Review of D850 from DPReview.com is out, but. . .

...We need to keep in mind that DPReview is owned by Amazon. Their objective is to entice people to buy more camera equipment. It should surprise no one that there is hype on just about every new camera, be it Canon, Sony, Olympus, or Nikon ....

 

Our friends at Nikon USA are nice enough to send me a D850 sample for review. Hopefully I'll have some first-hand experience with it soon, and I can compare it against my D800E.

I appreciate the fact that you pointed out that that Amazon is behind DPReview. I did not know that, I only thought they sponsored the site. To be fair, I now have a harder time understanding one part of the D850 review on DPReview; the XQD card is considered a necessary evil for those wanting speed rather than something the user might already have or be willing to buy anyway in order to maximize transfer speed. The reviewer is not all that positive regarding them and the XQD is listed in the Cons in the summary. I assume Amazon sell both XQD cards and card readers, so why is that novelty not hyped then?

All in all, I look forward to your upcoming review. I also hope it will include a comparison on the 1.2 and DX crop modes for when you need the added reach, say for wildlife (IQ at both base ISO and higher ISO settings).

> A 45MP D850 is as accomplished, IQ wise, as a 12MP D3S.

I hadn't checked that comparison, but I'd be pleased. I always vaguely lusted after the low-light capabilities of the D3s. (Yes, a D5 is better, and they're both faster than the D850 unless you go to 8MP fixed-focus JPEG mode, but it removes some of my floating NAS.)

There seems to be a consensus: if you already have a D8x0 and a D500, adding a D850 is quite a tough sell. Having had a D700 alongside my D800 and barely used it, I no longer have a back-up body alongside my D810. I'm less inclined to pick up a D500 at this point - I'd sooner trade in for the D850, but I can see how others make a different trade-off.

I would quite like a back-up body, once I'm feeling more flush with finance. I'll report back whether that's a D3x00 series, a beater used D800, or whatever I might hope Nikon releases to replace the D610.

I assume Amazon sell both XQD cards and card readers, so why is that novelty not hyped then?

I'd like to think the DPReview staff retain some journalistic integrity. They may be under some pressure not to hurt their sugar daddy, but I don't think they're entirely obliged to push sales. Or maybe, for once in my life, I'm not being cynical.

I also hope it will include a comparison on the 1.2 and DX crop modes for when you need the added reach

Just to be clear: as with any Nikon body, a crop mode on the D850 doesn't add any reach. All it does is throw away the pixels around the image border, as though you'd cropped the image in post-processing. This increases the buffer size and the number of images you can fit on a storage card (because you're storing fewer pixels the files are smaller and take up less buffer space), and on lesser bodies it may increase the frame rate (there's less data to read off the sensor, although this doesn't seem to be the limiting factor on the D850), but you don't gain any detail when you crop.

I appreciate the fact that you pointed out that that Amazon is behind DPReview. I did not know that, I only thought they sponsored the site.

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Phil Askey founded DPReview in London, UK back in 1998, and he sold that to Amazon in 2007. In 2010 Amazon relocated DPReview from London to Seattle where Amazon's headquarter is. See this Wikipedia article: Digital Photography Review - Wikipedia

If you clink on any purchase links on DPReview's own content, it will lead to Amazon. (Obviously people can post other links to their forums.) And you will not find advertisements from Adorama, B&H, etc. on DPReview. Obviously DPReview still has a lot of good information (as well as bad information on their forums), but to me, DPReview is more like a marketing arm for Amazon.

By the same token, Nikon USA is loaning me equipment for review to promote their products. While I don't get paid by Nikon, I do try to maintain a good relationship with them. Meanwhile, I also would like to maintain a good reputation and provide fair comments on Nikon products.

Pixel-level comparisons of SNR do not really have a clear meaning in applications. If you shoot a subject from a certain position with D810 and D850 and the same lens and focal length, and compare individual pixels, the image content in those pixels is different so a numerical comparison between SNR at the pixel level is not the correct way to do it. What you need to do is compare areas of equal image content. And that is what the Print comparison does.

