A few months ago I purchased a new Nikon D800 and this past week I was finally able to really put it to the test, especially it's low light capability. Recently I caught four dates of the Sponge/Spacehog tour. I have always enjoyed shooting concerts, but they often have the issue of not being very brightly lit. With my old D200 I could never set the ISO much higher than 640, 800 tops, before the image quality really fell apart. It helped when I got a couple f2.8 lenes. Even then I was shooting at a 1/60 sec or slower, which resulted in a lot of motion blur.
With the D800, however, not only am I passing the ISO 800 mark, but am shooing at speeds of ISO 4000! The image does get just a little grainy at these high speeds, but is still more than useable. Plus, I now get to shoot at faster shutter speeds to capture the action of the musicians playing and running around stage.
On the way to these shows, I was also able to stop at a tri-point and state high point for my ongoing series Unlikely Landscapes. One site was shot during dusk and another at night, and both were shot in light rain and frigid cold (this was the first time I had shot a high point at night). The D800 came through again, I was able to get decent exposures in poor lighting conditions with no problem. I've been blown away by the low-light capabilities of the D800, which was the selling point for me rather than the 36 megapixel rating.
I'm still using DX lenses, however, which means I'm getting a cropped image (15MP instead of 36MP). Considering though that my D200 was only 10MP I'm still getting a larger image and the same lens coverage. I'll get proper FX lenses for it one day, but for now, for my purposes, my f/2.8 DX lenses are d
Check out below for the results of the images of Ebright Azimuth at night (the high point of Delaware) and the tri-point of Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. For the concert images, go to my Facebook page (link below).
Tri-state point of Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. 2013.
Ebright Azimuth, Delaware state highpoint. 2013.