Nikon Officially Announces the D850

[rodeo_joe1]

"High end scanners could do 12000 ppi."

 

- Name one!

That's a 2 micron or 250lppmm resolution! Diffraction alone would dictate the impossibility of that without using monochromatic blue light. As for a flying spot of white light reaching that small a diameter - no chance. No chance at all.

 

And what on earth would be the point of scanning any generally available film at such a ludicrous resolution. So that the individual dye clouds could be counted?

 

It's not even possible to keep focus through the depth of a film emulsion using a microscope. So what optical magic makes you think a scanner could do far better while moving fast enough to scan a piece of film in any practical timescale?

 

Sure, a scanner might have a setting that outputs 12,000 ppi, but more than half of those pixels will hold no real image data.

Edited August 31, 2017 by rodeo_joe|1

[Andrew Garrard]

> Pentax has a mirrorless FX camera - that's news to me.

 

No, I believe the K-01 was crop sensor. It just retained lens compatibility with their existing dSLR line, which meant retaining the flange distance necessary for a mirror box... which meant a thick camera. Size isn't the only advantage to mirrorless (I maintain someone should make an SLR with a collapsible mirror box and pentamirror so it folds flat-ish for transport, but more because it's an amusing engineering exercise than because I want one), but a camera twice the thickness of everyone else's was always going to be a hard sell, even with pancake lenses.

 

> > 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!

 

Mostly my argument was that I don't see why it should cost anything to do this - especially on a camera that has separate aperture lever and mirror control (which, admittedly, the lower-end Nikons haven't - but that's a nice feature even for relatively modern lenses). If it's there, it essentially solves the metering problem for old lenses much more effectively than the Df's "dial the aperture in twice" approach.

 

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

 

I'm reserving judgement. I didn't get perfect metering with the D500 I hired, but I wasn't as familiar with it.

 

> > 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.

 

Yes, I watched it last night too. I'm sure someone explicitly said the reverse in a previous chat with Nikon, and the guys in the presentation I watched certainly weren't accurate about everything, but it does sound like it's gone down the single-digit route. Never having used one in anger, I trust you can still vaguely see through the greyed-out bit so you can see things coming into the frame?

 

> 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.

 

I've vaguely been hoping you can go both ways - otherwise I'm tempted to tune my lenses deliberately with AF fine tune to front-focus so that I can actually use this to focus bracket. I'd much prefer it behave like exposure bracketing, but the interview seemed to suggest that they were only thinking about focus stacking (and someone commented that "Nikon engineers were coming up with good ideas without customer demand"; thanks, but I specifically asked Nikon to pass on a request both for focus bracketing and focus stacking, so if they "didn't have a customer request", things still aren't getting through).

[ilkka_nissila]

The Heidelberg Tango has a resolution of 12000ppi. Since the wavelength of light is < 1 micrometer, scanning at 2 micrometer resolution seems reasonable (drum scanners read with the center of the microscope lens's optical axis). Zeiss reported measuring 400 lpmm resolution on their 135mm f/2 Apo Sonnar on black and white film, so this is about the same ball park. I've looked at Kodachrome 25 slides under a microscope and it contained spider web which was sharply rendered by the microscope but my 4000 ppi scanner blurred it. The grain was very fine under the microscope and very unnoticeable, but the scan again looked much grainier. I suspect it may have been to do with the light source used in the scanner vs. microscope and the quality of the lens, but digitization also may contribute to the outcome. I think there is no question that the consumer scanners in the 1000-2000€ ball park that were available a decade ago could not do fair justice to slow slide film let alone slow black and white film. I saw a review of the Minolta 5400 ppi scanner and there was no question it showed finer detail that could not be scanned with the Nikon LS-5000. The Nikon was fast, though. I'm not saying that it's practical to scan at 12000 ppi for normal use but scanning at 4000 ppi (which led to 20MP files from 35mm film) rwas not showing the best of what was on the film. Perhaps we can get better scan quality by using the D850 and some appropriate reproduction lenses. The microscope lens really left a totally different impression of the spider web on the slide. I have to believe that given appropriate technology it should be possible to digitize it faithfully.

