Category Archives: Nikon bodies

About Nikon DSLRs

The Nikon D800 in the studio

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses, Photographs

There is no better bargain.

I have been taking studio pictures with my Novatron strobe outfit for almost three decades now with the cameras ranging from rangefinder Leicas, through Rollieflexes, and Canon and Nikon DSLRs. Autofocus in the DSLRs instantly obsoleted the film equipment which was sold. Maybe the lenses were better, but nailing focus every time beats optical quality in my book.

My Nikon DSLR journey started with a D700, then the D3x, the APS-C D2x, and finally the D800. The latter was introduced by Nikon in 2012 for $3,000 and I paid just $525 a few months ago for mine with 16k clicks. Clicks are not that important for a body designed to deliver 200,000 of them, but a USA legal import is. Nikon USA will refuse to service grey market imports. Check the serial number and look for the ‘Nikon USA’ sticker inside the battery compartment.



The all important sticker.

Suffice it to say that, with the introduction of mirrorless bodies and new lenses to fit, Nikon has comprehensively trashed the used value of every DSLR they ever made and most of the lenses which fit it.

Yes, the D750 and D780 and D810 and D850 have better low light sensors but that is of no use in the studio environment. With powerful strobes I’m mostly using ISO 200 or less.

Two things stand out in my D800 experience in the studio. Even in the low ambient light that I use with weak modeling lamps in the strobes, focus is nailed every time and as for absence of sensor noise it is simply extraordinary. Definition is like nothing I’ve ever seen and while I am strictly an SOOC guy, knowing that I can crop when needed is comforting.

Maybe a Phase One or a digital Hasselblad with a large medium format sensor will render more detail for the mega buck cost of entry, but as I have no interest in making billboard-sized enlargements, call me a happy camper. And keeping the additional $12,000 in my pocketbook is a benefit not lost on me.

Do I have a complaint? Of course. Just take a look what this little outfit weighs with the 28-300mm AFS zoom and loaded battery grip:



A waistline comparable with that of most Americans.
Can you spell ‘obese’?

I extolled the D800’s many virtues, weight aside, here, but as ever pictures speak louder than words. Here is Dutch, a gorgeous Hungarian Vizsla, in a recent studio session, SOOC naturally:



A beautiful hunting dog, descended from Hungarian royalty.


Sharp enough for you?

One final advantage. Even my ancient, non-subscription Lightroom v 6.4 from 2015, bought and paid for just once, happily processes D800 RAW files. Try that with your latest and greatest Nikon body, or pay the nasty people at Adobe a monthly fee of $20 in perpetuity – and good luck getting off that treadmill. It’s not for nothing that the US DoJ just sued them for shady subscription practices.

The Nikon D800 outfit

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses

At bargain basement prices.

Having returned to FF DSLRs with the Nikon D800 one year ago, I thought it might be of interest to show my outfit now.

When Nikon discontinued its DSLR range in favor of newer mirrorless bodies, with lenses to match, two things happened. The price of the latest gear shot up and that of the discontinued hardware crashed. As a result, if your psyche can tolerate a flapping mirror, just as most have these past 75 years, then look to keep your check book bruised but not battered as you acquire some of the finest photography hardware ever made.


The kit today.

  • D800 body, $475 with just 16,000 shutter actuations. Yes the later D850 comes with 45mp (you do not need that many) and costs three times as much. Your call. Need wi-fi and a fold out LCD screen? Try the D750 at the same price with a more than adequate 24mp.
  • 50mm f/1.4 AF-S G Nikkor, just overhauled by Nikon – $113. Front left. All prices include original Nikon hood and both caps.
  • 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S G VR Nikkor, $415. Rear left.
  • 16-35mm f/4 AF-S G VR Nikkor, $315. Rear right.
  • 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G Nikkor, $238. Front right.
  • 60mm f/2.8 AF-S G Micro Nikkor, on the camera with film copying attachment – $267 + $60
  • MB-D12 vertical camera grip – $37. Front.
  • New Nikon battery, in the D800 – $60

There is nothing I can tell you about these lenses that is not already known – outstanding definition at any aperture, dead accurate and fast AF and robust but not heavy for what you get. Resale value? 100 cents on the dollar.

