Happy 100th Birthday, Nikon and the Development of the D850

Nikon is officially 100 years old today, 25th July, 2017.

 

Nikon also announced the development of the D850, which is the FX-format successor to the D810.

 

• Nikon Japan's news on the 100th anniversary: Nikon | News | Nikon Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of its Founding
  
• And the D850, but there isn't much info yet: Nikon | News | Development of Digital SLR Camera Nikon D850
  

D850 teaser video on Nikon's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10155068483989620

Nikon isn't providing much info on the D850 yet. Pretty much everybody knows that they would upgrade the D810 some time, and I thought it should have been last year. I would imagine that this D850 will be the FX version of the D500 but with emphasis on high pixel count instead of high frame rate.

 

Nikon USA is supposed to have this page on the D850: Nikon D850 DSLR Camera, but so far that link is not working yet. By the time you read this, it may work at that time.

 

Update: Nikon USA is providing a new link, which leads to the video Dieter posted earlier: Nikon D850 DSLR Camera

Link does work, shows same video as the one I linked to on facebook. Plus the option to join an email list to get more information - once it is available.

Link does work, shows same video as the one I linked to on facebook. Plus the option to join an email list to get more information - once it is available.

But you can't pre-order yet. :)

One has to wonder what's going on at Nikon: the D810 successor was expected at Photokina last year, yet here we are some 10 months later and all we get a development announcement? For a minute I thought the D850 might be mirrorless - but the press release confirms it to be a DSLR.

 

But you can't pre-order yet.

Zero intention to do so :D

 

8K time lapse ... 8K video?

 

What's been released so far doesn't feel like much of a celebration of the 100th anniversary. Not a single new celebratory product? Just two cameras and three lenses in a dull gray paint?

Edited July 25, 2017 by Dieter Schaefer

Ohh... nice. No wonder they were offering a free grip with the D810 recently in Canada. This time, I may just get one. But waiting for the inevitable recalls first...

There is some info that the D820 will be the successor to the D810 and that the D850 is another solution.

A 100 year "celebration" with a phantom camera that doesn't exist to be bought yet.

 

The words "booze up" and "brewery" spring to mind!

 

Is 100 years not enough notice for Nikon to get something organised?

 

And a faked-up video with some obvious matting work!? Come on.

Edited July 25, 2017 by rodeo_joe|1

We might as well post a list of specs for this fantasy camera. Winner of the lottery to name those most close to the specs of the actual camera (should it eventually be realised) will win the right to pre-order one.

 

I'll kick off with 16 bit depth A/D with overlapping Bayer filters for more accurate colour, and thus immediately put myself out of the running.

Finally a true successor to the D700, fast enough for sports with sufficient FX resolution for everything else? The pre-announcement is odd, though. The details are vague enough for the 'Osborne Effect' to hurt sales of the D810, D750 and D500. Maybe there was intense corporate pressure to announce something today, or perhaps development is behind the original schedule? I can't remember the last time they did this with a dSLR - was it the D70? Any bets on the launch date? In the shops for Christmas or early 2018?

I can just see the meeting.....

 

'What do you mean, 'You've missed the Anniversary Deadline'....You've had 100 years"!

 

OK, so what DO YOU HAVE?

 

Well, we've got a really short video lash-up that shows nothing of the camera and promises something not many people want...

 

Gosh, how splendid, We'll upload it straight away. Well done!

 

Any other business? What's Canon up-to? Anyone know??? No? OK then, Date of Next Meeting.........

Edited July 25, 2017 by mike_halliwell

A 100 year "celebration" with a phantom camera that doesn't exist to be bought yet.

 

The words "booze up" and "brewery" spring to mind!

 

Is 100 years not enough notice for Nikon to get something organised?

 

mm How about special "Fan Meetings" ?

 

- ファンミーティング 2017 | ニコンイメージング

I'd thought I'd been so busy this year that I wouldn't have got my "which features would we like to see from Nikon" survey out before the D810 successor. Looks like I might still have a little time (although it'd mostly be "this is what you *could* have got" at this point).

 

I'm still planning to put something up in the next week or so. I'll be interested to see how well the desires of people on this forum align with what Nikon have made. I'm a bit worried that they're talking about speed and low light (although 8K suggests resolution); if they've made the low-ISO dynamic range worse then that would be the thing that put me off a purchase. Well, that and saving up. And not trusting Nikon until the bugs have shaken out. Otherwise they'll probably get some money from me next year.

