I haven’t had a chance to post about the new dSLR bodies that Nikon has released in the last several weeks.

Nikon has released the update to my D700, and they have answered my request for more megapixels. The D800 is the new updated version of my camera. I was hoping for 24mp or there abouts, but not 36mp’s!!! I have a feeling, 36mp will be too much! The file sizes are going to be very large and I have a feeling my trusty 24″ iMac 3.06 C2D with 8GB of RAM isn’t going to be powerful enough. In addition, the 1TB HD I have in it already is about 60-70% full. I won’t have enough hard drive space on my current iMac without upgrading the hard drive to at least 2TB!

I was predicting that Nikon would have release the D800 with 16mp like the Nikon D4 they announced at the beginning of the year based on the D3 lineage, and my D700. Nikon had to go big or go home, they say! So, my wishes were answered with the all mighty D800.

I have a feeling upgrading to this D800 dSLR camera will require me to upgrade my iMac and most likely my MacBook Pro is too weak to edit the large file sizes. I have pre-ordered mine, but I originally pre-ordered the D800e. I don’t expect to make the first wave of inventory and shipments, but I will be patient.

To complicate things further and put me into the dilemma of do I switch to Canon, Canon is rumored to be releasing or announcing their Canon 5D Mk II replacement. I am interested to see what the specs of that camera will be, but rumors put it at 22mp, which is reasonable, 61 points of autofocus, which hopefully is like the 51 points of autofocus on my D700, and dual card slots for CF and SD. People have told me that the autofocus of Canon cameras aren’t that good compared to the dSLR bodies of Nikon. I have to say if that were the case, the landscape images I do see would be poorly focused. The image quality is very good compared to Nikon, but it will be interesting to see what the D800’s 36mp sensor captures compared to what Canon has to offer. Because Nikon hasn’t release their shipment dates on the D800’s, I will have some time to ponder the decision of whether to switch to Canon or stay with Nikon. The battle between Nikon and Canon continues!

~Greg Chong