The Micro Nikkor will be sold when my film ‘scanning’ project is completed, making for a net kit cost of just $1,653. A Nikon Z8 mirrorless body runs some $3,800 and lenses are extra. Can you spell ‘Bargain’?

For all my Nikon lens articles click here.

Tethered shooting with Lightroom

Lightroom, Nikon bodies

Instant preview.

Tethered shooting refers to a connection – wired or wireless – between your camera and a display device, allowing near instant preview of images, typically in a studio environment, on a decently sized laptop or desktop display. ‘Chimping’ the small rear LCD on the camera pales by comparison.

In this way you can instantly assess composition, lighting, exposure and focus and, most importantly, if you have a client present, you can give him faster-than-Polaroid previews of the session’s photographs.

Before you start spending money on cables I suggest you check that your processing software on your computer supports the camera of your choice. Not all software supports all cameras and you can bet that older versions of software will not support many of the latest camera models. Of all manufacturers you can be assured that Adobe will have been first on the planned obsolescence wagon, forcing you to upgrade your software at considerable cost.

My gear is relatively dated – Lightroom 6.4, a Nikon D800 and a 2015 MacBook Air, the latter no speed demon by modern standards. I use a wired USB2 connection between camera and laptop. Wireless solutions are available for those with more money than sense. Mine involved diving into the cable box in the garage and finding the right cable, free.

Plug the cable into the laptop and camera, turn the latter on, and Lightroom requires these steps:




Enabling tethered capture in Lightroom.

Once both ends of the cable are plugged in the Nikon D800 no longer shows a frame count on the top LCD:


The frame count display in tethered capture mode.

If you do not see ‘PC’ in the frame count location unplug the cable from the computer and reconnect it. As a further check, a display panel will pop up in Lightroom and will show the model of the connected camera if the connection has been properly made.

‘PC’ indicates that the storage card in the camera is not being used to store images, which are being sent directly to the connected computer.

One word of caution. The camera socket for the connecting cable in the D800, if using a wired solution, uses a USB2/3 Micro USB design. This is unarguably the worst connector ever made, being unidirectional, fragile, small, and easily damaged. What’s worse the cable is subjected to tugging and stress in use, inviting disconnection as a minimum, damage at worst. So, instead of a costly solution what is needed is a simple twist tie, attached between the left strap lug or key ring and the cable, acting as a simple and free strain relief thus:


A tether for the tether. Highly recommended. The white paint mark has been added to indicate orientation when plugging the connector into the camera.

Acknowledging the awfulness of the Micro USB socket and connector, Nikon did make a strain relief clip but mine did not come with the secondhand body I bought. They crop up on eBay from time to time for very little; mine ran me $9.45:


The Nikon USB cable clip.

Here it is installed. Be aware that the MicroUSB connector comes in both USB2 (narrow) and USB3 (broader – two connectors in one) versions. The casing for the USB3 version on the cables in my box will not pass the opening in the Nikon USB Cable Clip (you could always try sanding it down if that is all you have), while the narrower USB2 version passes through just fine. There’s a locating peg and a couple of shark teeth to hold the whole thing in place on the camera and the cable itself is secured with a locking foldover bar. Indeed, as the image below shows there’s an unused adjacent peg hole which suggests there may be a wider USB3 version of this clip. I do not know. It works well:


The Nikon D800 USB Cable CLip installed on my camera.

I have found no difference in transfer speed for the USB2 vs. the USB3 cable, both allowing LR to render the image on the laptop’s display in 5 seconds after the shutter button is depressed. using my ancient 11″ MacBook Air and the 14-bit RAW file format. That’s a whole lot faster than a Polaroid! Edwin Land would be proud.

My strong inclination is to rip off that awful, intrusive rubber cover for the connector area, but I have not yet summoned the courage to do that.

I switch Lightroom to full screen display (hit ‘F’ on the keyboard) and the latest image is the one displayed in maximum size. Hit ‘G’ for the familiar LR grid display. The advantage of the full screen display is that it’s far easier to judge the image in full size.

And that’s about it. Once the session is completed the LR catalog can be exported to your desktop of choice for post-processing in the usual way. I simply network my desktop Mac Pro with the MacBook Air and transfer the catalog into the Lightroom software on the Mac Pro. You use Windows? You are on your own.

