SP’S Battle of the Titans

In SP’s September issue, I read the article that pitted the D800 and the 5DIII against each other. Although I can’t afford either camera, I would like to put forward few of my thoughts. First, congratulations to Ronnie and the

team for bringing out a very frank and unbiased comparison between the Canon 5D III and the Nikon D800. It was classic Ronnie - deep in technical content with the subtle touch of humor! In spite of the apparent similarities in size and shape, these two cameras are as different as chalk and cheese. The 5D III is an excellent general purpose camera whereas the D800 is more specialised camera for landscape and studio photography. With its very high pixel count, the D800 nibbles at the lower end of medium format realm at a fraction of the price. However, many of its drawbacks like frame rate, shallower buffer depth are due to the very same feature. In fact, a simple calculation will show D800 pushes more data through the pipe than the 5D III but it is still one FPS slower! Coming to Ronnie’s note on Nikon users on the “deer” problem, being one myself would approach the problem this way: I would use the DX mode. That will reduce the pixel count to around 15.5 MP, which is still a respectable figure. For that I get 5 FPS or even 6 FPS with the optional grip. The burst rate goes to 100 frames for JPEG/fine and 23 for RAW+JPEG. Plus the reach is better (always a boon to wildlife photographers) due to cropping. I also get another unique advantage - a sort of sports finder which will help me to frame a moving subject much more easily since I can see beyond what the lens is capturing in the viewfinder. All in all not bad for a leopard that can change its spots! Of course one can argue against it but this is a reasonable solution. The same crop will reduce pixel count on 5DIII to around 9.5MP with no increase in FPS. One good feature was the ability of D800 to focus with lenses as slow as f/8 (by as many as 8 sensors). This is an invaluable feature for wildlife photographers (who are always short focal length) since it will allow a 300 f/4 lens to work with a 2X converter thus saving a great deal of money. From the rumors that are flying about, Canon is supposed to bring out an ultra-high pixel count camera of the order of 47MP and Nikon a low cost 24MP camera. Perhaps Canon is trying to do a Nikon, and vice versa! Thanks and Regards, AshokKandimalla,Hyderabad