I’m gonna be honest, I never thought I’d own a full-frame camera. The Nikon D850 is literally the first FX pro body that I’ve touched. I could never justify their cost since I’m not a professional (i.e., I don’t make money from photography). Besides, haven’t we always been told by the pros that it’s not the gear, it’s the photographer? Is there any truth to that?
Thanks to a generous sign-on bonus from this new company I started working for, and a ridiculous Black Friday deal at Walmart, I was able to get the Nikon D850 for a pretty good price. I’ve been using the camera for a couple of months now.
Why the Nikon D850?
I’ve been a Nikon user for close to a decade now. I’ve got a Nikon D7100 and two Nikon lenses, the mighty 18-140mm kit lens and my best camera gear purchase (no sarcasm), the 50mm f1.8D. I’m deep into their ecosystem so another Nikon was the obvious choice of brand. Since I shoot almost exclusively wildlife these days, my priority was good autofocus speed, decent frame rate and an overall well-built machine.
Considering my budget, it was a choice between the Nikon D500 or the D850. Both cameras are almost evenly matched in the autofocus department. The D500 has the superior frame rate (10fps vs 7fps without the grip) while the D850 has the better resolution (21.5M vs 457M). The D850 has the added benefit of being a full frame camera with a BI-CMOS sensor that outputs incredible image quality. Fun fact, the Nikon D850 was the first camera to hit a DxO mark score of 100. You can read that interesting article here.
The good stuff
- The autofocus is FAST. Like, blazing fast! Once you point the camera at something, it does not lose focus. Even if it does, a quick tap of the focus button and the camera latches onto the subject again quite easily. Btw, I learnt how to setup this camera using Steve Perry’s guide.
- The colors look so beautiful straight out of the camera that it feels wrong to mess with them in post processing.
- That insane dynamic range is evident when I try to pull detail from the shadows in a poorly lit scene.
- I LOVE the low light performance. I used to be terrified of bumping up my ISO beyond 800 on my D7100. On the D850, I just leave it at 800. I’d rather risk having noise than motion blur. Even the noise at say ISO3200 is so easy to clean up in Lightroom.
- The 45 megapixels give you plenty of detail to work with. If I had more detail than this, I honestly don’t know what I would do with it.
- This camera, apparently, has some great weather sealing. I would never do anything that would put this camera’s life at risk. But if it ever does get in harm’s way, I will definitely let you know whether it survived or not in a thrilling follow up post. For now, I’m gonna trust Nikon and sleep happy.
However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There are some things to be mindful about if this is the first time you’re gonna be using a high-resolution FX camera body.
Things to remember
- Since it’s an FX body, you’re gonna be lacking in reach compared to a DX body. I didn’t realize how nice it was to have 50% more reach. Although some of that is offset by the fact that this camera has 45 megapixels which allow you to crop more.
- Having an insane amount of resolution is a double-edged sword. While it allows you to see the tiniest details in your pictures, it also makes the tiniest motion blur glaringly obvious. It’s quite a humbling experience. For the first couple of hours, I couldn’t understand why all my images were so blurred even at shutter speeds I was always comfortable with. I had to double the amount of shutter speed I was using to get satisfyingly sharp images.
- This camera consumes memory like a college student chugging beer at a frat party trying to impress his bros. Each photo out of this thing is like 50 MEGABYTES! If you’ve been using anything less than 64GB cards, you need to forget them. Get a CFExpress Type B card with at least 128GB for photos and more if you’re going to be doing video. You need the high write and read speeds supported by these cards to get the best performance out of the camera. I’m personally using the SanDisk 128GB Extreme pro CFExpress Card Type B. You will also need a corresponding card reader – SanDisk Extreme PRO CFexpress Card Reader. These costs ($250 for the card and $50 for the reader) can add up quickly so consider this before buying this camera.
- To get the highest possible frame rate of 9fps out of this camera, you need the battery grip. Without it, you get 7fps. It’s not bad but not great either. That’s still an upgrade from my D7100’s 5fps though. For now, I don’t have the grip, but I do plan on getting it sometime in the future.
- If you’re someone who is conscious of how much weight in gear you want to carry around, beware! Weight was the last thing on the Nikon’s mind while creating this beast. But if you do like your camera to feel solid, you’re going to love the way this camera feels in the hand.
- I’ve heard of a lot of criticism regarding the D850’s video capabilities. I haven’t tested those yet since I don’t do a lot of videos. I will write another post about it when I get to it.
Final thoughts
Getting this camera is not going to dramatically improve your photography if you’re upgrading from a beginner DX body. In fact, you’ll struggle to get decent pictures for a while due to the high resolution. If the sluggish auto focus of your current camera has been your limiting factor, you’ll put more keepers on the card with the D850. An easier way to get dramatically different and better pictures would be to invest in a new lens. That’s what I did first when I bought the Nikon 500mm f5.6 PF. If you’d like to read about my experience with that lens, you can check it out here. Below are some pictures I shot with the D850. Let me know what you think in the comments.
