The Nikon D810 ($3,299.95, body only) is a full-frame camera with a high-resolution 36-megapixel image sensor, a tank-like build quality, and loads of features that will satisfy pro photographers and serious amateurs alike. The image sensor omits a low-pass filter, which maximizes detail, putting it in the same class as medium format digital bodies for making large prints, and the 51-point autofocus system locks onto subjects with ease. Its 5fps burst rate is on the slow side for sports and action, but more than adequate for events and reportage. The D810 isn't a revolutionary upgrade to the D800 , but it offers a number of improvements and enhancements, making it our Editors' Choice professional D-SLR.
Design and Controls
When you pick up the D810, you can feel its weight in your hands. It's hefty, just under 2 pounds without a lens, with that weight packed into a 4.9-by-5.8-by-3.3-inch (HWD) frame. The handgrip is slightly different than that of the D800. It's hard to tell the difference without handling the cameras in succession, but the D810's grip feels just a bit more natural in my hands when compared with the D800. Its size is in line with other pro bodies, but it's noticeably larger and heavier than our favorite entry-level full-frame SLR, the Canon EOS 6D ($1,699.00 at Amazon) (4.4 by 5.7 by 2.8 inches, 1.7 pounds), or Nikon's own take on that category, the D610 ($819.95 at Walmart) (4.4 by 5.6 by 3.2 inches, 1.7 pounds).
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The D810 is built tough, with a magnesium alloy chassis, dust and moisture sealing, and a shutter that's rated to 200,000 cycles. The shutter mechanism has been improved from the D800 to introduce less vibration, which makes for sharper photos. To further reduce vibration an electronic first curtain shutter option is available. A standard shutter must start closed and then open and close again to take an exposure. But with an electronic first curtain shutter, which is active when the shutter is already open for Live View mode and when shooting in the Mirror Lock-Up drive mode, the mechanical shutter just has to close to capture an exposure.
There are physical controls strewn about the D810's body. The front of the body houses a depth-of-field preview button, the programmable Fn control, and the front control dial, all placed so that they can be controlled by your right hand when holding the camera. There are also controls for your left hand—a focus toggle lever with control button, the Bracket button, and the flash release, and the flash power compensation control.
Above the Bracket button, on the top plate, is the drive mode control dial—it lets you set the camera's behavior when you trip the shutter. Release modes include Single, Continuous High (5fps), Continuous Low (1-5fps), Quiet, Quiet Continuous (3fps), Self-Timer, and Mirror Lock-Up. The top of that dial includes buttons that adjust the White Balance, image quality, the metering pattern, and the ISO. To the right of the viewfinder and pop-up flash you'll find a monochrome information LCD (with backlight), a button to adjust the shooting mode, the power switch and shutter release, a button to start recording movies, and the Exposure Compensation.
The playback and delete controls sit on the top left corner of the rear of the D810, and below them you'll find a column of buttons that include Menu, Lock/Picture Control, Plus, Minus, and OK. Controls on the right side of the rear include the AE-L/AF-L and AF-ON buttons, and at the rear control dial, the i button and the Info button. There's also a joypad that is used to navigate the menu and select the active focus point (it can be locked so you don't accidentally change it), and the Live View button with a toggle switch to change between still and video mode.
The rear display is covered with a protective plastic cover. It's inexpensive to replace ($18) if cracked or scratched. The display itself is 3.2 inches in size with a 4:3 aspect ratio, so there's room for a strip of information when using the camera in Live View and shooting at the sensor's native 3:2 ratio. The display is extremely sharp—its 1,229k-dot resolution ensures that—putting it on the same level as others in this class. The Canon EOS 5D Mark III ($1,479.95 at Amazon) also uses a 3.2-inch display with a resolution that exceeds a million dots.
The optical viewfinder is a solid glass pentaprism that delivers 100 percent of the frame to your eye. The area of the frame covered by the autofocus system is marked in black (it lights up red when acquiring focus), and if you opt to manually select a focus point or group of points, they appear as black squares. The current shooting settings run across the bottom of the finder and are displayed in blue via OLED, just like the Nikon D7100 ($574.95 at Amazon) . You can select any of a number of framing aids, including a virtual level and a rule of thirds grid to appear in the finder.
The D810 doesn't include Wi-Fi or an integrated GPS. The Sony Alpha 99 ( at Amazon) is one of the few cameras in this class that has a GPS, and none of the pro models include built-in Wi-Fi. Nikon does sell the WT-5A Wireless Transmitter ($877) and UT-1 Communication Unit ($470) to add Wi-Fi file transfer and remote control to the D810. It's an expensive add-on, but it adds wireless tethering and file transfer. If you're just looking to transfer the occasional image to your smartphone or tablet, the Eyefi Mobi ($12.99 at Amazon) SD memory card is an inexpensive add-on for JPG file transfer. The D810 is compatible with Nikon's GP-1A GPS Unit ($312) is available if geotagging is critical to your work.
