Nikon D850: First full-res sample images

blah blah blah. you dont see the real quality of an image until you view it at 100%. viewing this image at 100% you can clearly see it isnt sharp. like i said my 300mm f4 at f5.6 is very very sharp, much sharper than this. without pixel peeping haha.. ok then, go buy the old 70-200 vr 1, image quality doesnt matter right? whats the use for a 2800$ lens if there is one for 1200$ that "without pixel peeping" hence viewing at 50% looks the same right??

did you really just say that with "pixel peeping" nothing is ever sharp enough? do you want me to upload an image that i took at f5.6 of a bird? ill even do more and upload it in DNG to prove i didnt even edit it. view it at 100% and see how sharp it is..

When I said "With pixel peeping, nothing is never sharp enough", I meant that I can find a zoom ratio(300:1, 500:1, etc. where it will not be sharp.
I have sold 16x20 prints where the image was not even sharp at 50%. An image viewed sharp at 100% makes a 5'x7' print. At some distance that will also not look sharp.

Blah Blah Blah, my daddy is stronger than your daddy!

it looks soft because they missed focus... no idea why they picked this photo as an example... looking at other photos the camera is plenty sharp.

fyngyrz - I've seen many portraits that don't have a single specular catchlight in the eyes that look good. In many people's view, a specular highlight is actually considered to be a bad thing, since it's far from natural, which is why it normally needs to be added to the shot by the use of auxiliary lighting.

To say it's a fail & that the photographer is amateurish is a not only a harsh criticism, but it's simply wrong.

I've been doing that for a couple of years now with the sigma Merrill cameras

How do you know AF wad used?

Usual empty pointless comparison , it's hard to imagine that the D850 or an A7xx series are bad cameras in every day use. It's nice to have the choice and it can never be that overly critical or invalidating comments are politically neautral. It's irrelavent if the D850 does little or nothing different to an A7xx, and the presence of an OVF is unlikely to be the sole justification for buying any brand.
This is no more than clumsy journalism trying creative an underwhelming narrative about the D850.

George1958 "the presence of an OVF is unlikely to be the sole justification for buying any brand"

Absolute nonsense. The absence of an EVF is a deal breaker for me. Kirk Tuck takes the some position - he simply does not want to own a camera without an EVF these days. Its a workflow thing. And I agree.

Not having an EVF surely IS a valid reason not to buy a D850 for some people. It is not "trivialising the D850" to say this.

I highly doubt that claim from Nikon. Maybe lost in translation somewhere?

but, on the other hand, no one will remove that amazing detail in eyes, hair, clothes etc... hiding unpleasant (for some applications) details is one thing, having high res details all-over is another thing :)

Bambi, The most common mistake what amateurs do in portraits is removing details from the skin. Don't remove details just correct skin imperfections without loosing skin texture/details. Using healing brush and blur filters is also the tools for amateurs...

in my experience the photographer wants detail and the client, flattery.

Some of my, shall we say, more plump, brides ask about re-touching and slimming. I always reply that i will go only so far. they must be recognisable by the family!

At least with a high resolution camera/lens you can reduce the detail if required.... but not the other way.. :)

"blur filters" OK thanks Bambi to proving that you know nothing about serious photography. Keep commenting about the D850 LV AF please, at least you're entertaining in that, but don't try serious stuff you might harm yourself.

It will probaby slugish as well....also a highend graphics card would probably make more of a difference than an 8 core cpu

Got a Geforce GTX 1060. Not high end but definitely not a slouch either.

Lightroom used to be much faster a couple of years ago. Even with the 36 MP D800E files I had back then.

Or stop using Lightroom.

This camera is for people who get paid to shoot, not for those who pay to shoot.

12x8 is hardly large and if they were taken at the same time, of the same subject and the K1 was using pixel shift you would be able to tell the difference. Unless the printing was so poorly done...

I think the point is that many of these cameras will be sold to people to take snaps of the family at Disney.

It is not for me to decide on people's buying decisions or infer anything from them.

I was simply musing on the perspective of analysing gear for gears sake. Few people actually "need" a camera like this. A few pros will want the DR and the ability to crop large or print huge. But not many. `

Of course, the point I make also explains why camera sales have fallen so much. We just don't need these enhancements any more for 99% of times.

Most paying clients will not care or even know if an image is taken with a D850 or a 3 year old D750. So lets put all this hype into perspective.

