Announced: | 24 Aug 2017 |
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Sensor Resolution: | 46Mp |
Sensor Type: | Full frame BSI-CMOS |
ISO: | 64-25600 |
Weight: | 1015g |
Physical Dimensions: | 146 x 124 x 79 mm |
Viewfinder: | Optical (pentaprism) |
Screen Type: | 3.2" Tilting |
Video Resolutions: | 3840 x 2160 |
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Launched with the catch phrase “I am the difference maker”, Nikon D850 is a professional reflex camera with technical features so good that it can definitely deserve such a slogan, especially thanks to the 45.7 megapixels sensor and to an infinity of functions that we’ll see later.
Nikon D850 is an impressive leap forward compared to D810 and is, at the moment, a concentrate of the whole technology of the Japanese house.
Let’s see if the promises made in the launching of the publicity campaign are kept by a camera announced as exceptional.
The magnesium alloy camera body of Nikon D850 gives you a pleasant feeling of compactness and solidity.
In fact, its weight and size (146 x 124 x 78.5 millimeters) contribute to give an important status to this camera. The design is simple, very classic. The grip is great, the buttons have the right size, the ergonomics is friendly (once you’ve learned how to work with it).
Compared to its “elderly” sister D810, D850 has three main differences:
After years of Sony labeled innovation, Nikon has designed a sensor from the new building technology: 45.7 megapixels, backlit (CMOS B-S) and without low-pass filter. With such characteristics, it has extremely high definition, better control of the noise and wide color range: to top it all, ISO sensitivity range between 64 and 25,600, really impressive given the amount of megapixel of the sensor.
Fast and precise, Expeed 5 is the processor of Nikon D850: burst mode can shoot up to 9fps with the battery grip on. With D810 you could shoot only up to 5! If you shoot in RAW format, buffering is 51 shots at 14 bit (at 12 bit 170!). If you shoot in jpeg format you can forget about buffering.
D850 autofocus is the same of the extremely fast D500 and D5: 153 AF points (99 cross-shaped, 55 manual through the joystick on the back, 15 sensitive up to f/8 aperture). In other words, in the center point, sensitivity is up to -4EV: the moonlight is enough! It performs very well with moving subjects (D810 wasn’t suited for sports photos).
Liveview autofocus is good but the Dual Pixel system of top-of-the-line Canon cameras is one step ahead.
Other remarkable feature, already mentioned randomly in the previous sections, are:
The price of Nikon D850 is around 3,700 euros. Since it’s not a mainstream product, it’s not easy to find it in stock. If you choose to buy it with the “Italy warranty” and not through Nital, then the price is lower: 3,200/3,300 euros. Obviously, the 4-year warranty and assistance would fall short: in case of such a camera, I would not suggest you to spare money on this.
If you’ve already had professional full frame cameras, Nikon D850 shouldn’t be hard to use. If it is your first professional camera, though, it’ll take you a while to learn the commands and the customization. In that case, note that you’ll have to buy top-level lens: any optical flaw, with 47.5 megapixels, will be amplified.
The image quality is superb at low ISO: in good light Nikon D850 has the best performance among “medium format” cameras. At high ISO, the difference is even bigger. In any case, the quality is well above D810.
The color range is astonishing, the colors are exceptional, the sharpness is surprising both in portraits and in landscapes. No problem with moving subjects: shooting at 7fps for almost 8 seconds with the highest resolution and its top-of-the-line viewfinder autofocus, Nikon D850 can be absolutely used for professional sports photography.
Among all the cameras launched in the last couple of years, Nikon D850 is the reflex that took the most significant qualitative leap compared to the previous reference model.
Extremely high definition was the flagship of Nikon D810, but it had some minor flaws, especially in terms of autofocus, speed and low lights.
And so there comes Nikon D850, an actual professional all round camera that fills the gaps of its previous sister.
The fact that, on the internet, reviews are mostly enthusiastic and that used Nikon D850 are definitely not easy to find on the second-hand market… surely means something. As a matter of fact, there aren’t many equal alternatives:
Canon 5D Mark IV has liveview AF and video better performance. For the rest, it has something less (and a much cheaper price).
Sony A7RIII is technically tremendous, but maybe it is a little too expensive against its performance. It is preferable only if you want a professional mirrorless camera instead of a reflex one.
I’ll end this review with the summary of the summary: Nikon D850 is a camera with stunning performances and I believe that professionals will appreciate it greatly.