The D5 has better dynamic range than most FX cameras at high ISO. Dynamic range is to me more important at high ISO than low ISO since in high ISO applications ”good enough” image quality is not a given and often lighting indoors is highly contrasty (light bulbs and then lots of darkness). Color correction is often needed by boosting the blue and as that channel has the lowest innate sensitivity, the noise can easily become offensive especially after color correction. Having excellent DR at high ISO does help in such situations. In landscape and real estate photography one can often take two or more exposures and combine the images with appropriate masking, something that won’t work for documentary shots indoors at night.

...Just to be clear: as with any Nikon body, a crop mode on the D850 doesn't add any reach. All it does is throw away the pixels around the image border, as though you'd cropped the image in post-processing.... ...but you don't gain any detail when you crop.

I am fully aware of what the DX crop mode does and its usability for wildlife and other small subjects (macro, to name one). I do not believe than many reading this thread thinks the DX mode adds detail, just that it saves you time in post - and memory cards in the field. The 24 Mpix FX cameras are limited to about 10 Mpix in DX crop mode and photos show quite a bit of grain, too much to really be useful to me. The D800/810 DX crop roughly correspond to a D7000 and it starts to become usable. As the DX crop on the D850 is similar to the resolution of the D500, I strongly believe that more photographers than before will use it every now and then for birds and other small subjects.

I know I can download RAW test files from various D850 tests, crop them myself to DX and have a look, but I as I know Shun likes to shoot birds I wanted to ask him for such a comparison.

For anyone coming back to this after a post edit (apologies for posting screen grabs from dpreview - I wasn't sure if that was okay, and apparently it isn't)... I see substantially more low-frequency chroma noise at the same ISO from the D810 and D800e than the D850 at the same ISO in the dpreview image, particularly in relatively monochrome regions, for example around the lock of hair. I don't think the D850 is as good at ISO 6400 as the D800e is at ISO 3200 (at least at "screen" size) but it's close. Other areas of the image show different behaviour; that's not unusual, and we saw similar variations when comparing images from the D7000 and D700.

As Ilkka says, I'd expect the "print" (normalised image size) comparison to be more meaningful in most situations unless you're actually trying to determine the merits of increased resolution. By the measure of "screen" (1:1 pixel comparison), the D700 is highly competitive with any modern Nikon on image quality, and I'm afraid I don't buy that. I'm curious to know why Dieter values this style of comparison. With the DxO comparison I was really trying to argue that the D850 is no worse (in the print view), which I'd read some other comments as indicating, not that a negligible improvement was significant. I'll take the extra dynamic range at higher ISO though, even if it's not as big a benefit as a D5 or A7R2. I want the low ISO benefits too, so the D850 is the right trade-off for me currently, although I won't turn down a D5 if offered.

I am fully aware of what the DX crop mode does and its usability for wildlife and other small subjects (macro, to name one).

Sorry, Heimbrandt - just making sure, and clarifying for any less-experienced photographers reading this thread. Your reference to "added reach" (rather than, say, "reduced field of view") made me think it was worth checking. I agree that the DX crop of the D850 is a lot more appealing than that of the D810 (and, especially, D700); there are extra sensor electronics in the way on the FX body (similarly if you compare a D7000 with a D800), so I wouldn't necessarily expect the D850 to keep up at the same ISO, but it should be close; I, too, am curious about the comparison.

Pixel-level comparisons of SNR do not really have a clear meaning in applications.

As Ilkka says, I'd expect the "print" (normalised image size) comparison to be more meaningful in most situations unless you're actually trying to determine the merits of increased resolution.

I'm curious to know why Dieter values this style of comparison.

Printing bigger when the camera offers more MP? Cropping to a certain dimension? Both real-life application where pixel-level performance matters. Not to mention that it serves to keep those who claim pixel-level improvements honest ;)

The image comparisons done at dpreview are at pixel level (which maybe the reason Andrew sees "significantly less" chroma noise). Comparing dpreview images between the D850 and the D500 shows no difference in chroma noise to me (which is supported by the dxomark results when viewed in Screen mode (which is the correct one for comparing results with dpreview images)). In Print mode, the expected 1-stop difference surfaces - identifying it as merely an artifact of forcing an DX and an FX image to print in the same size. Shouldn't a D500 image and a DX-crop from the D850 be virtually identical?

