Nikon Officially Announces the D850

[Andrew Garrard]

> They've started shipping before the manual is available?

 

The hard copy may be. I suspect the web maintainers for Nikon may not consider it a high priority, possibly because they don't understand there are weird people like me who read manuals for cameras they don't own. (So I'd just spotted the JPEG constraint Ilkka mentioned, though I'd not spotted it was also a resolution constraint. It appears the D850 "does it properly" at 6fps, and presumably does what the D5 does with the UHD video feed-to-JPEG conversion for the 30fps mode.)

 

I'll brace myself for more fine-tuning fun. I wish I could just dump the whole lot with Nikon for a week and ask them to go to town, but I don't think they offer that service!

[rick_jack1]

I am seriously considering buying one soon. I can't resist the 46mp. I own the majority of gold ring primes from 14mm to 600mm, my concerns are not about my lenses being not good enough, my concern is to take full advantage of this sensor will I need a tripod?

IVe read posts of D810 owners complaining about movement and mirror slap. Is this BS from some shaky photographers? I have no problem holding my D750 still in low light, I have very steady hands.

Your opinions please.

[Dieter Schaefer]

D850 Manual and Menu Guide: Nikon | Download center | D850

 

Hope the 9-point dynamic area AF available in the D850 will find its way into the D500 too!

Edited September 6, 2017 by Dieter Schaefer

[mike_halliwell]

Thank you Dieter! I've downloaded it and will be giving it some attention...:-)

[ilkka_nissila]

Looking at the manual, the split-screen display zoom still seems to have the restriction that both areas are on one horizontal line.

 

9-point dynamic is there, and the normal group area, but no horizontal or vertical line group areas.

Edited September 6, 2017 by ilkka_nissila

[Andrew Garrard]

> Looking at the manual, the split-screen display zoom still seems to have the restriction that both areas are on one horizontal line.

 

Damn. I wonder why, given the fast sensor readout? (I just did the download too, but I've not had a chance to read yet.)

 

It also appears that the focus stacking starts at the selected near distance and progresses towards infinity. So no focus bracketing (unless you AF fine tune all your lenses to front-focus).

 

Time to start making the list of requests for a bios update...

 

Rick: I use my D810 hand-held all the time. I get nervous around the 1/10-1/80s range because of possible vibration (the D850 is supposed to be better), but it's not always a problem, but there are plenty of shots in the D810 brochure that are hand-held. With flash you have nothing to worry about anyway, of course. There is a degree of wobble that the mirror and shutter put into things (and EFCS being in MLU only on the D810 doesn't help), but it can be over-stated.

[ilkka_nissila]

It seems the same adapter (BL-5) which is used for inserting EN-EL18(a/b) batteries into the D800 and D810's battery grip, MB-D12, is also used to attach EN-EL18(a/b) batteries into the MB-D18, so at least some reuse of parts is possible.

[Andrew Garrard]

I knew the 30fps mode was reduced resolution, but I'd not realised it was the DX crop, scaled down (3600x2400) and at "normal" JPEG quality. That just seems bizarre - if you can capture 3840x2400 from the full sensor for video purposes at 30fps, why not be able to dump JPEGs from the full frame that fast? The buffer's big enough, since you can only shoot 30fps for three seconds anyway..

[ilkka_nissila]

Well if the 4K video is done by pixel binning at a low level then it requires less data to be handled downstream.

[Andrew Garrard]

Okay, so according to the menu guide, AF fine tune is still a single value per lens.

 

Still looks like a good improvement on functionality (I'm expecting to use flicker reduction, for a start) but as ever, there are a minor list of disappointments. I'm not quite sure what the "improved split live view" comment was about if the functionality is basically the same as before.

[ilkka_nissila]

I thought I would use the flicker reduction feature a lot but in the past year I haven't run into a situation where the lights flicker in such a way that it would show as variations in my shots. I have run into it in the past when photographing indoors and those images were quite painful to fix when the color would vary from shot to shot. It seems indoor lighting is improving at the same time as we gain tools to deal with its variations in photography. I don't know how the lighting is in the UK.

 

"Improved live view split-screen display" was posted among rumored specifications. It could still be improved in some way that we can figure out when using it, or it could be that someone just expressed a wish. That's the problem with "rumors." Still, even as it has been implemented in the D810 and other cameras, I find this feature useful.

[Andrew Garrard]

> Well if the 4K video is done by pixel binning at a low level then it requires less data to be handled downstream.

