Nikon D850 DSLR Camera

This camera is possibly my favorite thing I’ve ever purchased. It’s an absolute beast. My wife and I are both photographers of different types. She does portrait photography (newborn, family, etc) and I do landscape/astrophotography. For years we’ve been on the very-mid-range D5200. We bought it while we were still both working part time in school, so we had to go for the best one we could on the extremely limited budget we had. While it has served us well, it’s obviously a cropped sensor body and it was time to upgrade to full frame, and many years later we’re in a far better place financially. (READ: No more school tuition and full time job yay) We figured if we’re going to spend the money on full frame, we might as well get the “dream camera”, so to speak, and not feel like we need to upgrade again soon.

And so we come to the D850. Lots of research went into the decision to go with the D850, there is no shortage of videos and reading material about it, it’s a landmark camera body for many reasons. Sure it’s pricey, but this sucker is going to last us for years and years. I’ll try to touch on all my personal favorite points, but there are literally so many that I’ll probably forget some, but here we go.

Body:
Super well designed, comfortable, if not a tad on the heavy side. It’s a beast of a camera though, so I can absolutely forgive the weight, and it’s by no means uncomfortably heavy. Just a tad heavier than I would have thought. The weatherproofing is excellent. You can watch tons of review videos where you’ll see them leaving the camera on a tripod in rainy weather to do a timelapse, and then they simply dry it off with a towel later. As a result of the weather proofing there is no built-in popup flash to make it far more sealed off. This doesn’t bother me at all because I never use that flash, if I need flash I’ll use an external one.

Autofocus:
If you know anything about the D850, you’ll know that the autofocus in the body is industry leading. (the same autofocus as the D5) A huge number of autofocus points, incredible focus speed, it’s absolutely incredible. I will simply leave this at what I’ve said so far since that’s really all that needs to be said. It’s awesome.

Controls:
Having come from the D5200 I feel like the controls are much more intuitive and better placed so as to be more ergonomic. They feel much higher quality than the D5200 which just helps with the overall premium nature of this camera. As a person who loves to do astrophotography, one of my favorite tiny improvements is the illuminated buttons! I don’t know how I survived without that before this. It’s one of those quality of life improvements that just makes so much sense when you finally have it.

Memory Card Slots:
So as I’m sure you’re aware by now, this camera has two slots. One SD slot and one XQD slot. I originally thought I wouldn’t get an XQD card, they’re so much more expensive than their SD card equivalents, and I hadn’t done much research into them, so I thought they were basically a chunkier SD card. I have since done the research and bought a 240 GB capacity card. The read/write speed is seriously blazing fast. Basically it can keep up with the D850, whereas an SD card by itself will start slowing you down during continuous shooting because it can’t clear the buffer fast enough. Transfer speeds to my computer are so much faster than my SD card. (note that you do need to buy a card reader for it) It’s also incredibly durable which is a great thing to not worry about when you’re in more rugged environments. My only complaint about the D850 now that I’ve bought into the XQD vision is that they only have one XQD slot and one SD card slot. I understand that XQD isn’t widely adopted right now, and that increases the barrier to entry for this camera, but I do wish that there were two XQD card slots in this camera rather than one of each. I have a large enough card, however, that I haven’t had a big enough session that I started writing to the SD card yet, so that’s not that big of a deal. (I usually remove everything off the card when I import right after my session, so I always start at empty)

Touchscreen/Live View:
I was skeptical that I would ever use the touchscreen aspect of the screen but I must say I was wrong. I use it very often. The screen itself is large, bright, and great resolution. You can pinch to zoom on your pictures and zoom in to see some incredible detail this camera takes. (something I couldn’t really do before until I was on my computer) It tilts up and down, a really handy feature that I forget about too often. (as I stand on my tiptoes to see when the camera is up high, I suddenly realize I don’t need to do that, the screen tilts) Live View is also incredible on this camera, again I use it far more than I thought I would. You can even autofocus on specific areas/objects by simply tapping the screen. It’s incredibly useful, and the screen is high enough quality that it really does your pictures justice. Very impressed with it.

Timelapse:
You can create a 4k timelapse video right in-camera. You can even create an 8k timelapse using the interval mode and the full resolution photos able to be taken by the D850, although this is not stitched together in-camera, so you’ll need to do that yourself. There are some incredible timelapses out there produced by the D850 that you can watch, the image quality is exceptional. You can also use Silent Live View mode, and that’ll not use any mechanical shutter. As stated in the camera’s product description, this is great for saving on shutter cycles and improving battery performance.