I agree with you 100% ... beside, whoever is behind the camera is what really matters. A great picture is not "excellent" because of the pixels but other things related to art that the camera itself cannot do.
A 4x6 ( 5x7 ) or even 8x10 pictures will look the same regardless of the quantity of pixels the camera has and as far as I know, not every photographer prints a wall size picture.
Some people believe that they will become pros by having a camera with more pixels. Good luck with that !

I totally agree with you, and personally i have, and enjoy using, old-ish, very old and incredibly old gear :)
But here we are on a gear review website, talking about new gear. Downplaying the amazing IQ and performance of these new machines (in this context especially) sound more like sour grapes than valid points.

I've read a lot of crazy stuff, but claiming higher MP sensors produce less noise certainly is a new one. It's also completely false.

There is a reason why Apple's iphones and Sony a7S low light monster, chose less MP to get better signal to noise ratio.

DxOMark a7S tests: "With less pixels on the Sony A7S full-frame sensor the pixels can be physically larger to improve the camera’s light gathering capabilities."

Yes, that is what people miss sometimes, if you had "enough" megapixels that is equal as your monitor you would be looking at 100% crop all the time, which can not be good as resizing to monitor resolution from higher MP source. It is perceptual sharpness. But there is probably limit how much you can notice difference given same monitor and 36 vs 46 MP, but there is no limit how much noise you can hide by downsizing given that noise performance is not going worse with higher MP sensor and in this case of d850 is not.

you have a good point - pixel peeping or looking at crops of these images don't look very good:

https://s29.postimg.org/vyp3734dz/d850-crop.jpg

...but if you take then entire image and down sample it...it helps a bit for landscapes.

@Bambi24 - wrong

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/4613822764/high-iso-compared-sony-a7s-vs-a7r-vs-canon-eos-5d-iii

your link: "The Sony A7S enables the use of incredibly high ISOs, including some unavailable to most cameras. When shooting at incredibly low light levels, the A7S will most likely give you significantly better results"

DxOMark: : "With less pixels on the Sony A7S full-frame sensor the pixels can be physically larger to improve the camera’s light gathering capabilities."

Claiming high MP improves low light gathering is the most ridiculous comment I have read on this site.

When I compare the pixel quality at 100% level, at base ISO most high-end camera is not that much different in terms of IQ.

But with higher MP picture, when you down-sample it from RAW file, you automatically get more condensed pixel. Thus IQ is better. I think that is the WOW factor when Sony a7RII's 42 MP picture presented to people. Don't look at the 100% pixel level, it is not that impressive.

Usually smaller pixels are better, provided you have gapless microlenses/BSI/Light pipes/etc. to get as much light as possible into the pixel. Aside from anything else the noise is finer grained. However there is a point where the signal is hard to dig out of the noise (cameras do a lot of in-camera work on noise) and then big pixels do seem to help, but it's at very low light levels.

@ Bambie read again:

"Note also that, because it has oversampled the scene, the 36MP camera's images are more detailed than those from the 12MP camera, even when downscaled to the same pixel count.

Even in this extreme case, although there is a difference, it's a difference that OOOOONNNNNLLY becomes relevant at very high ISOs, where the a7S's sensor design works to further lower its noise contribution. "

I think @Bambi24 misunderstood the point being made, specifically the correct point that when we downsize an image, its noise is reduced. To triumphantly claim that a high res sensor (at high res) has more noise than a low res sensor (at low res) is to compare an apple and an orange. First, downsize the high res image to the same low resolution (which will reduce its noise), then compare the two images for noise. Often they are about the same -- which tends to wipe the smug look off the face of the owner of the low res sensor, especially if it cost a lot.

You are both absolutely rigth, Sirs! :D

We already said goodbye to that with the Sony a7rII, Sony a99II. Canon 5Dsr don't have the same DR so only partly true here.

But 100 MP PhaseOne can't be beaten ;-)

Why the hell would anyone jump from Hasselblad to Fuji? They cost a fortune and are obviously pretty damn good. Who are these people that drop a camera maker on the strength of a few metrics?

Bambi24, with Hasselblad you probably need on-site assistance anyway. With Nikon, you just go and shoot :)
Joke aside, I think D850 and Nikon/Sigma Art are still a huge rival to medium format ecosystem.

"On the right side, there will be a word called download. Push the button."

