In the UK the sponsor of NR seems to be Google AdWords
who are current pushing Amazon and Mercedes

Important to do careful research on the reviews of any online seller. The sponsors of NR have outstanding records for customer service.

If you haven't already bought your camera yet then I would go with the Nikon D800. Warehouse Express aka WEX offer a great service. The price at the moment (November 2012) is £1989.00 and offer next day delivery if ordered before 2.00pm in the UK.

For the difference in price, get the D800!

Darren ,
buy the D800 without asking we'll love it , get it from amazon.co.uk

I used Aperture for years on a Macbook, but have found Lightroom 4.2 is so much easier overall and seems to have more functions especially in the brush work. One exception, possibly my dumb, but the clone tool on Aperture is better, IMO.

I now use a Macbook Pro, and do the photos on an external 1.5TB hard drive.

proudgeek said:
. I currently use Aperture with the Nik plug ins. Is that not adequate?

I have to confess I have not used aperture . I have friends that do, and they seem content

So if you are happy with Aperture then I cant see any reason to change

For me and any many others, it has the very big disadvantage, it does not run on Windows

Lightroom is cross platform

sevencrossing said:

to get the best out the D800 you need Lightroom 4 and a fairly modern computer

Seven, I understand the need for a "modern" computer given the file size. I'm currently running a Macbook Pro but it's 3 years old and I'm in line for a new one. What I'm curious about is the necessity for LR4. I currently use Aperture with the Nik plug ins. Is that not adequate?

I hope you love it, dazzy. Welcome to the forum.

Hi guys,

Thanks for your replies and brilliant advice. I purchased my D800 from a well known Nikon dealer in London (nr Victoria). Had brilliant service and only paid £2,000 for it.

Thanks again

Dazzy

thanks, but I'm on a D7000 now, and will stay on it until something more fitting comes along. if not for the focus points, the D600 would have been it (I've seen the video samples).

before the D7000 I had a 5Dmark2, which I hated for different reasons, and before that a D90. the D7000 was only supposed to hold me over until my dream Nikon FX camera would come along :)

Make certain you can return it for a full refund no matter which camera you choose.

sevencrossing said:

Since I "upgraded" from a D700 to a D800 the only time I use M is panos and exposures over 1 sec. The rest of the time I use aperture priority and auto ISO

I do switch the focus setting but once you get used to the controls it is not a problem
I might lose 1 in 100 shots due to forgetting to switch the focus setting

I have lost no shots due to incorrect exposure

different people, different preferences.
the fact that you only use M for panos and long exposures, does not mean that everybody uses it that way.

my two user settings have more than one difference between them; I use spot metering when shooting in the dark because I need my subject to be correctly exposed and not the dark surroundings. so to start off I have one user setting that has high iso, spot metering, AE-L/AF-L remapped to AF-ON, and JPG setting to monochrome, because with dark shots it's easier to see your composition in b/w when reviewing it on the screen. the second user setting is more for general use: low iso, grid metering, AF with shutter button, and colour JPG setting.

the JPG settings are only for the image review on camera. I do not save my images on JPG but the embedded preview follows the JPG settings. I solely shoot on RAW, and this is also why bigger file sizes might matter: it takes up more room on your computer and your memory cards. you will also need the fastest and most expensive memory cards or else your buffer will fill up too soon, while trying to write the big files to the card.
it rarely happens that I need to shoot so many pictures so soon after each other, but it has happened at certain live concerts for me.

and talking about live concerts, this is where the M setting might come in handy: your camera can easily be thrown off by the quickly changing lights. if you set your camera to a static setting, your photos will also display the atmosphere of the gig better if some shots are under or over exposed because of it. the best photo is not always a "correctly exposed shot" (according to the histogram).

and these are only a couple of reasons why user-settings are handy and, for me, a must-have on any camera that I own.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

and about the position of the focussing points:
as a test to see if I wasn't over-reacting, today I exported a lot of my recent photos from Lightroom using an overlay of the D600 focus points, and more than 50% of my focus areas fell outside the grid offered by the D600, but would have been covered by those of the D7000 or D800. so I might even have been under-reacting (if that's even a word).

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I also went to the shop today to compare the ergonomics of both cameras, I discovered that for my hands and use I prefer the shape of the D800 grip (more rounded, less edgy), but that I prefer the D600's front left corner edge (where the camera rests on the ball of my hand, while I use that same hand for lens adjustments).

and even though the D800 is build more like a pro camera, more solid, I thought that the height and the weight of the camera were just a bit too much for me, and preferred the over-all ergonomics of the D600. all buttons are where I want them to be, and the lack of an AF-ON button is no issue, because in one of my user settings I have remapped the AE-L/AF-L button to do just that.

so my conclusion is that with a slightly more rounded grip (minor problem) and with a wider focus point area (big issue), the D600 would have been thé perfect camera for me. now it isn't.

as I said before: different people, different preferences.
if that wasn't the case, then we wouldn't need any different camera models at all.

eric la href="http://nikonrumors.com/forum/topic.php?id=9074#post-114571">said:
the D800, although with a larger focus point area, is not an option because of the file size and the lack of user settings, I find myself switching between the two user settings and manual mode a lot on my current camera. especially while composing street shots.