By the measure of "screen" (1:1 pixel comparison), the D700 is highly competitive with any modern Nikon on image quality, and I'm afraid I don't buy that.

It's simply lacking the resolution. And the strong AA filter doesn't do it any favors in that regard either.

I do have to walk my argument back a bit though. The "Print" view at dxomark is the more useful one as it reflects the more common application of printing in the same print size or reducing images to the same number of pixels, for example, to publish on the web. It doesn't make the "Screen" view totally useless though.

Phil Askey founded DPReview in London, UK back in 1998, and he sold that to Amazon in 2007. In 2010 Amazon relocated DPReview from London to Seattle where Amazon's headquarter is. See this Wikipedia article: Digital Photography Review - Wikipedia

 

If you clink on any purchase links on DPReview's own content, it will lead to Amazon. (Obviously people can post other links to their forums.) And you will not find advertisements from Adorama, B&H, etc. on DPReview. Obviously DPReview still has a lot of good information (as well as bad information on their forums), but to me, DPReview is more like a marketing arm for Amazon.

 

By the same token, Nikon USA is loaning me equipment for review to promote their products. While I don't get paid by Nikon, I do try to maintain a good relationship with them. Meanwhile, I also would like to maintain a good reputation and provide fair comments on Nikon products.

This whole Amazon thing explains a lot now. Thanks Shun. I have never really paid too much stock in their reviews. In the beginning though I thought they were great.

But I thought they lost their way a long time ago.

This whole Amazon thing explains a lot now. Thanks Shun. I have never really paid too much stock in their reviews. In the beginning though I thought they were great.

But I thought they lost their way a long time ago.

I have been reading DPReview since around year 2000 when Phil Askey was in charge. Traditionally their reviews are very thorough with lots and lots of details, but I simply don't have the patience to read any one of them from beginning to end. Usually I check the conclusions and maybe take a look at some of the details I am interested in.

Since essentially nobody else advertises on DPReview, they must generate enough revenue for Amazon to justify their a dozen or so staff members, which is not exactly a tiny payroll.

In a broader sense, in the last few years, I think social media have been used to promote photo gears as well as to trash rival brands. Whenever Nikon has a new camera, there seems to be an army of people trying to find every little fault and then the issues are greatly exaggerated in various forums. Clearly the D600 indeed had some oil-on-shutter problems and then the D800 was declared "no recommended" by Thom Hogan: Thom Hogan Declares D800 "Not Recommended" .... At least so far people haven't found any serious problems with the D5, D500, and D850. But it is not limited to Nikon; I see various new Canon cameras are trashed in the last couple of years. Meanwhile there is plenty of hype on various Sony mirrorless cameras and most recently, we see one article after another promoting the D850.

None of these should be surprising. The social media have been used to influence elections. They have also been used to both promote and trash various cameras for several years.

I'm surprised that Thom Hogan would not recommend the D800. I bought the D800E in 2012 and have never had a single problem with it.

3 hours ago, Landrum Kelly said:

I'm surprised that Thom Hogan would not recommend the D800. I bought the D800E in 2012 and have never had a single problem with it.

Hogan was against the D800 back in 2012 because about 1/3 of them had the left AF issue initially. Also there is a design flaw in the frame that is prone to damage. Back then I used a D800 and D800 E extensively, and I had no issues. I also still own my D800 E.

Concerning the D850, it is great but it came towards the end of the DSLR era.