You need to come up with a real-world content consumer scenario. In the real world people aren't seeing 25MB 45 megapixel image on sites. People are consuming 1024x1024 instagram pictures. Or looking at the pictures above from DPReview which are in 600x400.

There is a case to be made for wildlife cameras, which I made above. But this is not a wildlife camera, certainly not at 1kg+ / 7fps without back.

@Bambi24 So are you suggesting that landscape pictures taken with D850 and printed 60inchx40inch won't be any higher quality than pictures taken with a lower MP cameras? How D850 is a master-of-none-camera when it comes to landscape images, especially if ISO64 is as good as D810?

And yes, I sell large prints of landscape images.

Also, 9fps with D5's auto-focus will open door for new types high resolution wildlife images which was not possible before. And I am not talking about cropping. So D850 might prove to be a very special camera for wildlife pros provided that autofocus works as advertised - contrary to your jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none comment. D850, as speced, is not the same as your jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none 5DIV. Though the later is also a very polished camera indeed.

But Bambi24 buys Hasselblad for the name and to get 24/7 service. It seems that is with the idea that the service includes someone else snapping pictures ;-)

36 MP to 45 MP is like going from 10 to 12,5 MP. It will not make a big difference in prints. And you are not going to see the difference on screen either unless you crop allot. The speed update is much more important.

Bambi - your in of the best Trolls on this site. Keep up the good work!!

What do you mean by 'heard mentality' in this instance?

Herd mentality, or mob mentality, describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors. Examples of the herd mentality include Nikon makes the best DSLR and Leica is the best image capturing device, globalism, stock market trends, superstition, and home décor.

Right, and what in my comment was indicative of 'herd mentality', or indicative that I'm part of some herd, specifically, part of the Nikon [edit: or other brand's] herd?

Another herd or mob mentality symptom is grabbing pitchforks and going after Nikon and its fans while muttering herd mentality.

Are you replying to me? What, pray, did I say for or against Nikon?

No, I am not.

Another herd or mob mentality symptom is grabbing pitchforks and going after the people grabbing pitchforks and going after Nikon and its fans while muttering herd mentality :-)

Calm down shizgeo. It's obvious who Sandy is responding to and it's not you. As for the reply , have you not noticed you can only reply to the original post?

Geez Shig, he's talking about Brandless. Isn't that obvious?

Sandy b:

My apologies. In truth, when I asked if 'you' were responding to me, I was asking the first person, whose commentary up to that point I couldn't fathom. When you said 'no', I stupidly read it as from brandless and not you.

From there, the undoing of shigzeo was inevitable.

@Triplet Perar: Sure, but most likely it's completely irrelevant for 99,999999% of the viewers.
BTW, why aren't lenses discussed in the context of resolution? I always had the feeling that lenses are most important for what's being recorded by a great sensor

@Triplet Perar "There are people who can tell the difference."
- Sure, I am one of them! I definitely can tell the difference - all you need is to read EXIF. Simple, ha? :-) But please, don't push me to pixel-peep those huge images - they are all the same :-)

Often? I've seen many that are just fine. And it doesn't have to be great distance, just far enough to get a great detail-filled view.

I have to agree... these are surprisingly unappealing images, and zooming in on a scene in heavy fog or a face in heavy makeup doesn't really tell much. Give or take color rendering (which from https://www.dpreview.com/videos/9193994762/blind-portrait-shootout-sony-a9-vs-canon-1dx-mark-ii-vs-nikon-d5 I know I don't like from Nikon), this looks a lot like the A7RII... I wonder if Sony made this sensor too?

#1 reveals a bit too much noise at ISO 100. On the other hand, the ISO 400 images are very clean???

"While Nikon contracts with a silicon foundry to actually manufacture the chips, Nikon confirmed that the D850's sensor is entirely their own design, vs. an off-the-shelf unit from a sensor manufacturer."

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/nikon-d850/nikon-d850A.HTM#overview_start

Hannu108: Nikon has generally claimed that the Sony-built sensors they used were their own designs... and they were tweaked... but I don't know anybody else who is making BSI that big. I suppose Samsung could? Am I right in thinking this chip doesn't have PDAF? If so, this could be Sony's 42MP sensor tech, but without the PDAF stuff -- which would be very reasonable for a DSLR and very consistent with the 36MP one used in the previous model.