Nikon Officially Announces the D850

[Landrum Kelly]

I will be staying with my D800E for now, but this is an impressive-sounding upgrade all the way around.

 

Lannie

[Wouter Willemse]

I still have my D 800e that I use because I can process the RAW files in Nikon Capture NX-2 as opposed to Nikon Capture NX-D. (I just do not want to learn LR or PS or Capture One.)

 

Sooner or later, you'll have to, all you do now is postpone that moment. Better to just get on with it - as much as I liked CNX2 and used with much pleasure, I can't say I regret for a moment investing some time in switching to Capture One. It at least keeps coming with updates, improvements, and new functionality regularly, and its results are very good. Same would go for Lightroom. In the meanwhile, CNX2 remains what it is: a comfortable pair of well-worn sneakers, but you now that sooner or later, they'll end up in a wastebag.

[rodeo_joe1]

I really didn't find Capture One majorly different from NX-2, or any other RAW processor really.

 

Once you've found where all the tools live you've cracked it. One USM filter or curves tool is the same as any other.

[bob_bill]

Dieter, you are right, the focus assist light and beep are annoying. Same for the beep on studio flashes. Einsteins will pop 10 times per second, I don't need a beep to tell me they are ready. I like working with continuous lights because even the flash is gone.

[mike_halliwell]

I'm surprised no-one has made a small gizmo to slip on the hot shoe for AFassist. It would be ideal for places that ban flash or additional bright lights.

Using hi ISO settings allows handheld operation in places like dark churches if only the AF could get a lock.

Something like the red line projector cube on the sc-29 but works in AF-S and AF -C. Power of lines could be varied to suit ambient conditions.

[rodeo_joe1]

Beeps are just annoying, but sometimes AF assist is handy. I normally have it disabled, except I did some "painting with light" in near total darkness where it was useful. Using a torch to illuminate the subject, while pressing AF on and immediately switching the camera to MF requires more hands than most people possess!

[jose_angel]

I'm surprised no-one has made a small gizmo to slip on the hot shoe for AFassist. It would be ideal for places that ban flash or additional bright lights.

Using hi ISO settings allows handheld operation in places like dark churches if only the AF could get a lock.

Something like the red line projector cube on the sc-29 but works in AF-S and AF -C. Power of lines could be varied to suit ambient conditions.

(I`m using it for years, either a LED spot placed on the subject or a laser pointer pointing at it... but mostly when shooting LF cameras).

It`d be certainly useful, but for sure this assistant lights will be highly problematic in most touristic places. If not, it will be quite hard to have a clean pic of whatever, where lots of people are projecting their red spots everywhere. For sure it will be prohibited in many places.

...

BTW, great to see Nikon decided to consider the D850 a "serious" camera... nice to check they have returned to the *perfect* pro camera design since the F6 (short body, full pro handy controls, no pop up flash, etc.). :)

[Andrew Garrard]

Hi all. I picked an interesting week to be in bed with a cold.

 

Having skimmed the thread, a few thoughts:

 

1) BT.2020 isn't HDR, it's just UHD, It does have a very wide gamut (wider than most TVs can actually display), hence the bit depth, but the maximum intensity isn't all that high - it has the same OETF as BT.709 (HDTV) and BT.601 (SDTV). BT.2100 is UHD, and introduces HLG and PQ transfer functions. I happen to have been working on this. I recommend you don't try to read those specs for your sanity, although I'm about to publish something that covers all of them if anyone's interested. Not that I'm using an HDR display, but I do think it would be nice if p'net followed some other sites in having full HDR image support (unless it already does support arbitrary profiles).

 

2) I'd foolishly thought the front-facing notch on the "shoulder" might have been an AF-assist light, although now I've seen better images I guess that's less likely (though it could still be a funny-shaped AF-assist?) If not, is that an IR trigger sensor? Unusual on something in the D8x0 class.

 

3) I use the on-camera flash a) as a trigger (so I might be paying the SB-500 tax if I don't go radio everywhere) and b) as an emergency light, because not everything I photograph is for aesthetics - sometimes I just need to document something in the dark. I do tend to carry decent (160-7200lm depending on size) flashlights, so I'll just make more use of them. I might resort to the radio trigger on the 10-pin connector, but I really wish Nikon had been able to integrate it, especially since the camera already has some form of wifi.