The Nikkor 16-35mm revisited

Nikon lenses

All that’s old is new again.

I last wrote about this ultrawide full-frame zoom in 2012. I must have been enjoying a period of more money than sense as I paid the full retail price of $1300 for what was a lens recently introduced by Nikon. At that time I wrote:

It’s bulky, the gargantuan lens hood is needed to shade the exposed front element, it’s set in a yucky resin body and at 24 ounces it’s no featherweight. The maximum aperture of f/4 is relatively modest and you will struggle getting dramatic differential focus effects. Being a ‘G’ optic there is no traditional aperture ring, aperture control being solely possible from the control dial on the body. I prefer a ring on the lens. Finally, at just under $1300 it’s anything but cheap.

The lens was sold after a couple of years’ use when I went all MF. That 16-35mm was in great demand at the time so the high resale price somewhat mollified the pain from the damage to my pocketbook.

When Nikon started transitioning from flapping mirror DSLRs to the mirrorless Z range, they did buyers of the old Nikon F mount optics a great favor. Stated simply, the bottom dropped out of the market on resale value on some of the finest optics known to man. Having recently added mint examples of the D800 and the 28-300mm zoom, I could not resist completing the focal length range with an ultrawide zoom and picked up a near new specimen of the 16-35mm ultrawide zoom for …. $315! Thank you Nikon and thank you Mr. Upgrading Seller. And thanks also for the free Hoya UV “Antistatic” (whaaat?) filter which sells for $70.

All the familiar characteristics of the 16-35mm are there. The awful barrel distortion at 16mm (the built in Lightroom Classic lens correction profile takes care of that with ease), the huge bulk and the slow maximum aperture. You can’t do anything about the bulk but the fact that this was the first ultrawide zoom with Vibration Reduction makes that f/4 maximum aperture more like f/2, and it works well.

But how wide, exactly, is 16mm? In full frame vernacular it’s plenty wide but not as wide as the claimed 12mm of the ultrawide optic in my iPhone 12 Pro Max, one of the best reasons for buying the iPhone. Yes, that device may have third world ergonomics and lacks reach at the long end of the lens range, but the ultrawide is excellent.

I set to checking who is who and what is what with two quick comparisons:


The 16-35mm Nikkor at 16mm**.


The 12mm lens on the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

** With distortion correction using the Adobe profile in Lightroom v6.

The answer is that the iPhone is noticeably wider using the ultrawide lens, if not as wide as you might expect, but what is really interesting is the comparison of resolving power from the miniscule lens in the iPhone with the giant on the D800. Yes, the D800 is better, but barely so. And the lenses in the iPhone will only get better whereas the Nikkor 16-35mm has remained unchanged for over a decade.


Comparing definition at 1:1. iPhone at left.

Still, for a modest investment of under $1,400 I have a top class 36mp sensor body and a lens focal length range of 16-300mm with just two zooms. I’ll leave you to count how many fixed focal length optics those two zooms replace and the fact that I can stretch the 300mm to 1000mm with relative impunity is just icing on the cake. Can’t do that with an iPhone.

Here’s my complete D800 kit:


The 16-35mm and 28-300mm VR Nikkors with the D800 body.

Fake Nikon camera batteries

Nikon bodies

Watch out!

A few years ago B&H, a reputable vendor of photo hardware, was forced to recall a batch of EN-EL15b Nikon batteries which turned out to be anything other than OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer). In fact they did not even ask for their return. They sent new OEM ones to purchasers of the bad batch and asked that the originals be recycled. B&H had been scammed and acted honorably to fix their procurement mistake.


The B&H recall advisory.

Battery fraud is common and my research indicates that saving $30-40 on an aftermarket or eBay ‘Nikon’ battery is false economy.

The D800 and many other Nikon bodies take the EN-EL15, of which there have been 4 versions – EN-EL15, EN-EL15a, EN-EL15b, EN-EL15c.

The D800 came with the EN-EL15 but all later models fit. The ‘a’ and ‘b’ variants appear to be complying with new labeling requirements as the first three versions are all rated at 1900mAh. The ‘c’, which came with later mirrorless bodies, has increased the capacity to 2280 mAH, or 20% more shots, which is a lot.

