Nikon D850

Nikon D850

Nikon D850
Announced: 24 Aug 2017
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
75
Overall Score
70
Image Quality
73
Speed Performance
92
Versatility
71
Comfort
Portrait

73

Portrait
Landscape

72

Landscape
Sport

77

Sport
Street

75

Street
Everyday

77

Everyday

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prospros

  • Its extraordinary color depth makes it perfect for portrait photography
  • Its wide dynamic range makes it ideal for landscape photography
  • The excellent sensor of this camera makes it perform very well in every shooting range
  • This camera autofocus is able to follow moving subjects
  • The Nikon D850 is tropicalized - this means you can use it also in adverse atmospheric and environmental conditions without ruining it
  • The LCD display is a convenient and almost indispensable feature
  • The microphone input can be very useful if you shoot videos
  • It has fast shutter speed, ideal for action photos
  • Nikon D850 battery has 1840.0 shoots autonomy. This will allow long photo sessions without having the need to recharge it.
  • The second memory slot makes the camera more reliable, also for professional use
  • Thanks to the wireless connection, Nikon D850 allows immediate picture sharing

Nikon D850: the review by our expert

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.

Design and camera body of D850

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:

  • The tilt LCD display, really convenient, especially with the camera on the tripod
  • The absence of the internal flash, which lightens the camera body a little
  • The AF control joystick, improving the workflow

Nikon D850: technical features

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:

  • 4K UHD Video, 4k and 8 k Time Lapse mode, with 0.5 seconds of minimal interval
  • 2 memory slots, 1 XQD slot and 1 UHS II slot
  • Shooting top speed 1/8000 sec., burst mode up to 9fps
  • Tropicalization
  • Battery: around 1840 shots + Battery grip
  • 3.2 inches tilt LCD display, 2,360,000 dots
  • “Snapbridge” Bluetooth connection and WiFi (supported by Nikon App only)
  • Price of Nikon D850

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.

Taking pictures with Nikon D850

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.

Nikon D850: my final opinion

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.

Nikon D850 and its rivals

Review compare Nikon D850 with overall score Portrait
Portrait
Landscape
Landscape
Sport
Sport
Street
Street
Everyday
Everyday
Nikon D850 Nikon
D850
75 73 72 77 75 77 $2,496.95
Nikon D780 Nikon
D780
71 69 69 67 74 77 buy on
Canon EOS 90D Canon
EOS 90D
65 54 52 66 70 75 buy on
Pentax K-3 Mark III Pentax
K-3 Mark III
64 53 51 66 68 71 buy on
Canon EOS Rebel SL3 Canon
EOS Rebel SL3
60 51 49 54 68 71 buy on
Canon EOS Rebel T8i Canon
EOS Rebel T8i
59 51 49 57 66 69 buy on
Pentax KF Pentax
KF
58 51 50 55 63 67 buy on

Nikon D850: concluding remarks and technical specifications

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:

  • Image Quality - Score 70, ranks in the category best 3%.
  • Speed Performance - Score 73, ranks in the category best 3%.
  • Comfort - Score 71, ranks in the category best 6%.
  • Versatility - Score 92, ranks in the category best 6%.

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:

  • Portrait - Great, score 73, ranks in the best 2% of its category. Nikon D850 is perfect for Portrait photography, one of the best in its class.
  • Landscape - Great, score 72, ranks in the best 2% of its category. Nikon D850 is perfect for Landscape photography, one of the best in its class.
  • Sport - Great, score 77, ranks in the best 3% of its category. Nikon D850 is perfect for Sport photography, one of the best in its class.
  • Street - Great, score 75, ranks in the best 1% of its category. Nikon D850 is perfect for Street photography, one of the best in its class.
  • Everyday - Great, score 77, ranks in the best 1% of its category. Nikon D850 is perfect for everyday photography, one of the best in its class.

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.

Nikon D850 technical specs

Sensor Type

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

yes

Lens

Manual Focus

yes

Lens Mount

Nikon F

Number of Lenses

280

Focal Length Multiplier

1

Screen Type

Screen Type

Tilting

Screen Size

3.2"

Screen Resolution

2359Kdot

Live View

yes

Touch Screen

yes

Viewfinder

Viewfinder

Optical (pentaprism)

Viewfinder Resolution

None

Viewfinder Coverage

100

Viewfinder Magnification

0.75

Features

Min Shutter Speed

30s

Max Shutter Speed

1/8000s

Continuous Shooting

7fps

Shutter Priority

yes

Aperture Priority

yes

Manual Exposure Mode

yes

Exposure Compensation

yes

Custom White Balance

yes

Image Stabilization

no

Built-in Flash

no

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

yes

AE Bracketing

yes

WB Bracketing

yes

Dxo Sensor Scores

DxO Overall Score

100

DxO Color Depth

26.4

DxO Dynamic Range

14.8

DxO Low Light ISO

2660

Exposure Modes

Multi-Segment

yes

Average

yes

Spot

yes

Partial

no

AF-Area

yes

Center Weighted

yes

Autofocus

AF Touch

yes

AF Continuous

yes

AF Single

yes

AF Tracking

yes

AF Selective

yes

AF Center

yes

AF MultiArea

yes

AF Live View

yes

AF Face Detection

yes

AF Contrast Detection

yes

AF Phase Detection

yes

Number of Focus Points

153

Number of Cross Focus Points

99

Video Features

Video Resolutions

3840 x 2160 @ 30p MOV H.264 Linear PCM

Max Video Resolution

3840x2160

Video Formats

MPEG-4

Microphone Port

yes

Headphone Port

yes

Connectivity

Wireless Connectivity

Built-in

HDMI

yes

USB

USB 3.0 (5 GBit/sec)

Physical

Environmental Sealing

yes

Water Proof

no

Dust Proof

no

Shock Proof

no

Crush Proof

no

Freeze Proof

no

Weight

1015g

Physical Dimensions

146 x 124 x 79 mm

Battery Life

1840

Battery Type

Battery Pack

Battery Model

EN-EL15a

Other Features

Self Timer

Yes (2, 5, 10, 20 secs)

Timelapse Recording

yes

GPS

no

Storage Type

SD SDHC SDXC (UHS-II supported) + XQD

Storage Slots

2

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