 

4) On the D810 I use ISO64 most of the time. Sunny 16 says that's f/4 at 1/1000s or f/8 at 1/250s, ish. That's hardly unusable - and I'm usually trying to expose for the highlights so I can push shadows in post. One of my biggest complaints about the D810 is that highlight priority metering often still blows highlights; why it can't actually ETTR I don't know. I'll be interested to see whether the D850 is any more reliable at this. Loss of low-ISO dynamic range is the one thing that would stop me upgrading, although so far people have been making mostly confident statements.

 

5) I noted before that the D500 has two "small raw" modes. The D810 has "uncompressed" 12-bit small raw, which gives you (quoted) 27.9MB files compared with 29.2MB for lossy compressed full resolution 12-bit, or 31.9MB lossless compressed 12-bit. As commented in several places, this is largely useless, especially since it's not really raw and halves the buffer size(ish) compared with the large version. I believe the resolution is 3680x2456, although that's surprisingly hard to confirm. The D500 has "lossless compressed" 12-bit raw, claiming 14.5MB for "medium" (4176x2784) and 11.0MB for "small" (2784x1856), vs (5568x3712) and 20.1MB for lossless 12-bit large files or 17.2MB for lossy compressed 12-bit large files. That's a bit more useful, especially for "small". I've still not seen an analysis on the new raw formats - I guess if they'd resorted to Phase One-style Sensor+ binning, which is actually what I suspect most of us would like, we'd have heard - but there still might be an improvement over the D810 that's not entirely worth dismissing, especially at higher ISO where there's reduced dynamic range (and compression is worse) anyway.

 

6) So much for me getting my survey together, but I might still try to summarize our previous discussions and see what Nikon has hit.

 

7) I really wish Nikon had followed Sigma and added multi-distance and multi-zoom AF tuning - multi-sensor would have been nice, too. This shouldn't be all that hard to do, and be a software fix. I'm hopeful I'll see more reliable behaviour than I get from my D810 anyway (especially with the Sigma primes). I'm entirely expecting to use the focus stacking as a work-around, although I'm a bit alarmed that it might not allow me to stack both sides of the focus point (just based on one description). Focus stacking is nice to have anyway, of course.

 

8) Various people talk about "improved split live view". Has anyone tried it? The sensor read-out should allow more flexibility, but if they've done the flexible 4-way split I kept asking for, I owe someone at Nikon some chocolates. It might make me wheel out my tilt-shifts again.

 

9) Speed is nice, and would stop me from having D500 envy. I'll probably get the grip, although possibly eventually. I don't burst shoot much, but when I want it, it's nice - I've been known to use the D810's 1.2x crop to get an extra fps.

 

10) Unless something's wrong, Nikon seem to have hit enough plus points on this that I'll upgrade. But probably not until the new year, when I'll optimistically hope that there might be a small sale and I hope for a new year bonus.

 

Time to start discussions on what the successor to the D610 (I still think Nikon should do a full-frame body without AF motor or aperture following tab, assuming this actually saved money, and under-cut the moderately expensive new 6D2) and D750? Or the "Df2"?

[ilkka_nissila]

Radio triggering flash reliably seems to be quite difficult. I have radio triggers for my Elinchom studio flashes (mains and and battery powered) and the previous generation Skyport (small trigger with antenna that you can turn) wasn't able to trigger the Quadra battery powered flashes 100% reliably if one of the flashes was behind the subjects for example for background lighting, in an indoor studio environment. It would work and it would not. The newer ELB and ELC flashes have a perturbation which contains the receiving antenna and that seems to add reliability of triggering. Finally Elinchrom has some newer and more powerful transmitters which increase reliability also. I don't think the newest transmitter (Skyport HS Plus) has misfired the flashes with me, but the D5 isn't officially supported so there are some annoyances. Elinchrom units in my experience fire reliably outdoors though, even the older tech ones. I think the concrete walls cause some problems for the radio signal.

 

The Nikon radio flash system is in my experience very reliable. I think if they integrated the antenna in the body there is greater chance that there would be reduced range or reliability issues. I have no doubt that the external little thing (WR-R10 and WR-A10 adapter) is offered because it works better than one integrated in the camera. I don't think any camera manufacturer has integrated radio control of flash into their cameras in the sense that an external unit is not needed at all. There must be a technical reason for this. Anyway I find the WR-R10/A10/T10 is handy as it can be used to trigger a second camera from the main camera up to 50m (if I recall correctly) and also can be used to trigger the remote cameras from the T10 handset. So there are multiple functions for the same components, which is great. The remote triggering also works on older cameras and is not restricted to radio AWL capable cameras.

