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by Neilyb on Fri Sep 22, 2017 3:37 am
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Mike in O wrote:
WJaekel wrote: In fact, the most intriguing thing with the Nikon D 850 is the combination of very high resolution and speed (if using the grip)
This is what I am really referring to, very high resolution and still maintains up to 9fps along with the inclusion of QXD makes this camera an ideal all rounder. Plus the introductory price is also attractive for such a package.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:20 am
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Neilyb wrote:
Mike in O wrote:
WJaekel wrote: In fact, the most intriguing thing with the Nikon D 850 is the combination of very high resolution and speed (if using the grip)
This is what I am really referring to, very high resolution and still maintains up to 9fps along with the inclusion of QXD makes this camera an ideal all rounder. Plus the introductory price is also attractive for such a package.
Just to be clear, unless you already have a D5 and therefore the battery and charger to get 9FPS, you need to add the grip, charger, and battery which is about $1000.
 

by Neilyb on Fri Sep 22, 2017 7:32 am
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Yes of course, but shooting 7fps is already, IMO, pretty darn amazing considering the resolution. The 51 frame buffer is another plus that, while not always useful, does have its moments.
 

by Mark Picard on Fri Sep 22, 2017 10:22 am
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E.J. Peiker wrote: Just to be clear, unless you already have a D5 and therefore the battery and charger to get 9FPS, you need to add the grip, charger, and battery which is about $1000.
Apparently Watson is already offering a replacement battery for much less, and it's probably only a short time before they offer their own charger too. And I'll bet Vello and other aftermarket companies will be producing a grip in the near future. Hang in there guys/girls - financial help is coming!  :wink:
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by david fletcher on Fri Sep 22, 2017 1:33 pm
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Mark Picard wrote:
E.J. Peiker wrote: Just to be clear, unless you already have a D5 and therefore the battery and charger to get 9FPS, you need to add the grip, charger, and battery which is about $1000.
Apparently Watson is already offering a replacement battery for much less, and it's probably only a short time before they offer their own charger too. And I'll bet Vello and other aftermarket companies will be producing a grip in the near future. Hang in there guys/girls - financial help is coming!  :wink:
Ditto.  Already available.  My solution which will fit the D850 is a BL-5 after market as it costs 40% of the Nikon original.  Added to that an EX-PRO EN-EL18 battery at 2600mAh and the EX-PRO MH-26 charger for a total of £73 which is about £317 cheaper than the Nikon original parts.

Have been using that combo in the D800 I have, to absolutely no ill effects.  Battery charges fine and holds charge perfectly so absolutely no reason to see why it will not be suitable for the D850, which is actually why I bought it.. (tester on the D800 in readiness for the  incoming D850.  However, for my personal taste I will probably buy the OEM Grip as whilst I've been happy with alternative grips on the other bodies I have, I have seen no evidence that the Vello's, Meike etc work to boost the drive speeds when fitted with the EN-EL 18, 18a,18b battery's.  (not only that, the after market BL-5's fit the MB-D12 perfectly, so will fit the MB-D18, but not the Meike spare grip I had).  
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by Brian Stirling on Fri Sep 22, 2017 2:08 pm
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I've been reading the news and reports and checking out the videos about it on YouTube and I am really tempted by the D850. I have two D800E's that are now 5 years old and when the D810 came out it was certainly interesting and an improvement but not enough so to justify an upgrade so I held off. This new D850 is another improvement over the D810 and a larger jump from my D800E's and I have to confess I hanging onto the fence with my finger nails. I would really love to know more about Nikon's reported FF mirrorless -- not jest the spec but the timeline. For me the improvement in IQ for still images is perhaps not the most important improvement as the IQ from the D800E is still phenomenal in my book and even though the D810 was a bit better and the D850 even more so I think we've reached a point where all the best DSLR's of the last 5 years or so are so good there has to be other factors that drive the decision.

