03. April 2012 · Categories: Photos

The Nikon D800 is a great camera with respect to the photos it takes, but it has a few issues with usability. The problem is that to a large extent the camera has not yet arrived in the iPad/iPhone age, and still tries to do everything in body, instead of allowing us to use our much more usable touch screen phones and iPads.

Indeed the manual controls are pretty ergonomic, apart from a few issues:

  • It is a pity that the standard infrared receiver for easy remote release is not included. Even though it would only work short distances, it is brilliant as a light way to provide remote release
  • The camera can store up to 4 different settings banks, which then can be recalled. Strangely these cannot be quickly recalled, it would be great if the alternate command wheel could select these when pressing the mode button.
  • I do not understand that so many options are provided via a quick menu button for the quality of the images generated. Let us be honest, we all use at most three settings: compact, large and best. We might have a different opinion what should be behind them, but that is what options are for. And with the quality button only needing to change one setting, could we swap quality and mode buttons, and have the mode button extend with recall as stated above?

A few buttons could be placed a bit better, like the autofocus button, the DOF preview button (which is not reachable with your left thumb, unlike the D7000), and an extra custom button below the AF-ON button (Why is the AF-ON button not configurable?)

On the other hand, the D800 also has nifty little touches, like the shutter for the eye piece, or the two-axis virtual horizon.

But the big problem is the lack of any integration with an iPhone or iPad. I do not understand why a wifi remote mode is not standard, it would make using the camera a lot nicer:

  • Provide an app for remote shooting, with live view streaming. You have hardware video encoding on board, use it to provide good streaming performance.
  • Adapt tap to focus and tap to expose controls to make shooting easier
  • Use that large screen to provide access to more of the relevant data at once, and to make configuration easier.
  • Immediately download the photos to your device, and use iPhoto to do a first pass through them, and upload photos using the internet

I understand that using Wi-Fi draws a lot of power, but that could resolved by providing a battery grip with integrated WiFi. But given that WiFi now does not cost much anymore, it really should be standard for a D800.