 

Highlight priority mode still requires exposure compensation but in practical situations where you are in a dark cave with spotlit subject, it is quite good. With ETTR there is always the question of how large the blown out highlights can be before it is too much. If one photographs in indoor lighting with small light sources, and if the walls are dark (e.g., in a medieval castle or church) then usually you want proper exposure for the main subject and the lights can be allowed to be blown out by a bit. If you take ETTR literally so that not a single pixel can be blown out in such a scenario, you may have a shot where the main subject is 3-4 stops underexposed. And that can't be good no matter how much dynamic range there is in the sensor. In photographing events and people I believe correct exposure for the main subject is the best approach and some highlights can be blown out a bit here and there. In my experience highlight priority mode is best used only in specific scenarios where a brightly light main subject is many stops brighter than the surround which constitutes most of the picture area. I think leaving it on accidentally for the duration of an event would really be a disaster.

 

How I manage highlights is I lift the tone curve up a bit from the middle, decreasing highlight contrast and increasing shadow contrast. This results in a look which I like and it allows keeping consistent highlight tonality even when the highlights are brighter than the main subject (to an extent). Of course in landscape and architectural photography the situation is different and I usually capture a few different exposures to be sure I have what is needed to make the final result. Usually lifting shadows of a single exposure quickly runs into limits of what can be considered a good result and I typically only do it by lifting the middle of the tone curve and not the shadows per se. The image quickly becomes foggy if the darkest shadows are lifted. For situations where the midpoint lift strategy is not enough I resort to multiple exposures. I don't typically use more than two images for a blend and more often than not I am satisfied with using a single exposure using the technique described. Often use of too far apart exposures to make an exposure blended image results in something that the eye won't believe to be true or realistic. I do appreciate the high dynamic range of the D810 but still I only do moderate adjustments. Quite a lot of the time I need high DR at high ISO (because dark interiors are often artificially lit and can have large variations in light levels in different parts of the space, resulting in a need to do local adjustments and color correction) and put a priority there, and this is not an area of strength for the D810. Early evaluations suggests the D850 improves DR at ISO 400 and above significantly over the D810 so that is definitely going to make the camera more general purpose.

 

I have some lenses without CPU and others which have CPU but rely on the body motor to AF so I would not buy a camera without full support of those lenses. And the idea of such a product is a bit insulting to me given Nikon used to make such a big deal out of supporting their existing lens base. If anything they should make more of an effort at it and please no significant blunders like the limitations in AF-P lenses. Viewfinder quality and lens range are important reasons for my use of the Nikon system and while I've given up on them providing these features in the low-end cameras I do think all FX models should have full lens compatibility and excellent viewfinders - those two are some of the reasons why people choose FX. From an image quality perspective I think most photography applications could be very well carried out by DX cameras but I do think FX viewfinders and lens range (especially fast wide angles) add significant value. And many users of entry level and midrange FX models actually hunt for lens bargains on the used market, something they could not afford in AF-S.

[Andrew Garrard]

Thanks, Ilkka.

 

> I think if they integrated the antenna in the body there is greater chance that there would be reduced range or reliability issues.

 

I don't deny that it's an engineering problem, but phones seem to be able to work with integrated antennae. I just don't like a small, losable, protruding nubbin attached to a socket which has been know to break on the D800 series. Even if it made for a larger viewfinder hump, I'd have preferred integrated. But it's not the end of the world. I'd not complain if all my flashes weren't SB-600s because I never needed a trigger before.

 

> I don't think any camera manufacturer has integrated radio control of flash into their cameras in the sense that an external unit is not needed at all. There must be a technical reason for this.

 

Or a commercial one? I suspect the majority of customers don't use external flash triggering, and multiple companies figure they can charge people for the capability.

 

> Highlight priority mode still requires exposure compensation but in practical situations where you are in a dark cave with spotlit subject, it is quite good.

 

I guess I'm asking for Nikon to tweak their algorithm - although it may have improved with the new meter. I don't mind blows spotlights, but I'm not very happy when I shoot a subject indoors and, despite highlight priority mode, the windows behind them blow out. Likewise when clouds blow out, or if (say) I'm in Antelope Canyon and I'm trying to retain the highlights on the sand (or even patches of sky). Nikon seem to have a metering system that's designed to allow the JPEG to balance everything. That's great and all, but when the dynamic range of the scene is large enough, I'd like to sacrifice the JPEG in order to avoid the raw file clipping. You've got six stops of dynamic range above what a JPEG can encode (depending on how you like looking at the tone curve); if I have to apply significant shifts to the final image, I'll do so. What looks acceptable varies a lot according to the image, though I agree that making everything look massively "HDR" is rarely good.