I've been doing a lot more video in the last couple years and have a couple 4K cameras (Panasonic G85 and DJI Phantom 4 Pro) but my Nikon gear, though video capable, was way out of there league as far as video is concerned. The D850 appears to have made a huge jump in this regard and by all accounts I've read so far it is now at least worthy of mention for video. The 144Mbps bit rate should result in pretty decent files with less blocking up etc, but Nikon is still way behind Canon as far as live view AF is concerned -- Canon's dual pixel is light years ahead of Nikon.

I know many here bristle at the mention of video in a DSLR so I'll return to stills. The AF appears to be significantly improved over the D810 and D800(E) and the increase in frame rate is a real plus for wildlife, sports and action work, particularly with the battery grip. The BSI sensor also looks to have improved DR and high ISO performance and being able to set the ISO to ISO32 is very useful for landscape work when slow shutter speeds are desired. But, I've not really been fixated on using the lowest ISO setting for a while now and comfortably increase the ISO according to the conditions. With my D800E's I'll try to use ISO100 when working from a tripod, but if I'm walking around handheld I boost the ISO to ISO200 as a matter of habit. If the conditions are less than ideal, windy for example I'll boost to ISO200-400 while working from an tripod and ISO400-800 when walking around -- getting good shots even at ISO3200 is not out of the question either.

So, here's my summary:

PRO:

1. A reasonable increase in MP and therefore detail -- we're probably reaching a practical limit with MP but we'll see

2. Better AF in stills (non live view)

3. Better DR and high ISO performance with the new BSI sensor

4. Vastly improved video with decent bit rate 4K30

5. Improved LCD screen that's now the flippy type -- useful when you need to shoot over or under things

6. Faster frame rate


CONS:

1. Live view AF still pretty mehh -- not terrible but so far from dual pixel its hardly in the same class

2. No high res EVF -- I guess we have to wait for the mirrorless


I mentioned that I've been reading reviews and checking out the videos and in one of the videos I found what I believe to be a hot pixel in one of the videos. Check out this video and look at the very center and just a few percent down from the very top beginning at about 1:34 -- there's definitely a bright pixel that remain in the same spot even as the camera angle changes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITd_kYWChM


So, I'm getting splinters sitting on the fence and am torn between buying the D850 now or waiting to see what the mirrorless looks like. I also want to see if hot pixels are a problem with this new BSI sensor.


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by Mike in O on Fri Sep 22, 2017 2:25 pm
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On thing to keep in mind with the new sensor is that it has 2 knees of gain which all modern Sony sensors have...no need to worry about iso 100, 200 etc. I can shoot at 100 or 640 with my 99II and push and pull to no detriment. Above 640, you have another invarience to the next knee, I haven't seen where the knees are with the 850 but I noticed there were 2.
 

by Brian Stirling on Fri Sep 22, 2017 2:35 pm
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Mike in O wrote:On thing to keep in mind with the new sensor is that it has 2 knees of gain which all modern Sony sensors have...no need to worry about iso 100, 200 etc.  I can shoot at 100 or 640 with my 99II and push and pull to no detriment.  Above 640, you have another invarience to the next knee, I haven't seen where the knees are with the 850 but I noticed there were 2.


The D850 does NOT use a Sony sensor though it may well have Sony design and engineering in it.  

For sure increasing the ISO setting will increase noise, but my take is that for many shots the increase in noise is well managed and getting a faster shutter speed reduces blurring and on balance that trade off it worth it.  In fact, there are a lot of folks that now say the reciprocal rule need to be adjusted owing to the much higher resolution sensors we now have.  Back in the day and up to, say, 16MP, using a shutter speed the reciprocal of the focal length was a good rule of thumb but with higher resolution sensors the motion blurring is more obvious so we should probably up the shutter speed by 2X the old rule and maybe even more.  Assuming you desire to maintain the greatest detail, and that's not always the case, you are looking at f/5.6-f/8 depending on the relative distances of objects in the FOV so getting the higher shutter speed to further limit blurring may require boosting the ISO a bit.  And again, the modern DSLR's are all so good that increasing the ISO modestly should not be a problem.