Video:
In addition to the photography I enjoy, I love shooting video. As everyone knows, Nikon doesn’t do as well as Canon in this regard. Of all Nikon’s cameras, the D850 appears to be the best when it comes to shooting video. The autofocus while shooting video is not good, so you’d better settle on using manual focus. None of this means that the D850 will produce bad video. If you know how to work around some of the annoyances and less-than-stellar features, you’ll get video that is just fine. Most of us, however, aren’t getting the D850 for shooting video, so let’s talk about the true purpose of this camera.

Image Quality:
Thus we arrive to the most important aspect of any camera review, the image quality. This is actually a section where I have very little to say, partly because I covered a lot of supporting info, and the other part because it’s quite simple. This camera is a beast. It’s got a whopping 45.7 megapixels. This was a major upgrade for me, coming from the 24.1 megapixels in my D5200. I’m incredibly impressed with the sheer amount of data collected in the RAW images especially coming from my D5200. The amount of detail I can bring out in post is impressive. As such, the RAW files are very large, so hopefully you have plenty of storage space. It has great low-light capabilities, and the autofocus works surprisingly well even in low light. I can’t think of a single complaint about this category, which speaks to the incredible images this camera produces.

If you can afford it, I can’t recommend this camera enough. It’s an incredible piece of technology, one of the best cameras you can buy. If you are looking for an incredible full frame DSLR with no compromises (minus video of course) then look no further than the Nikon D850.

The D850 is a big improvement over my D7000. Using the same lens and exposure, the D850 does a noticeable better job. Can’t tell if it is the increased pixel density, lack of anti aliasing filter, or what, but a definite improvement.

Haven’t used all the available options, but life is easier with the D850. Focus stacking is so much easier. The D7000 would do it, but only after being tethered to my tablet/phone or connected with wifi using the TP-Link. Still not clear on how the length of a focus step is calculated, but just following the instructions have worked well so far, even when doing macro with tubes. Focus Peaking makes using manual lenses, including the Celestron C5, so much easier. Nice to have HDR as a menu option. I do like the HDR option on qDSLRDashboard better with up to 19 exposure available instead of only 3, but then I am back to having to carry my tablet again. With the improved dynamic range, also a noticeable improvement over the D7000, HDR may be almost a thing of the the past.

The D850 is supposed to get more photos per battery than the D7000. I think it will but you have to leave the live view/touch screen alone and that is hard to do. It works very well. Easy to see in bright sunlight, focus and shoot by touching the screen, using focus peaking, or setting up many of the on camera options require its use. The electronic shutter, with no noise or vibration, only works in live view. I can go through a battery on the D850 way faster than with the D7000.

Do miss not have a IR shutter release. It was so simple and quick to use on the D7000. Had to do a search on the internet to verify it wasn’t on the D850. Still haven’t figured out a fast way to do a wireless shutter release. Snapbridge is always there, but that is not fast. You could change your mind by the time that gets set up. It requires the WIFI connection to work.

The WIFI connection was a big disappointment at first, still not my favorite thing, but I have found a procedure that gets it up and going every time. Ignore the instructions when you try to connect with wifi. The bluetooth hasn’t been a problem. Use the camera menu to turn it on and, if the phone/tablet is paired, it will quickly connect. The only thing bluetooth can do is use the phone/tablet GPS data to geotag your photos, update the time/date on your camera, and turn the camera wifi on. To turn the camera wifi on select “Download pictures” or “Remote photography” on the Snapbridge app on your phone/tablet. Every time I do this I get the message that the connection has failed. Ignore that and go to settings on the phone/tablet where you can now select the camera wifi on the list of available wifis because Snapbridge did turn it on, and select connect. Then go back to Snapbridge, select “Remote photography” and it will connect. Haven’t found Snapbridge to be all that useful to control the camera so I usually go to qDSLRDashboard and connect with it. Works great and works every time, but why can’t I just have a menu option, ON THE CAMERA, to turn the wifi on and off.

The other annoyance with the D850 was the cover for the hot shoe not being provided. I thought at first it must have been left out when the camera was packaged. Nope. You just don’t get one. Over $3000 dollars for a camera and you have to get your own cover for the hot shoe. This is not my first new Nikon camera but it is the most expensive. I am almost positive this is the first time I had to go find my own hot shoe cover. It is a nice cover.

Hopefully Nikon continues updating Snapbridge and the D850. I do like the camera, but I will still find uses for the D7000, like long range backpacking, since it is lighter and easier on batteries. But then again, the D850 is only about 1 lbs heavier and I think I could learn to leave the live view alone….maybe.

Update
The latest firmware update, part C 1.10, added the option to turn WIFI on/off to the WIFI menu on the camera. Snapbridge is no longer needed to control the camera WIFI.