D800 Review: Can You Use a D800 for Sport Photography?

A lot has been written about the D800's ability as a tool for capturing sport with many reports stating that the 4 frames per second (fps) motordrive is too slow and the large files fill the buffer too quickly.  I decided to spend an hour trackside at the recent European Le Mans Series test at Paul Ricard to try the D800 out as a camera for sport photography and to see if these reports were true.

Nikon D800 - Sigma 50-500mm f4/f6.3 - 1/1000 @ f8 - ISO 200 - DX MODE

The shot above was taken on the D800 and converted to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2.  There is nothing wrong with this shot and the D800 handles like any other Nikon DSLR (D50, D90, D300S and D700) I've owned.  I have to admit that I have never been a 'spray and hope' type of photographer, this is where you point the camera and shoot at 8fps and hope that one of the shots is what you need.  

Yes high speed frame rates are useful but you have to use the facility wisely.  I prefer to shoot one or maybe two frames as I follow the car through the corner and I have learnt through experience when the car is in the right place and to press the shutter release a fraction of a second before it reaches that point.

Now a lot has been written about the 'pedestrian' 4 fps motordrive on the D800 but I come from the school of manual cameras where the frame rate was dictated by how fast you could crank the film advance.  When I did get my first motor drive it was 3.5 fps and it seemed like a machine gun.  You had to be careful because with only 36 frames on a roll of film you could find yourself changing films at a critical moment so you had to be selective with your images.  This was a good lesson to learn and something that modern DSLRs don't teach photographers.  My Nikon F5 was the first really fast SLR I owned and this shot at 8 fps which at the time was the fastest mainstream pro spec camera, but I still used the function sparingly.

Back to the D800 and for me 4fps is adequate for most things when working trackside however the Nikon has a trick up its sleeve that can help in more ways than one.  The D800 can be set to DX mode, which means you only use the centre portion of the 36mp sensor and gives you the same field of view as the other Nikon DX cameras such as the D300S, D7000 etc.  With DX mode engaged the effective number of pixels drops from 36mp to 16mp - the same as a D7000 and 4mp more than a D300S - which is still more than enough for most uses.  Also remember the Nikon D4 is 16mp on a full frame sensor and this costs twice as much as a D800, but the D4 has many other attributes that makes it a perfect camera for sports photography, so it's probably not the best comparison to make, but it is worth noting.

There are two advantages in using DX mode. The first being the focal length of the lens is mutiplied by 1.5 times, so a 500mm becomes a 750mm.  The second advantage is the motordrive increases from 4fps to 6fps, which is a significant increase in performance, mainly due to the fact the file sizes have been reduced.  

The shot at the top of this page was taken in DX mode using my Sigma telephoto set to the long end of 500mm, so effectively giving me 750mm.  The shot below was taken in FX mode at the same corner and you can see the difference in the field of view.  

Nikon D800 - Sigma 50-500mm f4/f6.3 - 1/1000 @ f11 - ISO 200 - FX MODE

Now there is nothing to stop a D800 user taking the shots in FX mode and then cropping in post production, I demonstrated this capability in an earlier blog last month (CLICK HERE to  see previous post).  But the disadvantage is you are limited to 4fps, so you have to decide which method to use. 

I have found the D800 to be a highly capable camera and is effectively two cameras in one.  In FX mode it is arguably the best DSLR on the market for landscape and studio photography, with its massive 36mp sensor.  Yes you can use it for sports photography in FX mode but it has its limitations, not that I have found it to be a problem in the field but that could just be the way I use the camera as described above.  Switch the D800 to DX mode and suddenly the camera can match the best Nikon DX cameras and is a very capable machine for sports photography.

This review of my D800 isn't a scientific test but just my observations on my experiences with the camera and how I use the Nikon D800 in the field, not in the laboratory.  I hope you found this blog post useful and thank you for taking the time to read it.  I will be posting more reviews on my experiences with the D800 in the coming weeks, so keep checking back.

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