D800

I have yet to see a photo underwater irrespective of the underwater housing to convince me that the Nikon D800 has a great

advantage for underwater photographers. I do own a D800 and I am very impressed as to land photography, but to underwater, I need convincing.

At the moment I am still using my old D70s, and I need somebody to show me how much better I will be spending another £4000 on a housing, no matter whether it be a Seacam, Nauticam, Seacam, Ikelite, or even a Subal . I was hopinmg in this forum to gleam some real answers but at the moment they have not materialised.

This may help: http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=46334

Dear Dava,

I find it strange that you say you are impressed by the D800 on land, but that you cannot understand that the same improved dynamic range and higher resolution that impresses you on land would also provide you with the opportunity for better pictures underwater. No camera can make YOU a better photographer. That has to come from inside YOU. A better camera can only provide YOU with the opportunity to improve your pictures. If you couldn't see the big difference in the rendering of the sun in Adam Hanlon's first set of three pictures, you should probably stay with your D70s. Or put your iPhone in a plastic bag and shoot with that.

I have yet to see a photo underwater irrespective of the underwater housing to convince me that the Nikon D800 has a great

advantage for underwater photographers.

The problem with your question is the definition of 'great advantage'. I haven't tried a D800 as yet but can comment on the potential 'advantages' that it may have in general terms - whether these will translate into 'great underwater advantages' depends on what you are trying to achieve.

The greater resolution is likely to be limited in the corners when used behind either flat or dome port. The reasons for this are purely optical and are due to ports being of the simples types of lens design and inherently being limited in their corners as they are most highly stressed in optical terms in the corners. Increasing the capture resolution of a degraded image won't help it a great deal - although tonality of the degraded image MIGHT improve, I'm not sure that this has any real practical relevance. Centrally the resolution might improve if the lenses used are good enough and it they are used at the appropriate apertures and if the photographer's technique is good enough. So it may well be possible to increase central detail somewhat.

If the dynamic range is improved, and if this is a real dynamic range capture improvement rather than a recalculation of highlight data produced then this may be an advantage - I personally quite simply don't rate web based images for determining such things (no offence Adam, I apply this to ALL web images as web images are unable to show such nuances in my experience).

However the law of diminishing returns applies to high resolution sensors. They will produce more data, but translating this into usable data is not as straightforward as simply looking at the numbers and thinking bigger is better. There may well be advantages to using a D800 underwater, whether they will be 'great' will depend on you and your uses for your images.