 

> Quite a lot of the time I need high DR at high ISO (because dark interiors are often artificially lit and can have large variations in light levels in different parts of the space, resulting in a need to do local adjustments and color correction) and put a priority there, and this is not an area of strength for the D810.

 

Agreed. I'm hoping that at higher ISO the sensor behaves more like the a7RII - interviews suggested it won't quite match the D5 (which seems to have been tuned for high ISO more than the D4/D4s, which had a better mix). Still, I care more about the low ISO DR - otherwise I'd have found a used D4 or D3s by now. Being somewhat more flexible at higher ISO would be very welcome if nothing significant has been lost.

 

> I have some lenses without CPU and others which have CPU but rely on the body motor to AF so I would not buy a camera without full support of those lenses. And the idea of such a product is a bit insulting to me given Nikon used to make such a big deal out of supporting their existing lens base.

 

I'd be as cross as you if they'd done this to the D850 - and they probably shouldn't do it to the D750's successor either. But I did say if it saves money. The D7500 doesn't have an AI ring, though it does have both a pentaprism and an AF motor. Nikon have the same problem as the rest of the ILC market: differentiation from cell phones. Nikon's failure to produce a more complete DX lens set in the time since the D1 was launched suggests that they really want to push people to FX, where the lenses cost more and the upgrade path is clear, and where there's less competition from mirrorless (other than the A7 and A9 series and the occasional Leica). The D500 is for a very specific set of customers; the D7500 is a compromise between the D500 and D7200. There are still customers put off by the weight of an FX camera, and certainly by the cost. If you're upgrading from a D3x00 or D5x00, you won't miss the AI ring or AF motor. I strongly suspect most D7x00 owners upgrading to FX wouldn't miss them either - any lens using them would have been somewhat wasted on a DX body anyway.

 

A pentamirror, while more contentious, still looks much brighter in FX than in DX - there were plenty of film cameras sold with pentamirrors. Based on comparing my Eos 500 (pentamirror) to my Eos 620 (pentaprism), it's a significant weight difference - as you can tell if you've ever held an F5 prism in your hand. I don't have accurate numbers, but I've seen a suggestion that you'd expect a mirror to have about 96% reflection and for there to be three bounces in a pentamirror, so you'd expect it to be about 88% as bright as a pentaprism at the same magnification. That's much less of a difference than the DX/FX gap, and I certainly never objected to the pentamirror film cameras I used (though my pentamirror 300D is very dim). Conclusion: a pentamirror-based D610 successor would still have a better finder than a D500, and it would be the single easiest way to get the "lightest FX body" prize back from the 6D2. Along with missing off the AF motor and aperture ring.

 

The 6Dmk2 is currently a $2000 camera. Approximately, so is the D500. The D610 goes for $1500. Nikon could put in a multiCAM 3500 and bump the frame rate, add 4K video and maybe a touchscreen, and likely still hit the $1500 mark with a reduced BoM and weight. I suspect most D610 owners would see it as an upgrade, even if it just picked up the D750 sensor tweaks (indeed, the D750 could well need an upgrade first for differentiation - though jumping both to ~30MP would help). Would I buy one as my primary body? No way. Would I buy one as a backup (if it was half the price of a D850 and substantially cheaper than a used D8x0)? I wouldn't rule it out, especially if it was small and light. Would I recommend it to some friends? You bet.

 

Again, this logic assumes that leaving off some bits saves Nikon some money. If it costs them nothing to drop the AF motor and aperture ring, they shouldn't. But they dropped the ring from the D7500 and AF from the series below the D7x00, so I'm inclined to think the features aren't free.

 

But I'm not running a company the size of Nikon, and I've not done any research beyond this forum. And this is probably a topic for another thread. :-)

[Andrew Garrard]

Quick poll of readers: I'm not jumping on a D850 immediately partly because of cash flow, although I'll likely think hard in the new year. But another reason to delay is Nikon's recent track record in making a high-end body that, you know, works properly (first time). The "give it a few months" argument is pretty convincing to me, even if it crashes the trade-in value of my D810.

 

Out of interest, of those considering a D850 purchase, how many are planning to be early adopters?