[Dieter Schaefer]

No, I believe the K-01

My mistake - there was a K-01; and there now is a K-1.

I didn't get perfect metering with the D500

Didn't say perfect. Just better than what I was used to from previous models. One thing I have to say about Sony A7 and A7II, they seem to do better than most Nikons as far as metering is concerned.

[Andrew Garrard]

My mistake - there was a K-01; and there now is a K-1

 

Someone in the photographic industry using confusing naming? That's never happened before. :-)

 

Didn't say perfect. Just better than what I was used to from previous models. One thing I have to say about Sony A7 and A7II, they seem to do better than most Nikons as far as metering is concerned.

 

:-) I'll bear that in mind. I'm sure using the full sensor has the potential to offer an advantage when metering, although it may come down to design choices.

[mike_halliwell]

So, when can we expect the manual to be available?

[Andrew Garrard]

So, when can we expect the manual to be available?

 

I've been trying to keep an eye out, too. I'm not quite clear whether the D850 is finally shipping yet - there was talk of B&H giving one away, but they might have just donated a voucher.

[bgelfand]

I've been trying to keep an eye out, too. I'm not quite clear whether the D850 is finally shipping yet - there was talk of B&H giving one away, but they might have just donated a voucher.

 

The official release date is 8 September 2017 (although I am not sure if that is the date in Japan or the U.S - there is an International Date Line involved). It is my understanding that the camera is sold out, so if you do not have a confirmed pre-order, you may be waiting "for a while".

[Andrew Garrard]

Thanks, bgelfand. So... I guess the manual will be out by then! It would be nice if Nikon realised that there are geeks like me who treat it as marketing material and would like to read before we buy (although it used to be that you had to own a Nikon product before you could read the manual at all, bizarrely).

 

I'm happy to wait for a possible price drop, for an improvement in my finances, and for any troubles to shake out, anyway. Good luck to everyone jumping early!

[mike_halliwell]

OK, let's play how much....really.

We know the UK price in £££ is higher than the US price in $$$...by a lot.

 

The price banded about by Nikon US is $3295 and available for £3499 in UK... ($4520!!)

 

If I carry a large bundle of $100 bills over the pond, how many do I need to buy a D850 in-store in, say, Miami?

 

I've heard many times that UK prices, as shown, include ALL taxes, whereas US prices only show pre-tax prices as they are added at the till... But humour me with a vague truth

 

PS... For clarity sake, I'm choosing to ignore any subsequent tax to bring it into the UK.

[Dieter Schaefer]

Miami

Miami's sales tax is varies between 6 and 7% depending on ZIP code. If you order from big NY stores like adorama or B&H, then you don't pay sales tax if ordering from out-of-state. So, if you visit B&H and purchase in store, you pay NY sales tax (8.875%); if you order from outside New York (let's say New Jersey), then you don't pay the sales tax.

I'm choosing to ignore any subsequent tax to bring it into the UK.

Which, if you end up paying it, is not something to ignore. Duty might be on the order of the US sales tax but could go up to 35%. That's on top of the British VAT, of course. And if you tried to sneak it in and got caught, there's a fine on top of it for sure.

 

Take the British VAT out of the $4520 and the price differential to the US price drops to a bit more than $300; that difference can easily be eaten up by the import duty.

Edited August 31, 2017 by Dieter Schaefer

[ilkka_nissila]

If you buy it in the US you can get the US sales tax back (tax free purchase) but legally you should pay the UK VAT and customs fees when you go back. You still save money in this case over the local price in the UK. However Nikon UK may be reluctant to offer warranty service and play games with it.

[mike_halliwell]

So if i wander into B&H with $3295 X 1.09 in cash... I still pay almost $1000 less than the price here?

