One of the advances Nikon has made with the Nikon D810 is the complete removal of the low-pass (aka anti-aliasing) filter. The Nikon D800e achieved a similar effect by adding a second filter layer to undo the effects of the anti-aliasing filter, but the move to eliminate it completely in the D810 goes a step further. The concern, of course, is the potential for increased moire, or color interference patterns, in small details. To test out the Nikon D810 for moire in landscapes, I chose the Milwaukee skyline…

Moire is most commonly found in images of fabric patterns, but it can also seriously mess up architectural shots as the fine details on distant buildings can have a similar problem. So I shot the Milwaukee Skyline from the Lake Michigan Ferry on our way across. The original shot was squeaky clean (as viewed and processed in Photoshop CC 2014 with Auto chosen in Camera Raw). No visible interference patterns. I pushed my luck a bit by using Tonal Contrast to bring out some more of the detail in the buildings and sky that had been reduced by the atmosphere. Still no artifacts. All in all I was quite pleased. I’ll certainly try some fabric patterns as well, but this is a good sign.

NOTE ON THE SAMPLE IMAGE: Moire patterns can easily be introduced by image resizing and by viewing conditions. Since the original image is too large to post to the web, I’v put a 1200 pixel wide version in the body of the article, with a 4000 pixel wide (12MP) version below. They are both very clean as I look at them here, but I can’t guarantee that someplace in the process of viewing in your browser, moire won’t appear.