If it does the the job, why file size an issue?

Since I "upgraded" from a D700 to a D800 the only time I use M is panos and exposures over 1 sec. The rest of the time I use aperture priority and auto ISO

I do switch the focus setting but once you get used to the controls it is not a problem
I might lose 1 in 100 shots due to forgetting to switch the focus setting

I have lost no shots due to incorrect exposure

I almost jumped on the D600 when it dropped to €1949,- locally, but I wasn't convinced yet that the reduced focus point surface will work for me. especially when it comes to concert photography where there is only very local light and focus, and you only have micro seconds to get that deciding shot, so no time to focus and recompose…

the D800, although with a larger focus point area, is not an option because of the file size and the lack of user settings, I find myself switching between the two user settings and manual mode a lot on my current camera. especially while composing street shots.

why oh why did Nikon have to cripple the D600 on that point?
all the rest of the camera I could live with, easily. even at the almost D800 price point it is at now.

I guess there is no hope for a D750 which has the D700 body, the D600 internals, and the D800 focus system????

Sweet, peely. Enjoy it!

I had both in my hands in Jessops, and there was £250 diff! Seemed senseless to go for the 600, and then I realised - moving from the D90, with my current knowledge, the D800 was too much of a leap for me.
I default to Aperture or Shutter settings, and the D800 seemed a massive leap to fully manual. I'm not there yet.
I left,
and saw on NR yesterday that the Amazon price was £1620!! Ordered it, it's arrived today.
:) £650 price difference was a no brainer.

Thought this might apply here as well. D600/D800 comparisons.

CF Cards: Faster & more reliable
Shutter Speed:
-D600 - 1/4000
-D800-1/8000
Flash Sync Speed:
-D600-Up to 1/200 sec.Synchronizes with shutter at 1/250s or slower
-D800- Up to 1/250 sec.Synchronizes with shutter at 1/320s or slower (flash range drops at speeds between 1/250 and 1/320s)
Exposure Metering System: (This is a huge advantage)
-D600 - TTL exposure metering using 2,016-pixel RGB sensor
-D800 - TTL exposure metering using 91,000-pixel RGB sensor
Exposure Bracketing:
-D600 - 2 or 3 frames in steps of 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 1 or 2 EV
-D800 - 2 to 9 frames in steps of 1/3, 1/2, 2/3 or 1 EV
AF-area mode:
-D600 - 9, 21 or 39 point Dynamic-area AFAuto-area AFSingle-point AF3D-tracking (39 points)
-D800 - 9, 21 or 51 point Dynamic-area AFAuto-area AFSingle-point AF3D-tracking (51 points)
Flash Bracketing:
-D600 - 2 to 3 frames in steps of 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 1 or 2 EV
-D800 - 2 to 9 frames in steps of 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, or 1 EV
X-Sync Speed:
-D600 - 1/200
-D800 - 1/250
Top FP High Speed Sync:
-D600 - Up to 1/4000
-D800 - Up to 1/8000
Flash Control:
-D600 - TTL: i-TTL flash control using 2,016-pixel RGB sensor
-D800 - TTL: i-TTL flash control using 91,000-pixel RGB sensor
White Balance Bracketing:
-D600 - 2 to 3 exposures
-D800 - 2 to 9 exposures
Movie Audio recording device:
-D600 - (-)
-D800 - Linear PCM
Total custom Settings:
-D600 - 50
-D800 - 54

Just purchased a D800 from Dixons Travel at Heathrow airport for £1999. Plus, cash back of £75 because I purchased the 24-120mm f4 a few months ago.

I waited for the D600, but didn't see any point when faced with a similar price for both of the bodies.

Turns out it's not what you should do, but rather what y0u shouldn't. Of course it depends on what you need and when you are buying.

The only thing I would not do, is buy the D600 before the price plummets. Any other move should serve you well.

If you are buying now, D800, easily. The people who have posted above have explained it quite clearly.

To amplify msmoto's point though, if you're not buying today, you may see more of a spread in price in the coming months and at that point you can decide just what you need.

£300 difference in price at jessops in uk, i did pre order a D600 but changed my mind after thinking more about the price

Yeah I agree with you on that score, seems the D800 is going to be the better buy, although the D600 is the newer camera. I will carry on looking for a while to see if I can get the D800 below the £2,000 mark :-)

At the D600's current asking price, definitely the D800.

Cheers guys, I really appreciate your advice. It's quite a difficult to make your mind up when the price difference is so small and one camera is newer on the market than the other. I have the 40, 60 and 85mm macro lenses from Nikon. I will take a look at the 105 which maybe be better for me as I would like to develop my photography and start selling my pictures.

All I need to do now is find a dealer for the D800 that is cheap! I have seen an ad online today selling it for £2079. I have a 2 year old Macbook Pro which should be up to the job.

No brainer
get the D800
stunning for macro and the dynamic rage, on landscapes, will blow your soaks off
(you will see a very big difference in your sunrise sunset landscapes )

2 lenses to look at
105 f 2.8 Micro Nikkor one of , Nikon's sharpest lens
24 -120 f 4 vr Nikon's best all rounder

to get the best out the D800 you need Lightroom 4 and a fairly modern computer