D800 The Best DSLR Out There?

I guess Nikon knew what they were doing all along!

I was browsing the internet yesterday about news pertaining to the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. Even though the D800 was released weeks before the Canon, the latter has managed to ship its camera earlier. The first few Norwegian orders have also been sent out! Talk about efficiency! As for the Nikon D800, it has only, to the best of my knowledge, started shipping to the Japanese market and to NPS members. So far still no Norwegian sightings of these cameras yet!

Which brings me to my point. While browsing I was surprised to find a breaking news article from DxO Labs, a website famous (or infamous, whichever way you want to look at it) for benchmarking DSLR sensors. A lot of people swear by these reports, and a lot loathe them. A camera, after all, is not just about its sensor, but also the lens attached to it, and the photographer using it. But lo and behold: the Nikon D800 has scored top marks for its 36.3 full frame CMOS sensor, besting even its big brother the Nikon D4, and all the medium format cameras!

Unsurprisingly, it scores the top marks for its dynamic range, a result of the enormous amount of megapixels this camera has.  So I guess the Nikon D800 will indeed live up to its name as a landscape and studio photographer's camera of choice.

A little intriguing though is the fact that the Canon EOS 5D Mark III has not yet beet rated at DxO Labs, despite it already being in the hands of consumers. What I predict though would be this: the Canon will trump the D800 when it comes to low-light performance. But when the images from the D800 are resampled to match that of the Canon, Nikon will most likely still come out winning. But I guess we will never know until the final test results are revealed.

So now I am scrambling to complete my Nikon D800 budget much, much earlier than planned, and order as soon as possible. I predict that with this news, Nikon will not be able to keep up with orders for months!