Nikon D850 FX-Format Digital SLR Camera Body

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After a few months of almost daily use, I can confidently rate this camera as the best camera I have ever owned. I have used it in the rain, in the salt spray from ocean waves and the mist from waterfalls, it has held up well and its weather sealing is excellent. The color and dynamic range are amazing. The native low ISO of 64 adds so much to my landscape photography, such clean images. At high ISO settings for night sky and nighttime architecture, the images are still c lean and have far less noise than other cameras I have used. The built in intervelometer is versatile and can be set to a wide variety of shooting situations. The built in time lapse feature is great for a hassle free time lapse, it is easy to program and does a good job. The in camera multiple shot mode is very useful for stacking exposures that can produce a "long exposure" effect without using an ND filter. As the D850 was announced and getting ready to come on the market I had been looking to upgrade my camera body. It was a difficult decision and I did a lot of research. I finally settled on the Nikon D850 and I am extremely satisfied with the decision to buy this camera. Honestly it has exceeded my expectations. Sample photo included 0.6 seconds 14mm f11

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This is the camera Nikon needed to release. Please allow me to explain. Over the last 12-18 months I have found myself migrating away from my D750. For our production company I do about 50% stills and about 50% video. For video I use my GH5 - which for video - is a unbelievable. However.... it isnt that great for stills. The low light performance isnt great and as a whole... it lacks the finer points of higher end cameras. So I would use my D750 combined with my Otus 55mm for stills. The Otus is a beast - a fantastic lens that significantly outperforms the sensor on the D750. This combination of the GH5 is fine for the studio... but when I travel it just becomes too much to carry. For travel I use a Fuji X100F -which is a fantastic little camera. It has a 50mm equivalent lens and produces photos that are the same resolution as my D750+Otus combo but with marginally less sharpness and color accuracy. So my dilemma... why use Nikon equipment at all? I am not shooting sports or using telephoto lenses. Nikons are not superior for video.... and some of high end compact cameras nearly equal their performance (if you are primarily shooting mid-focal length primes ). Frankly, my Nikon D750 was ONLY being used when I was pairing it with a specialty lens. Sure there was the D810, but the increase in functionality didnt exactly overwhelm me. So - even in the studio - I was reaching for my Fuji X100F while leaving the larger Nikon D750 on the shelf. Enter the Nikon D850 This is the camera they needed to release. The new sensor and increased resolution gives me a very compelling reason to use this camera. When combined with my Otus 55mm lens I have something that closely resembles medium format. I can crop, crop, and crop and still get excellent resolution and edge contrast. It is amazing. When used with autofocus lenses (like most normal people) I find it to be fast and extremely accurate. Easily the best I have ever used. The D850 low light performance is also much better than the D750. Again it is the best I have ever used. I have taken high quality photos at ISO 3200- and honestly it is workable all the way to 12,800. While the GH5 still has many more video features than the D850. That does not mean the D850 is a one trick pony. I can carry it on location with confidence that if I have issues with the GH5 the D850 can step in (or be used for B roll). Even better the D850s large sensor can provide far superior DOF control and low light performance. In fact, for some controlled interview settings I would speculate that the D850 could be the DSLR that you could use (when paired with a high end lens). The D850 sensor beats the GH5 and I would put Nikons glass up against Sony (but that is just me). A few things to remember - Buy the high speed SD cards. They are crazy expensive, but they will fit directly into most computers while allowing you take photos almost as fast as you can push the button. - This camera will start to expose lower end lenses. Consider the price of high quality glass into your equation for your overall investment. - Most importantly... what are you doing with your camera? This is not... I repeat... NOT ... a camera for beginners. I would say that unless you are a real enthusiast or someone who uses their camera as a tool to make money you probably do not need the D850. If you cant answer the question "What specific feature of this camera do I NEED to aid me in taking (insert type of photo)" then dont buy it. Not only do you not need the D850 - it will be a hindrance to you. The menus can get complicated. The files will be unnecessarily large. If you shoot JPEGS in automode - do yourself and your wallet a favor and step down in camera. Final verdict - A hand-down improvement in the Nikon line-up. Unless you need the high speed output of the D5 I am not sure why any pro wouldnt invest in the D850.

