Thanks for this John, I was hoping you'd chime in. I think if I carry on with my Fuji system as the ideal travel cam, which is basically most of my shooting then I could find space, as you suggest, for a FF DSLR for special tasks for more considered activity. I think this is what I'm hankering after really and where I need to position such a move in my head. For instance the kids are getting active in sports and I wouldn't dream of taking the Fuji along for that sort of stuff (although I await to see if the X-T1 is going to be capable in this specific area). In fact just going down to the park and trying to capture the kids having fun is a futile excercise with the Fuji's so I know something that can track fast moving objects is something I'd benefit from. Ditto for motorsports, the X-Pro1 with 55-200 at 200mm missed more than it caught at the Fuji 6 hours last year (and to be fair, exactly what I expected). I was up the Tokyo tower last week and while I'm quite pleased with some of the cityscapes I captured with the 14mm (coming to the picture thread in due course), I would have loved to have shot this on a much higher res sensor... Horses for courses obviously.The 'pro' Nikon FX based lens choices, ie those lenses with enough quality to satisfy a D800 owner who knows how to use a D800 to achieve that quality are:from Nikon:
Primes.
24mm f1.4G ED
35mm f1.4G
50mm f1.4G
85mm f1.4 G
300mm f4 IF-ED
Zooms.
From Nikon:
AF-S 24-70 f2.8 G IF-ED
AFS 70-200 f2.8G VR11 IF-ED
(where 2 lenses off a similar focal length perform closely, I picked the less expensive)
From other makers.
Primes.
Zeiss Distagon 55mm T* OTUS 1.4 (this tested screamingly sharp on a D610 body...must have prime if you have the cash).
Zeiss APO Sonnar T* 135mm f2
Sigma 35mm f 1.4DG HSM
Zooms.
Sigma 18-35 f1.8 DC HSM.
There's lots more of course, but either IME or via testing, the above are the pinnacle of what's around at the moment for pure quality. None are cheap exactly, but some are reasonable used (though the Zeiss are too new to be around used yet I suspect).
I can see lots of advantages in running both a compact and a DSLR system, but no real logic behind equipping both systems with enough lenses and kit to do everything, and then not use that potential. My take on it is, as a photographer, I'd want the Fuji to do the compact walk around stuff, and the Nikon to do the specials...the photo's you know you want to take. Tripod jobs. On that basis I'd equip the Fuji with the sharpest of the standard zooms and ONE prime (35mm) for super compact work, and the Nikon with a quality mix, no expense spared, from 18-450.
(18-35/55/80/70-200/300+ 1.5 teleconverter).
On the other hand, if youre bank account is overflowing, run a pipeline to mine!
Re the lenses on a FF Nikon though, I've just had a look through Marks Flickr stream and checked the EXIF's to see what he's been using over the last few years on his D800 and it is mostly AF-D primes, nothing especially exotic and ultra expensive for the most part and no-one would argue the quality (although in many ways as soon as you see one of his images, you fall for it straight away and all thoughts of critical pixel peeping go away
). Same for Scott who takes most of his images on a 24/2.8D on his D600 and we are all loving his sublime output too. A FF Nikon with AF-D lenses is then clearly a viable way to go, especially if I was to switch to lightroom and utilise the lens correction profiles to get the best out of them.
