Horses for courses, or why I've just bought my second D600

[Cage]

My DSLR journey to date, since 2008, has been:

- Pentax K20D, liked it a lot

- Pentax K5, not so much

Then I decided I needed (?) a Full Frame camera (to be a proper photographer) so

- Nikon D600, gave great results, and only minor oil spot problems

- Nikon D800, I got sucked in by the multi-megapixies hype. Liked the camera generally, but wasn't happy with it's ISO capability at
ISO800 and above, or maybe my inability to utilise it.

- Nikon D7200 Huh, you've gone from a FF back to a crop sensor?

This is where the 'horses for courses' comes into play. My photographic interests are varied, with birding and nightscapes being to the
fore. My D7200, with the newly acquired Sigma 150-600 Sport attached, gives me the equivalent of a 900mm lens on a full frame
camera. I'm still learning about the Sport but to date the results are encouraging.

Australasian Reed-warbler-DSC_3157 by @Cage, on Flickr


So why go back to the D600? Purely and simply for it's pixel size, with it's 35.4 µm² pixel area 49% bigger than that of the D810's
23.72µn². Bigger pixels grab more photons. OK, there is a corresponding loss in pixel density but for nightscapes I don't see that as a
biggie. In fact I find the photos of the night sky more appealing with some areas of darkness not taken up with stars.

Between the two cameras, my 14mm and 150mm primes, my 24-70 and 150-600 zooms and 1.4 T/C's, I figure I've got every focal
length covered.

I would have probably preferred the D750 over the D600 for it's later in-camera processing engine, but when one is retired one has to
draw a line somewhere.

So for birding and finer detail it's the D7200, and for nightscapes and when the light is not too good, the D600.

As I said above, it really is horses for courses.

PS: I just noticed that I missed cropping the bottom.