Features and Autofocus
Features and AutofocusThe D810 includes a few new features, as well as enhancements to some functions that were included in the D800. There's a completely new metering mode, Highlight-Weighted metering, which is useful when shooting scenes where your subject is lit much more brightly than the surrounding area, such as a stage performer under a spotlight. It's indicated by a spot meter icon with an asterisk next to it, and can be selected when recording stills or video.
The Live View experience is generally crisper thanks to the higher resolution of the D810's rear LCD and a refresh rate that looks quicker to my eye. When focusing manually in Live View you're still able to magnify the frame to ensure you've focused perfectly, but there's a new setting that will interest architectural photographers. Tapping the i button brings up a number of options, including Split-Screen Display Zoom. This mode splits the Live View feed into two boxes. You can move them independently left and right, and zoom them in to the same size. It's useful for photographing a building or a landscape scene where you want to ensure that two distinct points are in focus, and should also come in handy when working with a Tilt-Shift lens. The only downside is that the two areas of the frame must be on the same horizontal axis—there's no way to check the top left and bottom right portion of the frame at the same time.
The D810 includes both interval still and time lapse movie modes. The still shooting mode is a bit more robust with options; you can set a start time, set shots to fire anywhere from once per second to once per day, and run up to 9 intervals, each with a maximum of 9,999 images, at a clip. Exposure Smoothing is a new feature for both modes; it compensates for slight changes in exposure, which prevents a flicker effect, but will still show more dramatic changes in light as your interval or time lapse progresses.
To record movies in camera you'll use the time lapse mode. You'll have to start it manually—there's no way to set the camera to start shooting at a set date and time in this mode—and at most images can be captured 10 minutes apart, for a maximum of 8 hours. Battery life can be a concern; I set up an 8-hour time lapse, with shots captured every 15 seconds, with the intent of saving a 1080p60 video of about 30 seconds in length. The D810 was able to record for about 6 of those hours on a fully charged battery—about 1,440 shots. I switched batteries and started another movie to take the time lapse above to sunset, which is why you'll notice a slight bump in the footage at the edit point. CIPA rates the D810 at 1,200 shots per charge, a mark which it exceeded. For longer time lapses you'll want to invest in the optional battery grip ($616), which effectively doubles shooting life, or the EP-5B Power Supply Connector ($56.45) and EH-5b AC Adapter ($118) to run the D810 off of AC power.
The D810's 51-point autofocus system inherits some of the improvements that were first seen in the D4S, notably the Group Area AF function with ties a group of five points together. It's a lot quicker to move a group of points around the frame, which can help you keep the point on a moving subject. There's also a 3D tracking option, which is available when shooting with continuous focus enabled, to automatically track a subject.
The D810 is quick to lock focus on a static subject—doing so in less than 0.1-second in bright light and in about a second in very dim conditions. Live View focus locks on in about 0.8 second in bright light and 1.4 seconds in dim light. The D810's focus system delivers more consistent performance than the Nikon Df ($3,509.95 at Amazon) ; the Df locks focus quickly in bright light, but suffers in dim conditions, averaging about 3.2 seconds to lock on. The D810 also outpaces the Df in Live View, but only by about 0.3-second in bright light.
Performance, Image Quality, and Conclusions
Performance, Image Quality, and Conclusions
The D810 starts, focuses, and fires in just about 0.6-second, which you'd expect from a camera of its class. Its continuous shooting rate is 5fps, a pace which it can keep for 18 Raw+JPG, 25 Raw, or 100 JPG images when shooting at the full 36-megapixel resolution. When paired with a SanDisk Extreme Pro 90MBps UDMA 7 CompactFlash memory card, the D810 required 14.7 seconds to write a full Raw+JPG burst to the card, 10.4 seconds to do the same for a Raw burst, and 7.7 seconds for a JPG burst. You can start shooting again during this duration.
There's also a Small Raw (9-megapixel) shooting option, but that actually gets you fewer shots in a burst (19), due to the processing required to downsample the image to a lower resolution. There are no other resolutions available for Small Raw, which is a shame as 9 megapixels may not be quite enough for some photographers who see 36-megapixel files as overkill.
If you need to shoot a little bit faster, you can set the camera to a 1.2x or 1.5x crop mode, which pushes the continuous rate to 6fps, and if you shoot in the 1.5x crop mode with the battery grip attached, 7fps is possible. If you need more than that, you'll need to move down to an APS-C body like the Sony Alpha 77 II ( at Amazon) , which shoots at 12fps, or up to a top-end full-frame model that's designed for shooting action, like the Canon EOS-1D X , which can shoot at an incredible 14fps.
The D810's 36-megapixel image sensor omits an optical low pass filter (OLPF). Nikon first experimented with this type of sensor with the release of the D800E, but that camera used an additional filter to offset the effect of the OLPF rather than to simply remove it. It's a design that is not dissimilar to that of Sony's full-frame mirrorless Alpha 7R ($2,498.00 at Amazon) , and while Nikon doesn't publicly acknowledge its use of a Sony-made sensor in this camera, teardowns of the D800 showed that it had a Sony sensor inside and it's more than likely that the D810 does as well.