My D800 came with two EN-EL15; the one would only charge to 40%, the other would charge to 100% but then lose 20% daily even without use, so I bought a new Nikon OEM EN-EL15c. Neither battery which came with the camera, when fully charged (solid LED on the charger), would reset the shot counter on the D800’s LCD.

Advice from Nikon and others as to compatibility is all over the place. I have found no issues charging or using the EN-EL15c in the D800 with the original charger MH-25.

Disadvantage of the OEM battery? It costs two or three times as much as the fakes.

Reckon on 2000-3000 snaps per charge (assuming no LCD chimping and no wi-fi use on bodies which have it). So I only need one good one. No way I take >2000 snaps in a session.

One excellent article on the subject is this one. The comments are particularly worth reading.

After reading that piece and others on the interwebs, I conclude there are eight indicators to look for in spotting fake Nikon camera batteries:

  • The four notches on the long sides of the holographic gold label on the back. Real batteries have these. Fakes may not unless they are really good fakes.
  • Weight. A real battery weighs 78-87 grams. Fakes may weigh less as there’s less power storage material inside. My new EN-EL15c came in at 80 grams.
  • Tap for a hollow sound. Tap the rounded sides of the battery with a fingernail. A hollow sound indicates a fake. A solid one points to the real thing – or a really good fake. The hollow sound is the result of the internal void from lack of energy storage material.
  • Failure to reset the shot counter to ‘0’ after a recharge. The shot counter in my D800 can be found on the LCD tool menu->Battery Info. An OEM battery resets this to zero after a full recharge. A fake one may not.
  • Failure to reach full charge in the MH-25 (or MH-25A – identical) Nikon charger. My new EN-EL15c gets a solid ‘fully charged’ light in the OEM charger, from dead flat (as shipped), in 2 hours and 45 minutes. A fake or aftermarket one may not.
  • Loss of charge, as indicated by the camera’s battery indicator, even after a period of non-use. This can indicate a fake or a really tired OEM battery.
  • There is a small stamped lower case alphabetic letter between the ‘+’ sign near the connector and the connector. It’s ‘a’ for the EN-EL15a, ‘b’ for the EN-EL15b and ‘c’ for the EN-EL15c. It’s blank on the original EN-EL15 so this is not a foolproof indicator. To be safe if you battery is an ‘a’, ‘b’ or ‘c’ model and the stamped letter is missing, it’s probably a fake.
  • Price. If it’s much under $70 and/or does not come in a Nikon box with circular holographic label, it’s probably a fake.

If any of the above symptoms is present, the chance are that your battery is a fake. (You need to check for all eight as each can be countered by a really good faker. It’s unlikely all eight will be). The first eight digits of the serial number on the battery are the manufacture date in the format yyymmdd. If the battery is much used and over 4 years old, even if OEM, it’s probably close to the end of its useful life.


One of the four notches on the holographic label is arrowed.
Both of these batteries have all four notches.

There are many <$30 Nikon batteries on eBay which never seem to come with a Nikon box which, when included, should also carry a holographic circular label.


OEM box. The holographic circular label is at top right.

The broader issue is why waste money on a non-OEM battery which can swell and jam in the camera or, in extreme cases, catch fire when being recharged? The camera costs many times the premium for the OEM battery. And good luck with the home fire claim with your friendly insurance company. My brand new OEM EN-EL15c cost $70 from a factory authorized vendor, has the holographic label notches, does not sound hollow when tapped, resets the camera’s shot counter to ‘0’ after a full recharge, gets a solid glowing LED on the MH-25 charger when full charged and does not lose charge even after many days of non use in the camera. And yes, there’s a stamped ‘c’ near the ‘+’ embossing:


Arrow indicates the stamped ‘c’ on my OEM EN-EL15c battery.

Apply all of the eight indicators above when examining your battery and you will almost certainly know if it is OEM or a fake. (For original EN-EL15 batteries, disregards the seventh indicator in the bulleted list above).

As for private label aftermarket batteries, it’s a crapshoot. As Mr. Eastwood once put it “Do you feel lucky?”.