Review | compare Nikon D850 with | overall score | Portrait | Landscape | Sport | Street | Everyday | |
NikonD850 | 75 | 73 | 72 | 77 | 75 | 77 | $2,496.95 | |
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NikonD780 | 71 | 69 | 69 | 67 | 74 | 77 | buy on | |
CanonEOS 90D | 65 | 54 | 52 | 66 | 70 | 75 | buy on | |
PentaxK-3 Mark III | 64 | 53 | 51 | 66 | 68 | 71 | buy on | |
CanonEOS Rebel SL3 | 60 | 51 | 49 | 54 | 68 | 71 | buy on | |
CanonEOS Rebel T8i | 59 | 51 | 49 | 57 | 66 | 69 | buy on | |
PentaxKF | 58 | 51 | 50 | 55 | 63 | 67 | buy on |
The Nikon D850 is a DSLR camera launched on 08/24/2017.
Technically speaking, the Nikon D850 ranks in the best 1% of its category (and in the best 99 of all cameras in our database) scoring 75 overall. The Nikon D850 weights 1015 gr and spans 146 x 124 x 79 mm. This means that it is one of the largest and heaviest cameras within its category.
Going into details, whatever the technical specification of interest, the Nikon D850 behaves better than average in its category:
However, the technical performance of your camera should be put in context. Indeed, depending on the type of photography you are interested in, each individual camera feature can impact your pictures to a different extent. This is the reason why we developed the iCamRank. iCamRank has been designed to weight all the individual technical specifications of each camera in the camerarace database, depending on different shooting conditions. Thus, here is what we suggest, depending on the photography type you like most:
Last but not least, the price. You can find the Nikon D850 sold on Amazon for a price comprised between 1859.0 USD and 2909.95 USD, well above the average for this camera type.
Overall, Nikon D850 is a good value for money. However, alternatives are also available, which you may want to take into consideration before taking the final decision. Click here to see alternative options.
Sensor Type
BSI-CMOS
Sensor Size
Full frame
Sensor Dimensions
35.9 x 23.9 mm
Sensor Area
858.01 mm2
Sensor Resolution
46 Mp
Max Image Resolution
8256 x 5504
Max Native ISO
25600
Min Native ISO
64
RAW Support
Manual Focus
Lens Mount
Nikon F
Number of Lenses
280
Focal Length Multiplier
1
Screen Type
Tilting
Screen Size
3.2"
Screen Resolution
2359Kdot
Live View
Touch Screen
Viewfinder
Optical (pentaprism)
Viewfinder Resolution
None
Viewfinder Coverage
100
Viewfinder Magnification
0.75
Min Shutter Speed
30s
Max Shutter Speed
1/8000s
Continuous Shooting
7fps
Shutter Priority
Aperture Priority
Manual Exposure Mode
Exposure Compensation
Custom White Balance
Image Stabilization
Built-in Flash
Flash Range
None
Max Flash Sync
-
Flash Modes
Front-curtain sync (normal) Rear-curtain sync Red-eye reduction Red-eye reduction with slow sync Slow sync
External Flash
AE Bracketing
WB Bracketing
DxO Overall Score
100
DxO Color Depth
26.4
DxO Dynamic Range
14.8
DxO Low Light ISO
2660
Multi-Segment
Average
Spot
Partial
AF-Area
Center Weighted
AF Touch
AF Continuous
AF Single
AF Tracking
AF Selective
AF Center
AF MultiArea
AF Live View
AF Face Detection
AF Contrast Detection
AF Phase Detection
Number of Focus Points
153
Number of Cross Focus Points
99
Video Resolutions
3840 x 2160 @ 30p MOV H.264 Linear PCM
Max Video Resolution
3840x2160
Video Formats
MPEG-4
Microphone Port
Headphone Port
Wireless Connectivity
Built-in
HDMI
USB
USB 3.0 (5 GBit/sec)
Environmental Sealing
Water Proof
Dust Proof
Shock Proof
Crush Proof
Freeze Proof
Weight
1015g
Physical Dimensions
146 x 124 x 79 mm
Battery Life
1840
Battery Type
Battery Pack
Battery Model
EN-EL15a
Self Timer
Yes (2, 5, 10, 20 secs)
Timelapse Recording
GPS
Storage Type
SD SDHC SDXC (UHS-II supported) + XQD
Storage Slots
2
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