PeterN wrote:
On 9/15/2012 10:41 PM, Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
If I could only have one it would
have to be the D4, [...]

I am leaning towards the D4 because of its better high ISO usability and
higher fps rate. Although it has less pixels than the D800, the pixels
are much larger.

Just be advised that the higher ISO is in fact a very
small difference for the D4 over the D800. The pixels
may be larger on the D4, but an image from a D800 can be
resampled to the same size as the D4 image and will then
be almost identical.

If most of what you do is printed at larger than 16x20,
the D800's pixels and dynamic range will outshine the
higher ISO capability of the D4.

But as far as the frame rate... if you shoot sports or
anything else that commonly causes you to shoot in
bursts, the D4 is *vastly* superior to the D800. It's
more than just a twice as fast fps rate too, because
even doing single shots it is relatively easy to fill up
the buffer on the D800 and have to wait and/or shoot
very slowly. The D4 will do a huge number of
consecutive shots without a pause. The memory buffer is
large enough for 76 compressed 14-bit RAW shots. I
shoot in NEF+JPEG and can get more than 50 in one burst.
The D800 holds only 20 RAW shots, and shooting NEF+JPEG
reduces that a bit too.

The difference in shooting speed is one that can often
make or break the ability to get the images you want.
That is very different than issues with pixels, ISO, and
dynamic range where most people won't even be able to
see the differences without a carefully selected set of
prints to compare side by side.


--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)