An OLPF is designed to smudge away some very fine detail in order to reduce the possibility of color moiré effects, which can appear as a rainbow of false color, from appearing in images. The D810 doesn't include this filter, but even when I was photographing some chickens (feathers often exhibit color moiré), I didn't notice any false color effects. If you do run into it, software applications like Adobe Lightroom and Phase One Capture One include tools that can remove it with ease.
See How We Test Digital Cameras
I used Imatest to check and see how much noise—and how much detail—the D810's 36-megapixel sensor captured at each step of its ISO range. The camera has a base ISO 64 sensitivity and a top standard ISO 12800 sensitivity, but it can be set to ISO 32, ISO 25600, and ISO 51200 in extended mode. There's always a lot of talk about high ISO capability, but the ISO 32 setting is welcome for landscape photographers who want to smooth the appearance of flowing water and anyone else who wants to shoot longer exposures in bright conditions without reaching for a neutral density filter.
When shooting JPGs at default settings, the D810 keeps noise under 1.5 percent through ISO 3200, and shows just 1.7 percent at ISO 6400. Close examination of photos on a calibrated display shows that detail is excellent through ISO 12800, even though image noise is about 2.2 percent at that sensitivity. Images lack crispness at ISO 25600 in JPG mode, and detail suffers noticeably at ISO 51200. We've included crops of each JPG ISO from 64 to 51200 in the accompanying slideshow. All of the photos were shot with the AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED set at a narrow aperture, and with the D810's self-timer and electronic first curtain shutter enabled to ensure the best image quality the camera can muster.
Event shooters who capture a high volume of images may opt to shoot in JPG for a simplified workflow, but if you're looking to really get the most out of the D810, you'll switch to Raw capture. It can capture 36-megapixel Raw images at 12-bit or 14-bit color depth, and also offers a 9-megapixel 12-bit Small Raw capture mode. I've included the Raw versions of each ISO test image in the slideshow, all converted to JPG in Lightroom using default develop settings. The D810 captures an incredible amount of detail when shooting in Raw, even at ISO 25600. Images shot at that high of a sensitivity do look a bit grainy, but the noise pattern is tight and doesn't erase fine details. At ISO 51200 the noise is a bit more offensive, but I wouldn't hesitate to use the camera at its top ISO when shooting Raw if a shot demanded it. But if you're looking to shoot in low light with cleaner results, consider a camera with a lower pixel count, like Nikon's own 16-megapixel Df, or Sony's full-frame mirrorless Alpha 7S ($2,498.00 at Amazon) body, which features a 12-megapixel image sensor that can be pushed all the way to ISO 409600.
The D810 has a number of video features that will appeal to serious videographers, including the ability to output uncompressed 1080p footage to a field recorder via its mini HDMI output, zebra patterns to indicate blown highlights, a microphone input and headphone jack, and adjustable audio level control. If you opt to record compressed footage to a memory card, you'll have your choice of frame rates (60, 50, 30, 25, or 24fps at 1080p, and 60 or 50fps at 720p) in QuickTime format. Full manual control is available when recording video, and you can quickly adjust the resolution and other settings when in Live View video mode via the i button. The footage shows an incredible amount of detail, although there is evidence of the rolling shutter effect during very quick camera movements, but that's to be expected from a full-frame camera.
In addition to the connectors used for video functions, the D810 features a USB 3.0 port, a PC Sync flash socket, a remote control socket, and a standard hot shoe. It has two memory card slots—one for CompactFlash memory and the other for SD, SDHC, or SDXC cards. You can configure the slots in a number of ways, including writing Raw to CF and JPG to SD, full-time mirroring of files to both cards, and simply using the secondary slot as a overflow storage that kicks in when the primary slot is full.
The Nikon D810 doesn't look like a huge upgrade from the D800 on paper, but the little differences in handling and operation give it a more refined feel. The electronic first curtain shutter option and a sensor design that omits the OLPF maximize sharpness, especially when paired with a sturdy tripod. Landscape photographers who don't have the budget or desire to carry a heavy medium format system built around a high-resolution back like the Phase One IQ250 or a camera like the Pentax 645Z will appreciate the D810's resolution, as it makes it possible to make large prints with lots of detail.
The autofocus system is quick, and while it doesn't match the burst rate of high-end sports cameras like the Nikon D4S and Canon EOS-1D X, the ability to shoot at 5fps is more than most event photographers need to capture the perfect wedding candid or grip-and-grin PR shot. When you add in pro-level video features and access to Nikon's extensive library of lenses, you end up with a versatile tool that can capture incredible images in a large variety of situations. If you don't have pro needs, or budget, but still want a full-frame camera, consider the Canon EOS 6D or Nikon's D610 as an alternative. But if you are in the market for a serious camera, one that you can rely on to earn a living, we recommend the D810. It's our Editors' Choice among its professional D-SLR peers.
The Nikon D810 is a high-resolution monster with incredible image quality and performance. It's expensive, but earns Editors' Choice honors.
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