I might just stay over there to use it for a bit!

Anyone know how long that period is?

Bizzarre Nikon Global pricing structure...

[Dieter Schaefer]

Bizzarre Nikon Global pricing structure...

Though Nikon might charge differently for different countries, but it is quite obvious that the majority of the price differential is due to British VAT and possibly import duty. Can't blame Nikon for that.

 

Not too long ago, I did a similar comparison between German and US prices. After backing out the German VAT, it turned out that the camera was actually cheaper in Germany than in the US. At least before one includes the possible import tax and duty when bringing it over from Germany.

 

Anyone know how long that period is?

British law should have an answer to that one.

[Andrew Garrard]

> However Nikon UK may be reluctant to offer warranty service and play games with it.

 

I'm pretty confident (although not 100%) that they're not allowed to do that, based on legal training I've had to sit thtrough. They'd certainly service it for a fee. I've had my 14-24 serviced, and that was bought in the US back when the dollar price was roughly the £ price, and the exchange rate was 2:1.

 

It's less tempting these days.

 

> I might just stay over there to use it for a bit!

> Anyone know how long that period is?

 

I've always wondered that. It seems implausible that you should be legally obliged to pay tax in the US and in the UK if you've (say) used an item for six months in the US and then moved back to the UK, but rummaging on the UK government's web site, the implication is that there's no limit and you have to pay VAT and import duty on absolutely everything. Presumably if that's actually true, you need to get some paperwork to say that you've already paid VAT and import duty if you move back and forth. There's normally some clause about items you "plan to leave" in a country, but I don't recall seeing anything describing "for how long". I've always assumed I don't need to start declaring all the camera kit I take with me on a trip to the US, but where the line is on "I've been using this in the US", if there is one at all, I don't know.

 

It's historically been the case that (at least Nikon) camera launch prices in the UK are very high, but they then drop after a few months; they tend to be more consistent in the US, I believe. That might be a deliberate strategy to try to stage the roll-out a bit while not actually banning some countries from selling the cameras. Of course, Brexit negotiations may throw everything in the air on the exchange rates anyway. Given that there's a waiting list anyway, I'm going to twiddle my thumbs and see what happens.

[ilkka_nissila]

There is still considerable extra on top of VAT and customs in the European D850 prices; in Germany and UK about 400€ and in Finland 600€. It has been suggested that the reason for the different prices is that the European legislation requires greater level of support in case the product has some issues than the US legislation. I've had many repairs over the years paid by Nikon even though the item was outside of warranty. In one case I had dropped the camera yet even so, the repair was paid by Nikon. I think this is a logical explanation for the different prices but I think Nikon should give good support whether the legislation requires it or not.

 

After I had been living for two years in the US, I could bring things I had bought in the USA customs and VAT free into Finland. I think if the items had been six months in my ownership then there was no need to pay VAT and customs, as long as my stay was at least 12 months. But I could be remembering the details wrong, it was many years ago.

[kevin_beretta]

If any if you folks want to see the best Canadian price for gear, photoprice.ca is where you want to go.

[Andrew Garrard]

FWIW, I've just been into Nikon UK to get my D810 sensor cleaned. I did ask, but:

 

1. They're not sure whether you can use the focus stacking feature for focus bracketing, or whether it's one-way (they didn't have someone around who'd tried).
   
2. They're not sure what exactly is new about the split screen live view (I'm still hopeful of a general four-way split, but then I'm occasionally an optimist).
   
3. Given that, I didn't bother to get confirmation that the AF tuning is still only single-point, and can't be used to tune AF points separately, or for different focus distances, or for different zoom values. Which would be nice (especially with auto fine tune speeding it up), but we may have run out of DSLRs before we get there.
   
4. They don't know when the manual is due out (which would probably answer the first three).
   

Not terribly informative, just letting you know I asked. If anyone finds the answers to the above, please let me know.