[Dieter Schaefer]

That's a bit more useful,

The smaller "RAW" sizes aren't actually RAW data (11-bit JPEG?) - so why not shoot TIFF to begin with? Everything in me rebels against reducing data at the time of acquisition - it can always be done later and there is zero reason (and IMHO it is a big mistake) to give anything up (given the fact that the data acquisition in general cannot be repeated). If there is ONE button on a Nikon DSLR that I wish Nikon would either lock or eliminate then it is the QUAL button. Just recently I became aware of one instance where it resulted in a shoot being done accidentally in JPEG LARGE FINE (could have been much worse) rather than the intended RAW; that's one setting Nikon should bury so deep in the menu that one really only changes it on purpose.

I'd foolishly thought the front-facing notch on the "shoulder" might have been an AF-assist light, although now I've seen better images I guess that's less likely (though it could still be a funny-shaped AF-assist?) If not, is that an IR trigger sensor? Unusual on something in the D8x0 class.

Much more mundane: self-timer light - something has to blink so the subjects are aware that a picture will be taken and can all say "cheese".

I still think Nikon should do a full-frame body without AF motor or aperture following tab

The omission of the latter in the D7500 may not matter much (for the reason Andrew gave in his latest post) but I think it would be a mistake on an FX camera. I personally no longer care about either of the two as I am not using manual focus lenses anymore and have no intention at all to add a screw-driven AF lens to my arsenal now that I finally got rid of all of them (except my wife's Tokina 11-16 but that one is easy to replace if need be).

And the idea of such a product is a bit insulting to me given Nikon used to make such a big deal out of supporting their existing lens base.

Indeed. Though as I said above, this does not matter to me personally anymore.

believe the resolution is 3680x2456, although that's surprisingly hard to confirm.

Why? Says so right in the menu of the camera.

I guess I'm asking for Nikon to tweak their algorithm

I rather rely on what's a few inches behind the camera to make the proper exposure decisions.

Time to start discussions on what the successor to the D610 (I still think Nikon should do a full-frame body without AF motor or aperture following tab, assuming this actually saved money, and under-cut the moderately expensive new 6D2) and D750? Or the "Df2"?

I think the very next thing that we'll be discussing is Nikon's mirrorless. Wouldn't be surprise if Nikon actually came out with two of them simultaneously - one at the low end of the FX range, and one closer to the high end (in view of the D850 release, the latter seems to be a bit unlikely now). Somehow I doubt that there will be a D620/650 or whatever the D610 might have been called; the D6xx series is dead. And it remains to be seen what the D750 successor looks like. My guess is that it will be based on the D850 with a feature reduction/elimination similar to the D500/D7500 duopoly. Might retain a 24MP sensor or use the 36MP one from the D810. Might also be something new in between.

how many are planning to be early adopters

Not me; I don't like to be a beta tester and certainly don't feel the need to have the latest and greatest right away. But I've said the same thing about the D500 - and then got one within three months of it becoming available - but only because opportunity knocked in form of a barely used one that had just been returned to the camera store. Had it not been for that, I'd bought one anyway during the end-of-year sale. Not sure if I would jump at the D850 even if the circumstances were similar.

 

While the D850 seems to improve upon the D810 in every aspect, I am not thinking too hard about replacing my D810 just yet. Many of the improvements for me fall into the category of "nice to have" but none of them is essential to me. It is comforting though to know that once my D810 will need replacing that there will be a very competent replacement available.

[photo_galleries]

Out of interest, of those considering a D850 purchase, how many are planning to be early adopters?

 

Except for the Nikon 200-500mm, I've never been an early adopter of any camera gear. Barring any major issues with the D850, my target date is Q1 2018, possibly Q2.

[rodeo_joe1]

The 50% UK price hike over a D810 is a real kick in the teeth, and definitely puts the D850 in the "not worth it" category for me.

 

I feel a call towards a Sony A7Rii (or iii).

 

Incidentally, why would Sony think that dual SDXC uhsii slots were adequate for its 20 fps 24Mp A9 flagship? While Nikon thinks that XQD is needed for 9fps and 45Mp? Does Sony have no faith in the future of its own card format? And if a 2nd slot SD card can keep up with XQD as backup; where's the speed advantage?

Edited August 30, 2017 by rodeo_joe|1

[ilkka_nissila]

XQD is more rugged, avoids exposed contacts which could easily be soiled by dirt or fingers, is significantly faster and cheaper than fast (but not as fast) SD UHS-II cards so there are a lot of benefits to users. The D500 and D5 empty the buffer a lot faster than the A9 and of course copying to computer is faster as well. But Sony think their mirrorless sell mainly because the bodies are as compact as possible and probably SD allows them to save a bit of space in the camera which is no doubt packed full of electronics.