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This is a review of a true production D850, not the pre-production versions. Executive Summary: simply fantastic! And now to the details: I am not a big fan of digital photography; I’m an old fashioned film guy that still shoots with a Hasselblad and 4X5. I somewhat reluctantly bought a Nikon Df as my first “good” digital camera only because of its retro styling. It resembled my F3HP’s. But having said that, the D850 has won me over. This camera offers the resolution that rivals film and an amazing ISO range. Combine that with high speed operation and the convenience of digital capture and I’ve probably shot my last roll of 35mm film. I’m still going to keep my medium and large format cameras, but holly cow, the images from this camera are simply superb! I’m a landscape, nature and environmental portrait photographer, so this review should be viewed in that context. I don’t shoot sports, weddings nor do product photography so the specific needs of those photographers are foreign to me. The features that I discuss are important to me, but there may be some missing that are important to you. Some of my favorite things, in no particular order: 1. The aforementioned resolution is simply fantastic! The capture of details is truly amazing. It’s not 4X5 quality, but it certainly approaches that. And think of all the images one can capture with this camera as opposed to the shots missed with medium and large format gear due to the hassles of lugging it around. 2. The viewfinder is extraordinarily bright. Brilliant! 3. Terrific ability to recover underexposed and shadow areas with very little noise. Far better than I’ve ever seen with other digital capture cameras. 4. Autofocus works extremely well even in low contrast scenes. 5. ISO range is entirely usable. Noise certainly increases at the higher ISO settings, but it is not objectionable. My only criticism of the camera is that it is big and heavy. It has to be, I suppose, to squeeze in all that technology; nonetheless, it would be nice if it were a bit smaller. With respect to size, I did get a chance to shoot it side by side with my friends D810. The D850 did sit better in the hand than the D810. The D850 felt a bit heavier, but more comfortable to hold. I believe that was because the D850 is a bit thinner with a deeper hand grip area. At least that’s the way it felt. I won’t do a comparison between the D810 and the D850 because I don’t have any depth of experience with the D810. All I’ll say is that when we compared images side by side in Lightroom, the D850 images were superior in all cases. Not hugely so, mind you, but even my friend agreed the D850 was the undisputed winner. With only a few days logged with the camera, those are my initial observations. You’ll notice I said nothing about the D850’s video capabilities and that’s because what I don’t know about shooting video would fill an encyclopedia (remember those?). I’ll leave that to those that know what they’re talking about. But, as a still photographer for some 45+ years now, I couldn’t be happier with the D850. The image quality is stunning. And if that’s all it offered, it would be worth the price of admission. But it also has a host of other features — of which I’m sure you’ve already read — that make this a true standout. I’m so glad I acquired one. I’ll keep my Df because I like the size and the retro styling and I’ll keep my medium and large format cameras just because, but the D850 is going to be my go to camera. And from a film die hard, that’s quite a statement.

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This is my 7th Nikon DSLR body, starting from a d70 many years ago. All have been incrementally better than the last. This D850 is to compliment my D4S and replace (probably) my D800E. This is the first time Ive felt that a new body was a total game changer. Short of the lack of an integrated vertical grip and the 11 frames per second id does everything that the D4S does, but better and more. The "changer" factor is the ability to shoot in near darkness and resolve actually good photos. ISO 20,000... meh. After some DXO processing they look great! Tracking soccer and lacrosse players on the field.. no problem. Focusing in the dark.. no problem. Put it in "auto" and hand it to someone expecting decent results.. no problem. Im not a video guy so Ill have to lend it to a trusted friend to get some handle on its ability there, but as a pure photo tool.. Its just fantastic.

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Admittedly, its an upgrade from a D5300 and only my second DSLR, but its flexibility has sold me. The grip is nice and deep, which makes it pretty comfortable. I accidentally tested the weather sealing a tiny bit when a mild sprinkling of rain happened on a hike, but it shrugged it off. Im sure the weather sealing was made to handle a bit more than just a drizzle.

