Canon 5D Mark III vs Nikon D800

Showing 25 comments

Dmitry Brodsky

(9:52 PM, May 10, 2013)

Canon's professional lens lineup in general is just better than Nikon's currently, and it is a fact. go to dpreview, lensrentals and others and read reviews. Canon's 70-200 F/2.8 IS II is the best 70-200 on planet by far (see dpreview review and conclusion). Canon's 24-70L II is the best and sharpest 24-70L II on planet currently. So these two lenses that are breadwinners for 99% of wedding photogs Canon wins. Add to it lenses in Canon's lineup that Nikon does not have alternative..... like my 85L II 1.2 which is SHARP at 1.2. Nikon has nothing on it. The only thing Nikon has on Canon is 14-24 F/2.8 which is an amazing wdeangle landscape lens. Now if you shoot landscapes, go to national parks, etc, then D800e with 14-24 is a better choice. Anything else, including low light, skin colors, video at 55mps rate, etc, 5DM3 wins. I sold D800 and got 5DM3 and could not be happier. Just one person's opinion.

Jacob Surland

(8:17 AM, May 01, 2013)

If you choose a camera brand, you also buy into each company's lens line up. I have changed from Canon 5D Mark III to Nikon D800 because of the lens line up. Nikon has better Wide angle Lenses, than Canon has, like the Nikkor 14-24mm. If you combined that with the fact, that the Nikon D800 sensor quite dramatically out performs the Canon 5D Mark III sensor in terms of Dynamic Range, should make it an obvious choice for any Landscape photographer to select a Nikon D800. If you do a little calculation, and compare a single shot from the D800 with a -2 to +2 auto exposure bracketing (for HDR) shot of the Canon 5D Mark III, the Nikon D800 is only 1,3 EV step from covering the same Dynamic range. You are able to recover a lot more details from the shadows and high lights on a D800 than you can with a 5D Mark III.

But for any low light situation requiring high ISO's I would pick the Canon 5D Mark III. In a real life the Canon 5D Mark III is so much better at high ISOs than Nikon D800.

--Jacob Surland, http://www.caughtinpixels.com.

Alex Hauck

(5:16 PM, February 27, 2013)

Ratings of lenses and actually using lenses are completely different things. Both companies have great lenses, although the canon L lens series does have a more prestigious and recognizable name, and that's because of the quality.

Alex Hauck

(5:14 PM, February 27, 2013)

I agree, you're used to Nikon menus. I love the canon interface, and have trouble with the Nikon interface simply because I am used to canon.

Alex Hauck

(5:10 PM, February 27, 2013)

The new firmware for the 5d will include a clean hdmi out. Should be in April. Also, I'm a film maker, and in no scenario would I EVER want continuous autofocus in video. These dslrs just can't have decent af in video mode. They aren't good, are noisy, and spend too much time searching for focus. That being said, I still would never use af video mode.
I would like to see 1080 @60fps, but in all honesty, I would only use it for slow motion, which shouldn't be often anyways. Bigger resolution helps with huge prints, so yes that is good, but you also suffer from noise, which for a film maker is a big advantage concerning the 5D. It really is how you intend to use the camera, both are fantastic machines.

Jonathan

(1:31 AM, October 23, 2012)

Gotta say I can't agree with that. I've shot Canon my whole life pretty much, and recently picked a D90 and I felt the same way that you did for about 2 hours, then I had the system figured out. The Canon system is fine, the Nikon system is fine, they're just different. I would note that even though I've shot Canon forever, I like Nikons in general, and it seems like they have a lot of extras that Canons don't, i.e., time lapse type feature, more bracketing, etc... Still, Canon 7D offers the best FPS in class for sports shooters and I do think Canon generally has better glass.

Mole

(4:12 AM, July 24, 2012)

I used to trust you guys. I visit this site like more than a year ago and every day i find more and more issues in the way you present the information about the cameras, the comparisons you make and the veracity of your reviews... I'm kind of disappointed. I'm a Nikon user, but definitely 5D Mark III has things D800 doesn't. Off corse, that goes in detriment of price which is higher in Canon. Nikons achievement is to make excellent cameras at lower prices... but this time the prices are not as different as they were with D7000 and 7D.

I defended this site before... now it will be difficult when my counter Canon user friends start making their point

Theredrider78

(11:31 PM, June 24, 2012)

Canon users should really consider using Nikons. :D

Theredrider78

(11:39 PM, May 20, 2012)

'Canon has the best lenses'!?!? Pffffttt. Doubt it! Are you comparing your old film lenses to your modern digital Canon lenses? Go to DXO mark and check lens ratings.

Cedricbrand

(7:39 PM, May 20, 2012)

I'm Nikon fan and on film i shot nikon, change to canon digital. From now on they will be comming together the cameras so start thinkin about the lenses! Canon has the best lenses out there as a overall pro package so you can stick to canon. Start spending money on proper pro lenses and stop the camera chase. In 5 years they will be close ii speed and image quality.

memmener

(9:08 PM, April 26, 2012)

"Slightly more lenses available
125 lenses vs 121".
First, there are only about 74 lenses listed on Canon's website, and 76 listed on Nikon's website.
Second, those 74 lenses includes many EF-S lenses which can't be mounted on full frame Canon bodies.
Nikon cropped sensor lenses CAN be mounted on full frame bodies.
On the D800, mounting a cropped sensor lens can still give you 15 megapixel pictures since the camera simply uses a portion of the
sensor the same size as a APS-C sensor.
You can even mount legacy manual focus lenses, since the Nikon mount haven't been changed in decades, since before autofocus was introduced.