[ilkka_nissila]

From what I read, the fine tune is the same as before i.e. one value per lens. Authorized service can do a more comprehensive adjustment if needed and they should have better equipment and more space to do the adjustment properly. At least I don't have enough space to fine tune long lenses indoors at home. For example if you want to adjust a 500mm lens at a distance of 50 x f, you need af least 25m of space and a large target and long rulers. Outdoors it is possible but subject to wind, uncontrolled light etc. If the distance or focal length dependent focus errors are significant then the equipment needs service. By explaining the problem clearly and politely it should be possible to get it done right. At least for me fine tuning still contains many mysteries. Fortunately with almost all my lenses auto fine tuning worked very well on the D5 and saved a lot of time. In my kit, only the 2x TC was beyond what auto fine tune could handle, and one fast lens auto fine tuned to the wrong value but otherwise I've been happy with it. Edited September 4, 2017 by ilkka_nissila

[Andrew Garrard]

Thanks, Ilkka. I'm assuming there's no change there as well, but I like to be hopeful occasionally. I do have the Sigma dock, although I'm not convinced that my attempts to use it helped very much (I suspect the interpolation scheme is a bit sensitive). The idea of auto fine tune and being able to pick a point and a distance you care about on a given day, lock that on, and then allow AF tracking to compensate for movement - that's appealing. But I may have much more luck with the new AF module in the D850 anyway. The D810 was already more reliable than the D800, for me.

 

I don't have vast amounts of faith in Nikon service centres' ability to align everything, given that it took me several attempts to explain to them that field curvature wasn't the same as barrel distortion (when I was getting my 14-24 checked out), but then my biggest problems have been with Sigma Art lenses. I can easily believe I'm doing more harm than good - but any ability to do this in the field would help.

 

That said, I bumped into a D5 (pro) owner at Nikon who said he didn't believe the D500 had the same module as the D5 based on performance (so maybe my D500 experience under-sells the AF). He also had nasty things to say about his attempts to use the Sony a9 (wheeling off a list of user interface issues) - I advised him never to try an a7 if the a9 caused him trouble. I believe the D700's AF was closer to the D3's than the D300's; I'm hoping the same will be true of the D850/D5/D500 triple.

 

Oh well, we'll find out many things soon. Including whether the camera works first time. :-)

[ilkka_nissila]

Since the D500 has smaller photosite spacing, any small AF error would be more apparent at the 100% pixel level and in print of equal size (from the whole sensor image). This assumes that one uses a 50% longer lens to get the same image on the FX camera. Of course different lenses and maximum apertures make the situation more complicated.

 

The D5 mirror moves faster than the D500 mirror and as a result, the AF and viewfinder have shorter blackout during high fps bursts. The AF data is a bit more up to date when the shutter opens, basically. The downside is that the D5 makes a louder sound than the D500, and possibly introduces a bit more vibration.

 

Each focus point covers a smaller part of the whole image in the D5, which means that one can more precisely pinpoint where the camera is to focus. There is also the 9-point dynamic area mode which has become my favorite (the smallest dynamic area in the D500 is 25-point).

 

The D5 battery has a higher voltage but I don't know if that is used to speed up AF. I read that the D850 mirror moves faster when powered by EN-EL18a/b and this is how it can achieve the 2fps boost. It will be interesting to see if the blackout is as short on the D850 + EN-EL18(a/b) as it is on the D5. I have noticed that in the D5 quiet mode I can get a few slight focus misses if the subject changes movement trajectory. This I attribute to the slower mirror rise as during this time, there is no new AF data so if the subject swings back and forth this can introduce a slight error. It would be nice to have the quietness and perfect AF but this is not to be, at least not yet. Usually the quiet mode AF is ok but it isn't quite as infallible as the normal (fast mirror) drive modes.

 

Nikon also added horizontal and vertical line group area AF to the D5 but so far I've not figured out if these modes are useful to me. I think they're first iteration that may benefit from some refinement.