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I made the leap from the D7100 to the D850 about 36 hours ago. I had backordered mine some time ago, as I sit here writing this review, I feel that period was well worth it. This camera is not some incremental step from the D810. This is the proverbial great leap forward. It took me a about an hour to set up the camera to my personal specifications. The software is very much similar to Nikon’s other line of cameras with a few added features. Color space was my immediate concern; the camera was in sRGB and I wanted Adobe. Checking calibration on my lens took a bit of time, but was a necessity on the D7100 was uneventful on the D850. All of my lens were spot on. The D7100 was not good for action and I knew that from the outset. Autofocus is a bit slow and the getting the shutter speed up meant pushing the ISO to rather noisy levels. The D850 is very good about handling noise at the higher ISO. Someone told me it is because the size of the pixels is so small its hardly a problem. With that knowledge, I set the High ISO Noise Reduction to normal, and Auto ISO limit to 1200. Noise is effectily gone. Noe there is couple of things I have to mention. 46.7megapixels can be very unforgiving if your shooting technique is even a bit sloppy. Unless you are shooting above 1/500 of a second, it will show in the very fine detail, VR or not. Use a tripod or monopod if at all possible, especially with long and heavy lens. Youll thank me when you see your first few shots. The second issue is memory cards and image sizes. The D850 uses both XQD and SDXC UHS II cards. Right now the XQD cards greater than 32gigs are mercilessly overpriced and looks to be that way into the near future. I mention this only because I shoot RAW and RAW file sizes are almost three times what you would have with other Nikon cameras. You may think you have more than enough, but a 32 gigabyte card will fill up fast. You can use your standard SD card in the slot provided, but be aware of that when you are shooting burst; you can bottleneck writing to the SD card very easily. So, all and all, this is a great camera

