The Nikon D850 may well be the only DSLR camera you ever need. So we have made use of the camera in various scenarios and in this article we look at using the D850 for portraits.

Why is the D850 ideal for portraits? Well, we have selected five good reasons and illustrate these points through portrait shoots in the studio, outdoors and in window light.

Let 's go through each reason as to why the Nikon D850 is great for portraits.

Nikon D850 for Portrait Photography: Resolution and Detail

Nikon D800

Nikon D800 - 100% Crop

Nikon D850

Nikon D850 - 100% Crop

Studio photographers demand high levels of detail and that is what 45.4-million pixels will give you. Of all full-frame DSLRs, only the Canon EOS 5DS has more pixels and that camera is not an all-rounder like the D850.

If you use a perfectly acceptable 240dpi print resolution, you 'll get print sizes of 874 × 583 mm from full-resolution images. That 's larger than A1!

A word of warning. With such fine detail, the spotlight is on lens quality and the photographer 's technique. Lens distortions and camera shake will be more obvious.

When shooting handheld you 'll need to give yourself an extra 1EV shutter speed in order to avoid blurry looking images. That does minimise the amount of possible light intake.

But in the right hands and with a good lens, the detail is excellent. Don 't need all the pixels? Full-resolution images can be downsized and will in turn look even sharper.

We made like-for-like images with the Nikon D850 and D800 in the studio to show the difference in image size. The D800 is no slouch, but the D850 is a level up.

What about detail in low contrast light, using higher ISO settings? Well, images are clean from ISO 32 to ISO 1600. Luminance noise is more obvious at ISO 3200 and steadily increases up the ISO range.

Observations on noise are made from viewing images at 100%. Downsize to 50% (similar to viewing 24-million-pixel images) and noise is a little less obvious.

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