Also, the D800 shutter has been tested up to 200,000 cycles, compared to only 150,000 for 5DMkIII. 50,000 more pictures in its life time!

Mart

(9:01 PM, April 19, 2012)

Canon should really consider using Sonys sensors.

treepop

(4:12 PM, April 19, 2012)

Looks like the Canon 5D Mark III has lost this round. Sure the 5D3 is better for sports, but not much. However the D800 absolutely trounces the 5D3 in IQ.

Snapsort

(2:35 PM, April 19, 2012)

It will be up soon (it take a bit of time for our system to update the specs). You could check out the 5D Mark III on our sister site Sortable if you want, the specs have been updated there already.

Mart

(2:28 PM, April 19, 2012)

Time to update, http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Canon-5D-Mark-III-Review/Sensor-performance

Parveg

(6:02 AM, April 02, 2012)

watch this too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jKspoynL0o

HenryT2

(6:22 AM, March 24, 2012)

Biggest differences: 36 vs. 22. 2 stop ISO. Continuous Auto Focus in Video. FPS.
Pop up flash.

Going purely on that, I'd give it to the Canon because 22 is good enough, but virtually noise free at 6400 vs. 1600 is a winner.

One unmentioned factor, the user interface for Canon sucks. I've used both and Canon's dials are useless and the menus are horrible.

SStephen

(7:10 PM, March 22, 2012)

I'm not sure why people are refusing to understand that camera's serve a specific purpose. I'm not interested in 36mp so in my opinion the Nikon doesn't "Win" (as if that is something a camera could do anyway). I am, however, interested in the 2 stop high ISO advantage over the 5DII and the 3 stop advantage over the 7D. Some people aren't interested in the ISO. That's ok, in that case they can use the Nikon D800. Or perhaps the rumored very high MP Canon camera coming out later this year. Neither camera "wins" but one could be better suited for your needs than the other.

Personally, the 5DIII is absolutely perfect for my photography needs. Which is normal shooting, events and weddings.

CIPA

(5:52 PM, March 20, 2012)

When you look at the CIPA standards you can see that 50% of those shots were taken with the flash, so in normal shooting conditions that number should rise. At least on the D800, the 5D doesn't have a flash built in after all.

Alfred

(0:19 PM, March 20, 2012)

That's the only thing I'm kind of scared of with the D800, those huge file sizes.. I mean one 64GB card doesn't even fit the whole 900 shot battery cycle and that's only when you shoot only RAW, without a JPG at the side, which I usually do. I guess I'll end up shooting at reduced resolution more than I'd like to.

Alfred

(0:14 PM, March 20, 2012)

Especially if you consider that at least on the D800, after 900 shots even a 64Gb card would be filled anyway.

Alfred

(0:12 PM, March 20, 2012)

I really really like the High ISO performance of the 5D, but the D800 High ISO performance is also amazing (better than I ever would have expected), especially considering it's huge resolution. Overall, the D800 just feels like a better allround camera, huge prints (if you print), great High ISO (not as good as the Mark III, but definitely good enough for me), amazing video (finally Nikon caught up), a reasonable speed (those 36MP RAW files are around 75MB big, 4fps is pretty amazing when you think about it, Medium Format gives you much much less, even the D3X was much slower, but I'm no sports shooter so it doesn't matter that much for me anyway) and all that at a lower price than the Mark III. I guess if you have a need for insane ISO shooting the 5D is the way to go in case you can't afford the D4 or 1DX, but I don't see many people using ISO 25600 and printing those files on a regular basis anyway. I'm looking forward to seeing the Dynamic Range and Autofocus performance in some reviews, but it won't change my decision I'd say.

Karl

(1:07 AM, March 05, 2012)

Sorry Peter, I read your name and accidently used it as my guest username. The comment about the comparison website is from me, Karl!

Peter

(1:05 AM, March 05, 2012)

@5b9b35fd8ef95b361a142a58831c1728:disqus Not necessarily... have a look at this page: http://www.stefigphoto.com/cameras/nikon/nikon-innovates-canon-renovates/
It is a brief comparison from all known aspects, which clearly points out the D800 as the winner.

M.R.Rafsanjani

(5:10 PM, March 03, 2012)

I think Canon reserve that for new model..maybe 6D??

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Nikon D800

vs

Canon EOS 5D Mark III

Reasons to buy the Nikon D800

Reasons to buy the Canon EOS 5D Mark III

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Relative to the best recent pro DSLRs, and ignoring price

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Advantages of the Canon 5D Mark III

Advantages of the Nikon D800

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Nikon D600

Canon EOS 6D

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Nikon D7100

Nikon D4

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Canon EOS 5D Mark III Competitors

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Showing 25 comments