I've been reading up on the 800/800E and will be getting the D800E.

My worry areas is feather detail in bird photography where moire may be an issue. I still have some concern about moire - specifically in this one area.

The NikonUSA website has some good discussion and examples of moire, but little in the context of fur or feathers. The issue comes up most often with architecture or on clothing with fine patterns.

The Leica M9 does not have an AA filter. This link to a Leica site provides come nice context about how rarely the issue comes up.
http://lavidaleica.com/content/anti-aliasing-filter-primer

I've also done a good bit of browsing on Leica forums and the consensus is that the problem is uncommon to rare. Now if I shot weddings, this would mean specific guidelines to the wedding party and family members to avoid wearing fine patterned clothing. I would also probably shoot the veil and other details with another camera part of the time.

As far as Capture NX2 is concerned, the latest release does have moire removal. It comes as a global setting under camera and lens corrections. You can choose the strength of correction desired - off, low, medium or high. I tried the setting with a dog photo looking at fur that had no moire - it did not make any difference at 100%.

So for me, I'm biting the bullet and going with the 800E. I have seen increased sharpness and heard that from Leica owners. My experience with a D200 converted for IR and removing the AA filter only has one image with moire out of about 10,000 shooting landscape and architecture. I'm going to try the moire removal tool on that image to see what happens.


Eric Bowles
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