E. Nixon
- Comment
Im a hobbyist when it comes to photography. Primarily for taking pictures of my kid and the events that we attend. I tend to do a lot of indoor shots, and before I got the Df I pretty much had the flash hooked up all of the time. I wanted a camera that was FX since most of my lenses were already FX, so my choices were D800, D610 and the Df. Major factors in my decision were Low Light vs Mega Pixel vs Price... D4 was never on the list due to the heavy price. Low light photography won as the primary factor. Video was not on the list since the majority of the time I have taken video was by accident. Since I have gotten this camera, I have not even attached a flash. Flash has just not been needed, even with all of the indoor shots that I do. Post process is a little more difficult since I do not have consistent lighting (especially since last month was December and colored Christmas lights do interfere more than I expected). But still worth the extra time required in post, plus I found that having blues, reds and greens in a shot make for some interesting shots. Auto white balance is better than any of my previous cameras. Supposedly there are 2 auto white balance settings, but I have not read the manual deeply enough to find the second setting. It is a little warm for Daylight and Cloudy conditions, but tolerable to leave it as is when in post. Auto White Balance does have issues with Incandescent (WAY too warm) and Florescent (not consistent, but may be due to mixed lighting conditions). Some of the control knobs are not the way that I would have designed them, but still usable if not needing to make adjustments on the fly. On several occasions I have used the incorrect indicator for setting ISO. The decreased light (compared to my other cameras) in the view finder was supposed to help with manual focus, but I do not think was a good feature especially since manual focus in low light is now more difficult since I cannot see it. I did not have plans on using Live View much since it was a feature that I rarely used in the past, but the ease of access to Live View along with the horizon line, I now use it at least 5-10% of the time. The autofocus area does not reach to the 1/3 points in the frame, which I find odd since that is where I put my points of interest for a photo. Live view does not have this limitation as far as I tell. Before I purchased, I read several reviews saying that it was not feasible to use heavier lenses with the Df. I found that using my F2.8 28-70mm or my f2.8 70-200mm was not as bad as the reviewers stated. I do miss the extended battery pack for stability. Overall this is the best camera that I have ever had (previous cameras, D100, D200, D300, Nikon 1 V2).