[Andrew Garrard]

> Since the D500 has smaller photosite spacing, any small AF error would be more apparent at the 100% pixel level and in print of equal size

 

Yes; I'm hoping that bodes well. I did have some focus issues with a D500 (with a 200-500, particularly with TC14), but I hope that's user error as much as anything.

 

> The D5 mirror moves faster than the D500 mirror

 

That's a good point - and obviously the D850 mirror is (slightly) slower. I don't know whether this is the entire difference reported by my D5 interlocutor, or whether he saw a software change (as suggested by the D300/D3 speed difference). I've not used them side by side to form an opinion.

 

> Each focus point covers a smaller part of the whole image in the D5

 

Yes, I value that in the D8x0. I'd not realised there was a dynamic area difference. Guess we'll see what exactly the D850 can do when the manual appears. (It's still not there.)

 

> I read that the D850 mirror moves faster when powered by EN-EL18a/b and this is how it can achieve the 2fps boost.

 

I could believe that, although I've not followed the details of what exactly is driven how in the D700/D8x0 range. I'm expecting the higher voltage Vbatt connection at the lens mount. I'm deliberating whether the grip appeals to me. It won't make much difference on battery life to me (I have a stash of existing D8x0 batteries so I can just swap, and I rarely run out of power anyway); 2fps extra is appealing, although as Thom Hogan points out, it comes at quite a tax. I bought a third-party ("Polaroid") grip for my D700 to get the extra 3fps (from AAs), but essentially didn't use it. I also forgot to trade it in when I got rid of my D700; anyone want one?

 

> It will be interesting to see if the blackout is as short on the D850 + EN-EL18(a/b) as it is on the D5.

 

I think that's unlikely, given the relative maximum speeds. But then, I hope the D850 is a little quieter.

 

> I have noticed that in the D5 quiet mode I can get a few slight focus misses if the subject changes movement trajectory. This I attribute to the slower mirror rise as during this time, there is no new AF data so if the subject swings back and forth this can introduce a slight error.

 

I've got to say I use quiet mode most of the time on my D810. Maybe it's having more of an effect on AF accuracy than I gave it credit for. I'll experiment.

 

> Nikon also added horizontal and vertical line group area AF to the D5 but so far I've not figured out if these modes are useful to me. I think they're first iteration that may benefit from some refinement.

 

Huh. I need to have another read of the D5 manual. (I was also unaware it could do silent multiple shots like the D850, which the chap I was talking to claimed it could do. It would do me good to be able to compare when the D850 manual comes out.

[ilkka_nissila]

The D5 silent mode is comparatively low resolution, jpg only. The quiet mode should AF fine as long as the movement is predictable enough but if there is a sudden change in direction or speed, the S or CL modes should be on top of it better. The difference is subtle and I do use Quiet Continuous when I need to make less sound. I look forward to seeing how the D850 sound is.

 

The D850 deliveries have started in my country, my local store had two but unfortunately they are already spoken for.

[Dieter Schaefer]

I did have some focus issues with a D500 (with a 200-500, particularly with TC14), but I hope that's user error as much as anything.

When I only had 12MP cameras, AF fine tune was not something I had to do on any lens with the exception of the Sigma 24/1.4. Once I got up to the 20, 24, and 36MP bodies, all tele lenses needed AF fine tuning. Adding a TC into the mix necessitated another round of AF fine tuning, almost always with a different parameter than the base lens. When I had to have my 200-500 serviced this year, and had to leave my D500 with it; it came back needing no AF fine tune at all as Nikon had made proper adjustments. Though I am not claiming that my experience is representative at all, but I cannot assume that a camera and (tele) lens will work perfectly without messing with AF fine tune. Interestingly, it appears that (with the exception of the Sigma 24/1.4), my other shorter focal lengths lenses don't need adjustments.

[mike_halliwell]

They've started shipping before the manual is available?

 

That's handy.....NOT!