In September, 2013, I was generously loaned a D800 for a week. During that time, I had the opportunity to perform several short test shoots with Sigma AF 400mm f/5.6 APO super-telephoto lens, with and without the Tamron-F 1.4XN MC4 teleconverter, both handheld, and using a SLIK LPIII monopod.

As the D800, until the release of the D7100 earlier in 2013, had the highest imaging photosite density of any DSLR, it is an excellent test platform, as 1:1 crops expose any deficiencies in sharpness and chromatic aberration performance of a lens.

While benchmarks for the D800 usually credit it with much better noise performance compared to APS-C/DX format designs like the D90, this appears to be the result of normalising whole frames down to a common shared format, i.e. comparing noise in a full frame. Comparing 1:1 crops from the D90 and D800 suggests performance mostly reflects photosite size, similar for both sensors. Using similar exposure parameters as used with the D90 yielded very good results in the D800.

The inevitable conclusion from these test shoots is that the 1988 designed Sigma AF 400mm f/5.6 APO super-telephoto lens performs superbly with the D800. With a 1.4 X teleconverter, the loss of performance, especially in chromatic aberration and vignetting, is more prominent than observed in the APS-C/DX format D90, but still tolerable, and digitally correctable.

Photos and text © 2013 Carlo Kopp; Photographs produced using a Nikon D800, and some using a Tamron-F 1.4XN MC4 Teleconverter; almost all images produced in acceptance test or validation shoots.