The interface is solid and I have not experieced the full buffer problem like I used to get with Lightroom and my D700, where after about ten rapid fire shots, the camera would stop firing until the image transfers caught up.

Over USB 3.0, the files transfer and display full screen on average in five seconds. Here is the workflow I'm settled on for now.Īfter trying a number of tethering options for the Nikon D800, the best for my purposes is Nikon Camera Control 2 with Nikon ViewNX 2. I really liked LR4 but Adobe is going to lose a whole load of customers who are being forced into alternatives only to find themselves pleasantly surprised.

my laptop only has USB2 so it's nothing to do with the USB3 interace on the D800. It took me quite a while to figure that the 'little preview file' was actually the full image already downloaded!! This was a real revelation compared to LR4 - I've stood in shoots and waited A-G-E-S to see images I've shot which drains the energy from a shoot At first I though 'oh that's nice it's giving me a little preview image so I can see what I've shot while it's waiting on downloading the massive RAW file' - the way the interface looks it seemed it wasn't actually downloading the RAW file and I actually thought it was hanging.

The Nikon software gets the 43MB NEF files off the D800 and onto my laptop faster than Lightroom did for the 11MB files generated by my D700 which always felt sluggish. I just wish they'd include this software with the camera like Canon do. Now also dumped LR4 due to no tethering support for D800 - Nikon Camera Control Pro 2 seems to be the only one that works BUT it has a lot more (tethering control) features and transfer/download times are incredible in comparison.

Nikon capture control pro 2