 

I assumed that binning happened for JPEG, too, given the reduced resolution. I guess if the h.264 encoding happens upstream you could still have lower memory bandwidth (not that I hope that's the limit), although that's normally a multi-frame thing suggesting that something somewhere must be buffering. I do wonder whether you'd get better quality by pulling frames out of a video stream, though.

[Andrew Garrard]

> "Improved live view split-screen display" was posted among rumored specifications.

 

Oh, my bad. I thought it was part of an early announcement, although I did fail to source that.

 

I like to have it, but a four-way split would absolutely encourage me to buy a 19mm PC-E.

[ilkka_nissila]

If you don't need full 45MP, but would like to shoot full frame images at 30fps silently you could just use the video and get frames from that. I don't know what the quality would be but I'd think they'd be at least decent.

 

For Mode 1 Silent Live View Photography, does the camera produce NEF files or JPG? On p. 49 in the manual there is no mention of this (in Mode 1) which I assume to mean that the quality and file type will be the same as for regular photography, and speed up to 6fps. The DX crop and JPG normal limitation is for Mode 2 which gives high frame rates.

[Andrew Garrard]

I'm also assuming the silent live view mode 1 can do raw (unlike, I gather, the D5); it certainly shouldn't be speed limited, and seems to be full resolution. I assume the 6fps limit is from the need to reset the sensor. There was talk in early previews of rolling shutter being a bit of a problem, which would correspond to that..

 

As you say, I can grab frames from a 30fps video at 4K. I wasn't expecting silent "mode 2" to do better than that (I could believe no raw, 4K resolution, 30fps), I'm just surprised that it's worse.

[ilkka_nissila]

Interestingly for 12-bit lossless compressed NEFs, medium (94) and small (56) raw formats give smaller burst depths than large NEF (170). Compressed 12-bit large NEF gives 200. I suppose if shooting action at high ISO in indoor venues one might as well shoot in 12-bit NEF since the extra bits aren't going to be adding real information at high ISO and the files should be a bit smaller which can help later on.

 

For 14-bit large NEFs, lossless compressed NEF gives 51 whereas compressed NEF gives 74 images. I think for action in bright sunlight the compressed 14-bit NEF would be a good option to extend the burst depth. (Lossy) compression of NEFs just reduces superfluous bits in highlights if I recall correctly how Nikon do it, so it probably doesn't visibly affect image quality. Still, a 51-image maximum burst in 14-bit lossless compressed NEF would already be quite good and I don't expect to run into it except possibly in figure skating where the smart thing to do would probably be to go with 12 bits (and gain the 170 or 200 image maximum burst depth).

[Andrew Garrard]

> Interestingly for 12-bit lossless compressed NEFs, medium (94) and small (56) raw formats give smaller burst depths than large NEF (170).

 

That was true of "small raw" (when uncompressed) on the D810, too. My guess is that the basic representation is the same (JPEG-like conversion to Y'CbCr and about 11-bit quality) applied retrospectively to the image in memory, only - unlike the D810 - with a lossless compression scheme on top. I'd really love Nikon to do PhaseOne-style binning instead, which would actually increase the available bit depth at the cost of requiring the reconstruction to handle an offset in nominal sample centres. It does mean Nikon can do a bit of filtering, though; the 1080p60 issue on the original Mavic Pro (which I discovered after recently buying one, but not recently enough to get a Platinum...)

 

Honestly I almost always shoot lossless compressed (+ JPEG fine to an SD card). I'd drop to 12-bit in the dark if I knew I was going to be bursting - where I've previously resorted to JPEG (such as dances after friends' weddings). I'd think of the small raw formats more as ways not to run out of card space than buffer space. Of course, when I (eventually) get a D850, I'll have to factor in getting rid of a load of CF cards and acquiring some XQDs.

[Andrew Garrard]

Belatedly (since this news is at least a couple of days old), I thought I remembered someone on this thread (apologies if it was somewhere else) asking about how long it would take the tools to catch up. Well, for anyone who didn't notice, Adobe have updated both their DNG tool and camera raw, so they're up to speed now. DxO don't seem to have updated Optix Pro yet - picking the other tool suite I care about.

[DB_Gallery]

Yeah, was pretty impressed with Adobe's action on this, have it installed which is good since my D850 is out for delivery.

[Andrew Garrard]

I see Thom Hogan is unimpressed by Adobe's first stab at the raw conversion, but support is better than no support. :)

 

In other news, I gather Nikon managed (generously interpreting their response) not to get any female photographers to turn up at a D850 promotional event. I'd be more sympathetic if they'd not had a page a few years back that suggested (IIRC) the 1 series was "for women". Which is probably why they decided you could buy them in pink...