Back in 2014 I had an ill-fated fling with a Nikon D800 camera, which I wrote about in this blog. It seemed that no matter what I did, I couldn’t shoot decent images with that camera and I disliked using it. Perhaps it takes a few years to get over something like that, but now I’m finding a few hidden gems in the old RAW files.
This image is two shots with the D800 that have been stitched together in Lightroom and then processed using Alien Skin Exposure X3. The processing applied in Exposure X3 used the Kodak Ektar film simulation. I then opened the shadows and cooled the image very slightly using the Exposure X3 controls.
What you may not notice in this image is the remains of the old packhorse bridge on the right of the image. This has been incorporated into the road bridge which covers it. If you didn’t climb down to the river you would never know it was there.
What I don’t like about the image is that the foreground rock on the right is soft because I didn’t have enough depth of field. Why? Because the lenses I was trying to use with this camera were poor quality and suffered from diffraction when stopped down Because of this I tended not to stop them down.
This image by the way was the final shot I took with the D800 before selling it.
Alien Skin Exposure X3 30% Sale
Whilst I was writing this post, an email popped into my in-box. Alien Skin are having a 25th Anniversary Sale with 30% off their products, including Exposure X3. Here’s a link to their blog announcement. But be fast if you want to take advantage, I think the 5th June (today) is the final day of the sale.
The Lightweight Photographer 
I had a similar experience with an Nikon F100 around the Millenium. It was a time when career consumed time and photography was squeezed out and confined to holidays. The infrequency of use, coupled with the complicated menu system, meant that every time I picked it up I felt like I was back at square 1. The camera manual was always not far away and the results (I was shooting Kodachromes) were never quite right exposure-wise. Dissatisfaction created negativity – it was a downward spiral.
That does sound very familiar. The purchase of the D800 coincided with a prolapsed disk in my neck and I could bearly carry the thing let alone take a steady shot. I used to spend hours trying to get a tripod into the right position just to be able to to take a shot. I sold the camera about 4 months later but it took a further 2 years for the nerve damage to repair.