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This camera is possibly my favorite thing Ive ever purchased. Its an absolute beast. My wife and I are both photographers of different types. She does portrait photography (newborn, family, etc) and I do landscape/astrophotography. For years weve been on the very-mid-range D5200. We bought it while we were still both working part time in school, so we had to go for the best one we could on the extremely limited budget we had. While it has served us well, its obviously a cropped sensor body and it was time to upgrade to full frame, and many years later were in a far better place financially. (READ: No more school tuition and full time job yay) We figured if were going to spend the money on full frame, we might as well get the "dream camera", so to speak, and not feel like we need to upgrade again soon. And so we come to the D850. Lots of research went into the decision to go with the D850, there is no shortage of videos and reading material about it, its a landmark camera body for many reasons. Sure its pricey, but this sucker is going to last us for years and years. Ill try to touch on all my personal favorite points, but there are literally so many that Ill probably forget some, but here we go. Body: Super well designed, comfortable, if not a tad on the heavy side. Its a beast of a camera though, so I can absolutely forgive the weight, and its by no means uncomfortably heavy. Just a tad heavier than I would have thought. The weatherproofing is excellent. You can watch tons of review videos where youll see them leaving the camera on a tripod in rainy weather to do a timelapse, and then they simply dry it off with a towel later. As a result of the weather proofing there is no built-in popup flash to make it far more sealed off. This doesnt bother me at all because I never use that flash, if I need flash Ill use an external one. Autofocus: If you know anything about the D850, youll know that the autofocus in the body is industry leading. (the same autofocus as the D5) A huge number of autofocus points, incredible focus speed, its absolutely incredible. I will simply leave this at what Ive said so far since thats really all that needs to be said. Its awesome. Controls: Having come from the D5200 I feel like the controls are much more intuitive and better placed so as to be more ergonomic. They feel much higher quality than the D5200 which just helps with the overall premium nature of this camera. As a person who loves to do astrophotography, one of my favorite tiny improvements is the illuminated buttons! I dont know how I survived without that before this. Its one of those quality of life improvements that just makes so much sense when you finally have it. Memory Card Slots: So as Im sure youre aware by now, this camera has two slots. One SD slot and one XQD slot. I originally thought I wouldnt get an XQD card, theyre so much more expensive than their SD card equivalents, and I hadnt done much research into them, so I thought they were basically a chunkier SD card. I have since done the research and bought a 240 GB capacity card. The read/write speed is seriously blazing fast. Basically it can keep up with the D850, whereas an SD card by itself will start slowing you down during continuous shooting because it cant clear the buffer fast enough. Transfer speeds to my computer are so much faster than my SD card. (note that you do need to buy a card reader for it) Its also incredibly durable which is a great thing to not worry about when youre in more rugged environments. My only complaint about the D850 now that Ive bought into the XQD vision is that they only have one XQD slot and one SD card slot. I understand that XQD isnt widely adopted right now, and that increases the barrier to entry for this camera, but I do wish that there were two XQD card slots in this camera rather than one of each. I have a large enough card, however, that I havent had a big enough session that I started writing to the SD card yet, so thats not that big of a deal. (I usually remove everything off the card when I import right after my session, so I always start at empty) Touchscreen/Live View: I was skeptical that I would ever use the touchscreen aspect of the screen but I must say I was wrong. I use it very often. The screen itself is large, bright, and great resolution. You can pinch to zoom on your pictures and zoom in to see some incredible detail this camera takes. (something I couldnt really do before until I was on my computer) It tilts up and down, a really handy feature that I forget about too often. (as I stand on my tiptoes to see when the camera is up high, I suddenly realize I dont need to do that, the screen tilts) Live View is also incredible on this camera, again I use it far more than I thought I would. You can even autofocus on specific areas/objects by simply tapping the screen. Its incredibly useful, and the screen is high enough quality that it really does your pictures justice. Very impressed with it. Timelapse: You can create a 4k timelapse video right in-camera. You can even create an 8k timelapse using the interval mode and the full resolution photos able to be taken by the D850, although this is not stitched together in-camera, so youll need to do that yourself. There are some incredible timelapses out there produced by the D850 that you can watch, the image quality is exceptional. You can also use Silent Live View mode, and thatll not use any mechanical shutter. As stated in the cameras product description, this is great for saving on shutter cycles and improving battery performance. Video: In addition to the photography I enjoy, I love shooting video. As everyone knows, Nikon doesnt do as well as Canon in this regard. Of all Nikons cameras, the D850 appears to be the best when it comes to shooting video. The autofocus while shooting video is not good, so youd better settle on using manual focus. None of this means that the D850 will produce bad video. If you know how to work around some of the annoyances and less-than-stellar features, youll get video that is just fine. Most of us, however, arent getting the D850 for shooting video, so lets talk about the true purpose of this camera. Image Quality: Thus we arrive to the most important aspect of any camera review, the image quality. This is actually a section where I have very little to say, partly because I covered a lot of supporting info, and the other part because its quite simple. This camera is a beast. Its got a whopping 45.7 megapixels. This was a major upgrade for me, coming from the 24.1 megapixels in my D5200. Im incredibly impressed with the sheer amount of data collected in the RAW images especially coming from my D5200. The amount of detail I can bring out in post is impressive. As such, the RAW files are very large, so hopefully you have plenty of storage space. It has great low-light capabilities, and the autofocus works surprisingly well even in low light. I cant think of a single complaint about this category, which speaks to the incredible images this camera produces. If you can afford it, I cant recommend this camera enough. Its an incredible piece of technology, one of the best cameras you can buy. If you are looking for an incredible full frame DSLR with no compromises (minus video of course) then look no further than the Nikon D850.

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I’ve had this for three days, and haven’t finished testing it yet. But I can tell you, this is the best, most thoroughly thought out camera I’ve ever owned. I’ve owned an F, an F2, a Nikkormat EL, an F3-T, a Nikonos III, a Nikonos V, an F4, an F5, a D200, a D600, a Linhof Technika, a Hasselblad 500c, a Pentax 67, a Graflex Crown Graphic, a Rolliflex, and an Exacta. This is a camera that really offers features of all of those. Not all the features, but enough to make it my favorite photographic tool of all time.

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I originally ordered from Adorama but was on back order for 2 1/2 months so i ordered on amazon and they csme through. The camera is amazing and takes great pictures. I especially like the snap bridge feature. I had a D800 and upgraded and very glad i did.

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Its expensive, but you get what you pay for. Its the creme de la creme of full-frame Nikon cameras. Theres countless spec highlights on Youtube. If you buy this camera, you set the bar for your lenses very high. Im stuck having to buy very expensive glass to get the most of this stellar camera. The level of detail you get is astounding with the high megapixels, even in low-lit areas. If youre a Nikon shooter and want to get serious, this is what you should buy. Dont skimp out on a cheaper model - This camera will be future proof for several years.

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