushed. This will happen much more in the case of 5d3. So I prefer the dull look to the crushed shadow one.

I think what many don't understand is that the Canon is using a lot of noise reduction in Camera. This is what the nofilmschool test shows in many ways. At about the same level of detail in low light (taking also into account the 1 stop difference in ISO rating) the d800 is much closer to the 5d3. It is the same on the photo side. Canon claimed 2 stop better low light than 5d2, but it was only in jpeg with some heavy noise reduction in camera as standard. In raw it was much much closer and at same output resolution the d800 has better high ISO than the 5d3 with DXOmark. Yes at same output resolution which should be the case in the video world also. You can't compare the 5d3 with much lower detail resolution to the d800 directly, they have to be equalized at about the same level and this is what the noise reduction software does.

Now I am not saying that the Nikon is better than the Canon. But in the case of low light both are much closer to what people think. The Nikon still shows too much aliasing and moire in video mode. In the end when the dust settle it will be perhaps a Nikon d800 + Mosaic filter + Ninja vs 5d3 - aliasing filter to see who is better. Unfortunately it won't matter at all because some people have already stigmatize the d800 as not good in low light.
 
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