Well, we've got a really short video lash-up that shows nothing of the camera and promises something not many people want...

Mike, you cynic! The 8k astrophotography time lapse community must be thinking all their Christmases have come at once! Or will be. Possibly after Christmas.

Actually it might not be as bad as that - I see now that Nikon announced it was 'developing' the D5 in Nov 2015, launched it the following January, and started to get it in the shops in March. So perhaps we will be able to buy it by Christmas.

Perhaps Nikon is just a bit shy and will give more details step by step.

Perhaps it is a mirrorless body and we shall be made used to it in small doses. :-)

The "D" prefix would seem to indicate it's a DSLR. Otherwise it would be one of the Coolpix series.... wouldn't it? Maybe "Coolpix Pro" for any serious EVF equipped interchangeable lens body?

 

Is anyone able to zoom in on the silhouette of the tripod mounted camera featured in the D850 teaser video? It would be ultimately funny if the camera used wasn't even a Nikon.

If this were a wedding anniversary, the wife would not be pleased.

 

No Df2 :-(

8K time lapse ... 8K video?

Shouldn't think so, but the timelapse thing suggests they have enough pixels horizontally to give us 8K stills in a standard 16:9 crop. Something like the 42MP Sony sensor would do that (the 36MP sensor in the D800/D810 falls a bit short).

The video implies much better low light performance - much better noise control at higher ISO with a high pixel count and perhaps better HDR performance.

I need to look again, but wasn't the video timelapse? If so, it doesn't say all that much about high ISO since it could have had long exposures, although I agree it's implied. It's certainly not clear to me that it covered HDR.

 

I do agree that 8K implies a sensor resolution bump at least to the level of the A7R2. Given Nikon's limited video background I'd be astonished (but pleased) if they acquired the ability to do 8K video natively. I'd prefer they didn't bump the resolution too far if it means that less sensor area gets used for video (although sampling properly and not skipping pixels would be nice. Sony's on-sensor processing is a step in the right direction for this, and better low light comes from their BSI sensor (a bit). Put another way, I'd rather have an 8192x5461 (44.7MP) cinema 8K-capable or 7680x5120 (39MP) UHD sensor with a 1:1 crop than (say) a 8660x5773 (50MP) sensor with a 0.95x crop in cinema 8K or 0.88x crop in UHD 8K - or worse as resolution rises.

 

There's way more stuff I might hope for (depending on how much of this "listening to users" Nikon has really done), but I'll get that survey together in the next few days and we can all share the fun.

Perhaps it is a mirrorless body

The "D" prefix would seem to indicate it's a DSLR.

As already mentioned, the press release states digital SLR.

8K video - shouldn't think so

The video is 4K (UHD, not DCI) if I am not mistaken (shows 3840x2160, so 16:9 ratio). 8K (UHD) is 7680 wide (x 4320) so a D810 falls indeed 300 pixels short ( about 40MP required).

Given the stated ability to do 8K timelapse, I strongly suspect the D850 has had some kind of resolution bump to get it over at least the UHD-8K if not cinema 8K (8192x4320) limit on the long axis. However, 8K cameras (there are a few) are big beasts which ship a lot of data around and have to keep it all cool. Getting that much data off a full-frame sensor at a video frame rate is... challenging. Besides, if it could actually do 8K video at a sensible frame rate, I don't think Nikon's teaser would have only claimed 8K in timelapse.

 

I care less about 8K than about being able to shoot 4K with integer sampling ratios, but that has the same implications for overall sensor resolution. For now, anyway - it may take a bit longer before we're all shooting 16K.

Anyone remember what (if anything) Nikon released to celebrate the 75th anniversary in 1992? Or the 50th in 1967? All I remember is the release of the 50/1.4G for the 75th anniversary of the Nikkor lenses in 2008. For a 100th birthday, this doesn't feel like much of a celebration at all...

 

Expectations regarding what Nikon will offer/can do seem to be rather low these days.

 

Getting that much data off a full-frame sensor

It appears that the Sony A9 is way ahead of the pack in terms of data processing/transfer. Seems to require the new kind of sensor architecture they introduced though; highly doubtful that they let Nikon have it at this point.