 

They do use XQD and their other high end card formats in some of their professional video cameras that are not so small.

 

If you use the SD card slot, I'm sure the number of shots you can get in a burst will be reduced and the time to clear the buffer will be longer. This is the case with the D500.

 

I'm planning on waiting for some price reductions on the D850. There is a considerable European premium on the camera and I don't like that very much at all. If Nikon sells a lot of them early on, perhaps they can offer a discount some time in 2018.

Edited August 30, 2017 by ilkka_nissila

[Dieter Schaefer]

why would Sony think that dual SDXC uhsii slots were adequate for its 20 fps 24Mp A9 flagship

Firstly, only one is UHS-II, the other one isn't. Secondly, making space for even one XQD card slot would have necessitated an increase in camera height, risking ire and fury from all the Sony fanboys (akin to Leica where reducing the width of a camera by about 2mm is considered a major deal because lets face it, any digital M before it was oversize and fat) that so cherish the compactness of their camera (even if it comes at the expense of handling and balance with larger lenses). If you want maximum performance out of the A9, you'll need to leave that 2nd slot empty or unused (just like in the D500); the main reason for having a 2nd slot at all seems to be video. Had Sony chosen to use only one card slot and made it XQD, there likely would never be any issue with filling the gargantuan 5GB buffer of the A9 - but even with UHS-II SD, the limits are rather high anyway (10s uncompressed AFAIK).

 

I'm with Ilkka on this one - I very much prefer XQD over SD - for the reasons he already mentioned. The alternative to XQD would be CFast - and I am glad Nikon hasn't chosen that route in the D500 (given the prices I just saw for CFast cards).

 

 

ony A7Rii (or iii)

Definitely wait for the A7RIII then. The battery consumption of the A7 MkI and MkII versions is really off-putting. And you may get the benefit of more external controls if Sony chooses to use the A9 body for the A7R II replacement. There are some very fine lenses now in Sony/Zeiss E-mount country, but there's also a membership premium to join that club.

 

And if a 2nd slot SD card can keep up with XQD as backup; where's the speed advantage?

At least on the D500, the number of shots in a burst goes way down (still high though) as the memory buffer does not clear fast enough anymore.

 

20 fps 24Mp A9 flagship

20 fps with Sony/Zeiss native E-mount lenses; with adapted lenses, this maxes out a 10fps. And it's 5fps when shooting without the electronic shutter feature.

[DB_Gallery]

Out of interest, of those considering a D850 purchase, how many are planning to be early adopters?

 

I have used my NPS priority ordering on new equipment since the F5 was announced and never really had many issues with equipment and when I did like the D750 shutter thing, I just had a loaner sent out in addition to having at least one other body to work with.

 

I think the likelihood that there could be an issue with the D850 is not out of the realm of possibility but since I have backup gear, it never really weighs on me that heavily and the first couple weeks with new digital bodies are discovery mode anyway.

 

I just got notification from NPS to confirm shipping info on my order and to reply in that regard so it looks like they are moving right along. I ordered a 105mm 1.4 that gets here tomorrow, that and the 850 ought to be superb for the Winter lifestyle shoots I have coming up.

 

The excitement builds.....

[Andrew Garrard]

> The smaller "RAW" sizes aren't actually RAW data (11-bit JPEG?) - so why not shoot TIFF to begin with?

 

Because the TIFFs are (I believe) 8-bit RGB completely uncompressed? (They're about the right size for 24bpp, anyway - and double uncompressed 12-bit.) On the D500 they're one of the few things that actually have a negative effect on the buffer capacity. I could believe that "small raw" is still painful on a D850 - it doesn't look to be obviously binning, which would seem to have been what everyone actually wanted (with a need for a tweak to the raw converters to tell them the sample location changed), but they may not be as bad as TIFF.

 

> Everything in me rebels against reducing data at the time of acquisition - it can always be done later and there is zero reason (and IMHO it is a big mistake) to give anything up (given the fact that the data acquisition in general cannot be repeated). If there is ONE button on a Nikon DSLR that I wish Nikon would either lock or eliminate then it is the QUAL button. Just recently I became aware of one instance where it resulted in a shoot being done accidentally in JPEG LARGE FINE (could have been much worse) rather than the intended RAW; that's one setting Nikon should bury so deep in the menu that one really only changes it on purpose.