The D800 which I had was great with some lenses but with some other lenses, it was a nightmare to try to get the AF working correctly across different distances. The D810 by contrast fixed these issues and was a very consistent focuser. The reason I traded the D810 in for a D850 was to get radio flash support, but I kind of regret letting go of the D810. Sometimes I can make rushed decisions. Anyway, I haven't used the SB-5000's (which is Nikon's radio-controllable flash) as much as I thought I would as I tend to do a lot with available light nowadays and much of my flash work is with Elinchroms. Having TTL is great but often there is just not enough power (when doing outdoor portraits). A paired SB-5000 setup where I set up a bracket on a stand with two SB-5000's and then there is either an umbrella or soft box works well but it tends to be top heavy and can fall over in wind. So in the end I often end up using Quadra due to its powerful but lightweight head, and a beauty dish with diffuser which doesn't pick up wind so badly. I think Nikon came into radio-controlled flash a bit late into the game and could have done much better by being 5 years earlier. Interestingly I've read reports of Canon's wireless flash system not being reliable any more in some circumstances potentially because of interference from other radio-based wireless communication systems of which there is a lot nowadays. I have found the SB-5000's radio triggering to be very reliable so it's a shame that it hasn't become more widely adopted. I get it that sometimes you have to be early in a technology to become successful but reliability and ease of use matters too. What's curious is that some seem to advocate for smaller flashes to go with the smaller size of mirrorless camera bodies now, but a very small flash can be too easily too close to the optical axis of the lens and cause problems with the images.

Anyway the D850 has worked well (as did the D810) for me, but I am not a big fan of high fps high res shooting as it tends to produce a lot of data. For me photography was always trying to get the best single moment on the card and then the editing work would be easy. With high fps the number of similar shots that results is very time-consuming to edit as I look for subtle differences in the facial expression and it has gotten so bad that I can only shoot one thing a month basically, and I still have a large backlog. In the D800/D810 era the speed of the camera limited the amount of data and kept my focus on catching the best single moment.

I have a D850 and a Df. I prefer the Df in nearly all cases. For some reason, the D850 just doesn't produce better pics. I took the Df on a month long vacation to Nepal and LOVED the pics that came out of it, all with the 24-70 f/2.8 Nikkor. Last May/June we went to Scotland for 4 weeks and I took the D850. The shots are ok, not great (24-70 and 14-24 Nikkors). They are sharp, well-lit, lots of detail. They just don't look right ... The only time the D850 really shines over the Df is when I use the 300 f/2.8 VRII and the 28 f/1.4 Nikkor. Then the D850 "wins" but for everything else the pics from the Df are my preference. I used to have a D700 and I feel I liked that better too than the D850, looking back at some of the old pics. I've discussed this here and in-depth with photographers who reviewed side-by-side shots of the same with both cameras and they too can't make sense of way the Df is better. I've done a factory reset and all ... no difference.

6 hours ago, kevin_beretta said:

I have a D850 and a Df. I prefer the Df in nearly all cases. For some reason, the D850 just doesn't produce better pics. I took the Df on a month long vacation to Nepal and LOVED the pics that came out of it, all with the 24-70 f/2.8 Nikkor. Last May/June we went to Scotland for 4 weeks and I took the D850. The shots are ok, not great (24-70 and 14-24 Nikkors). They are sharp, well-lit, lots of detail. They just don't look right ... The only time the D850 really shines over the Df is when I use the 300 f/2.8 VRII and the 28 f/1.4 Nikkor. Then the D850 "wins" but for everything else the pics from the Df are my preference. I used to have a D700 and I feel I liked that better too than the D850, looking back at some of the old pics. I've discussed this here and in-depth with photographers who reviewed side-by-side shots of the same with both cameras and they too can't make sense of way the Df is better. I've done a factory reset and all ... no difference.

I guess image quality can be subjective and there is obviously nothing wrong with liking or preferring a certain camera. I can see how the style of images from the Df can be seen as pleasing. However, probably there is also a lot that can be done to D850 images in post-processing to achieve the look that you like.

14 hours ago, ilkka_nissila said:

I guess image quality can be subjective and there is obviously nothing wrong with liking or preferring a certain camera. I can see how the style of images from the Df can be seen as pleasing. However, probably there is also a lot that can be done to D850 images in post-processing to achieve the look that you like.

I've spent days and days trying to replicate the Df look in LR and C1. A friend of mine who is a pro photographer graciously spent a day on it too in PS. We both agreed we didn't get the same result as the Df had. Some of the outputs were much better with a lot of work, but nothing looked as nice. The only difference we found was to re shoot the subjects in a lower res (Medium RAW) mode on the D850, then we were able to get a little closer. The D700, D4, Df and a few other Nikons have different sensor than the D850 (Sony sensor) and I am starting to wonder now why I never liked the output from any of the Sony cameras I tested a few years ago.