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by david fletcher on Fri Sep 22, 2017 2:36 pm
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Brian Stirling wrote: I mentioned that I've been reading reviews and checking out the videos and in one of the videos I found what I believe to be a hot pixel in one of the videos.  Check out this video and look at the very center and just a few percent down from the very top beginning at about 1:34 -- there's definitely a bright pixel that remain in the same spot even as the camera angle changes.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITd_kYWChM




Brian
Brian, FYI, there are some thoughts on another site re dead pixels...  HERE    wouldn't worry about that too much.  
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by Brian Stirling on Fri Sep 22, 2017 3:06 pm
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Yeah, many DSLR's have dead pixels but with a new sensor type (BSI) and a new FAB making it there is the chance that there might be many more dead pixels. Having a few "isolated" dead pixels is one thing, but having them bunched together is an entirely different and more troubling problem. I'm not saying that's the case, rather suggesting that the new sensor design and FAB may result in a QC issue that perhaps only time will tell.


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by Mike in O on Fri Sep 22, 2017 3:56 pm
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Doesn't Nikon remap every month in regards to dead pixels?
 

by SantaFeJoe on Sat Sep 23, 2017 10:19 am
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E.J. Peiker wrote: Was a little disappointed that the auto focus stacking feature does not recommend the number of shots in the stack based on the focal length and aperture in use - the photographer pretty much has to guess.
Oh dear, what's a photographer to do???!!!!! I'm sure you weren't expecting a glorified point and shoot that you just set and forget! Sorry, E. J., but I just couldn't resist! Photography has become so easy nowadays (with auto-stitch, focus stacking, HDR, etc.), that many new photographers have really come to expect to just press a setting and shoot. It certainly was not like that in the film days a few years back.

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by E.J. Peiker on Sat Sep 23, 2017 7:20 pm
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Joe, it's at best an inexact guessing game doing focus bracketing the way we have been doing it and the calculations to determine the right number of frames and exactly how far to shift the lens from frame to frame to ensure optimal overlap are non trivial and simply can not be done in the field.  We are now to the point where diffraction kicks in at apertures smaller than f/5.6 so if you want the absolute best image quality out of the camera you need to focus stack if the image requires DOF more than about f/8 but it is super easy to have slight focus overlap holes in your manually focus adjusted bracket and this really does nothing to solve that problem.  you still don't know what the optimum focus step distance from shot to shot is.  This has nothing to do with wanting a point and shoot experience - if I wanted that then I would have asked for the camera to do the focus stacking in camera and spit out an already stitched file with maximum DOF.  If you are going to give us an auto stacking feature then make it truly useful so that you can get maximum image quality out of it.  Otherwise it's still just guesswork only the the guessing is automated and you don't have to push the shutter button, refocus, push the shutter button, etc....  We are not in the film days anymore and our cameras are computers with lenses attached so we should be able to utilize the computing power to its fullest extent.  What we had to do in the film days is relatively irrelevant in today's world.
 

by SantaFeJoe on Sat Sep 23, 2017 7:44 pm
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Here's a link to an article on focus stacking with the D850, for those who are interested in more info:

https://photographylife.com/reviews/nikon-d850/4

Joe
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by SantaFeJoe on Mon Sep 25, 2017 12:45 pm
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At the bottom of the above posted link is another link to the FocusStacker App. Note that it is not for macro work, but more for landscape and architectural work. Here is that link:

http://www.georgedouvos.com/douvos/Focu ... ction.html

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by SantaFeJoe on Wed Sep 27, 2017 10:02 pm
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Some nice images shot with D850:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/ ... t-60170892

Joe
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by SantaFeJoe on Thu Sep 28, 2017 6:21 pm
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A new ongoing review:

https://photographylife.com/reviews/nikon-d850

Joe
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by Kim on Fri Sep 29, 2017 7:38 am
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For those worried about 'gaps' in manually focus stacked images you can purchase the equipment below to get complete control. You don't even need a
d850.

http://www.heliconsoft.com/helicon-remote-stackshot/
 

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