 

I ended up doing a night shoot in Australia at a star party and only afterwards found I'd only captured JPEGs - because Nikon had switched from RAW+JPEG when they cleaned my camera and, since I never changed it, I hadn't noticed. On the other hand, I've been known to drop resolution for frame rate/buffer size/file space. I rarely go to JPEG only, since I want to tweak white balance and usually the tone curves, but if I were shooting in bad light and knew I was capturing more noise than detail, I wouldn't turn down a proper binned mode at 12bpp. For something like a dance at a friend's wedding, where I've shot a lot of images, it would be worth it. (In fact, the last time I did go JPEG only was for a friend's wedding dance, because I knew I was going to burst several thousand shots of friends and relatives and I didn't have enough storage to shoot it all raw.)

 

> Much more mundane: self-timer light

 

Oh. Mystery, disappointingly, solved. :-)

 

> The omission of the latter in the D7500 may not matter much (for the reason Andrew gave in his latest post) but I think it would be a mistake on an FX camera.

 

My feeling is that, currently, Nikon have a "FX for long-term Nikon pro shooters" philosophy. I do have an F5, but my first Nikon DSLR was a D700 - the nearest I've been to owning a DX one was hiring a D500. I'll scream blue murder if the high-end bodies stop supporting the older stuff even though almost all my lenses (partly because they need to support high pixel counts) are relatively modern. It just doesn't feel necessary for every FX owner to have to pay an "old lens tax" with body features they'll never need, especially if Nikon actively wants people moving up to FX glass. FX has premium over the bottom of the market (I can't make a sensor cheaper), but AF-S is hardly new, let alone AF/AI-P that stopped the aperture ring being necessary, and Nikon has other options for those of us who like being completists. But I know nothing about running a company, as I said. Still, if people are willing to jump to Sony, AF on old lenses can't be the top of their priority list. Plus Nikon could actually make stop down metering work, which would help...

 

[D810 small raw resolution]

> Why? Says so right in the menu of the camera.

 

...which is not in front of me. The manual describes JPEG sizes, but isn't as clear about raw.

 

> I rather rely on what's a few inches behind the camera to make the proper exposure decisions.

 

Given a static scene, I chimp and tweak and annoy my wife until I have something acceptable. Given people moving about in awkward lighting, it would be nice to be able to trust the camera's meter more than I currently can. I'm sure some of it is the nut loose behind my keyboard, but the camera certainly isn't doing as much for me as it could.

 

> I think the very next thing that we'll be discussing is Nikon's mirrorless.

 

That would not hugely surprise me, although I remain a little confused about lenses there. So long as Nikon don't do a Pentax K-01 ("it's mirrorless... and as big as an SLR...") they're either going to be very late to the party with a new mount or have a few wide lenses and an adaptor for the rest. Plus, the more Nikon have to do electronics and software, the less I trust them with it. :-) They've hardly rushed with a D610 update, so I could believe they'll go a different route on the low end than follow the old design - I just think there's a gap there. I'll be interested to see how the D750 successor differentiates itself, given that "faster" seems a bit less likely.

 

I'm off to Yellowstone again at the end of next month (in the hope of carnivores on my third attempt); that'll be the last big outing of my D810, probably. I'll be trading in if the D850 is as promised - I could use better high ISO (if low-ISO DR is, as promised, uncompromised), I could certainly use AF that I could trust a bit more, reduction in shutter shock would be nice, I could occasionally use 4K video (including 30fps burst), the touch screen on the D500 was nice, and I still want to know what the "improved split-screen live view" is. So I'll need it to work; I tried having a D700 back-up alongside my D800e, and it just depreciated while never getting any use. I'm beginning to think my barely-used 24-120 (bought because I always thought I should get one and Brexit was about to bump the prices) might contribute to my 70-200 getting an upgrade, too. It looks like Nikon aren't going to be able to meet all orders for a while anyway.

 

DB, if you get one for us, please tell me about the live view thing? :-)

[bob_h]

I think that Nikon will have done their utmost to ensure that the original shipments will operate perfectly. The idea of the 1 to 1 aspect ratio with the viewfinder blacked out to show the square is interesting to me. The updated slide holder for the scans sounds good to me too. Wonder how soon they will be available to try in the Chicago area :-)

[Andrew Garrard]

I was under the impression - well, I was under the impression that there was some confusion, but I thought it was just frame lines like the crops on the other D8x0 bodies (not actually blacked out areas like the single-digit cameras)? 1:1 "instagram mode" is odd, but if people want it, enjoy!

 

I'm a bit astonished that the slide holder has as much coverage as it does. It's going to record a lot of grain and blur for most people - and it feels like this should have been marketed alongside the Df, not the D810 (especially with, of all things, a custom JPEG mode, even if it's trivial). Technically, btw, you could generate a raw file for inverting negatives, it just might be a bit oddly colour balanced, and it wouldn't really be "off the sensor" raw. But then analysis of weird gaps in Nikon's raw histograms suggests that raw isn't a direct read-out anyway.

[ilkka_nissila]

1:1 was a common aspect ratio in medium format film cameras; it shouldn't be surprising to see this option in a modern digital camera. The D850 has such high resolution that one might use it even as a default if one prefers it. No need to use a vertical grip it shooting square (apart from the 2 extra fps which may be seen as too expensive for many). Anyway it may lead to a different way of composing.

 

I think the D850 should be an good replacement for a scanner at least if consistent even lighting can be achieved. It will be interesting to see how the image quality compares to a dedicated scanner. I don't believe the resolution is at all excessive as the Minolta 5400 ppi scanners showed higher sharpness than the Nikon 4000 ppi models though depth of field may have been an issue when going for the highest sharpness. And by scanning at a high resolution, aliasing should be less of an issue. I think scanners exaggerated grain compared to optical enlargement on photographic paper and the higher resolution may alleviate the problem though I'm not sure if 45 MP is enough to avoid aliasing completely. High end scanners could do 12000 ppi.

[Dieter Schaefer]

Pentax K-01 ("it's mirrorless... and as big as an SLR...")

Pentax has a mirrorless FX camera - that's news to me. The K-1 seems to be a genuine DSLR. Leica made a huuuuuge mirrorless in form of the SL though :eek:

Plus Nikon could actually make stop down metering work, which would help...

Maybe when all the lenses are E? But why bother then? So, proper stop-down metering with old Nikon glass - forget about it!

but the camera certainly isn't doing as much for me as it could.

The D500 metering surprised me - and hopefully the D850 follows along the same path.

just frame lines like the crops on the other D8x0 bodies (not actually blacked out areas like the single-digit cameras)

Nope, watched the live presentation yesterday and there's definitely "blacking out" (actually graying) going on in the D850 viewfinder.

[mike_halliwell]

Anyone actually know how the Focus Stacking feature is going to be implemented?

I can imagine a..

Press HERE and HERE on the touchscreen and cover that indicated front to back depth in 50 slices.... and

START.

Can this be used with in-cam bracketing too? So eg. 3 frames per slice.

My D500 isn't with me at the moment, but do Nikon touchscreens work with a stylus?

Edited August 30, 2017 by mike_halliwell

[Dieter Schaefer]

Nikon should do a full-frame body without AF motor or aperture following tab

Nikon actively wants people moving up to FX glass

Nikon certainly tried to move people towards FX with the D600; not quite sure that was really successful considering the issues with that camera. Given that there is hardly any Nikon high-end DX lens system to speak of, bring out a FX body with an introductory price point anywhere near the current price of the D7500 and you effectively kill the sales of that model. I recently helped a friend who wanted to upgrade from his D3200 (mostly because of an upcoming trip to Africa) - a D750/24-120/18-35/70-300 would have cost $3800 even with the current discount on the D750/24-120 combo. Substantially more than the D7200/10-20/18-140/70-300 he ended up with (sufficient for his needs with the added benefit of more reach than the FX combo, where the only Nikon options to go longer would have been a large and heavy 200-500 or a smaller, lighter, but pricier 80-400, both of which were rejected because of size and weight (as was the new Sigma 100-400 that intrigues me a bit)). I wasn't all too happy that Nikon still hasn't (and probably never will) release the firmware upgrade that allows to turn off VR on the two AF-P lenses he got.

 

Press HERE and HERE on the touchscreen and cover that depth in 50 slices.... and

START.

More like focus on the closest point, select from a sliding scale of 1 to 10 how far you want the focus range to extend, select the number of images (up to 300) and hit go. Mirror will move up and the selected number of images will be acquired in total silence thanks to the electronic shutter.

[Hector Javkin]

I'm surprised no-one has made a small gizmo to slip on the hot shoe for AFassist. It would be ideal for places that ban flash or additional bright lights

 

It's not that small, and it's expensive if AF assist is your only reason for buying it, but the SU-800 flash commander can be set to fire no flashes, and will provide a near infrared assist light that I sometimes find very helpful. They may get cheaper on the used market as Nikon moves to radio-based remote control of flash.