Nikon D850 Review

Name: Nikon D850
Brand: nikon

September 14, 2017 | Mark Goldstein |

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 45.7 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 25Mb.

Noise

The base sensitivity of the Nikon D850 is ISO 64 but you can go down to ISO 32 (L1.0) if you wish. At the other end of the scale, the highest native sensitivity of the Nikon D850 is ISO 25600, but two boosted settings, ISO 51200 and ISO 102400, are also available.

JPEG	RAW
LO 1EV (ISO 32) (100% Crop)	LO 1EV (ISO 32) (100% Crop)


ISO 64 (100% Crop)	ISO 64 (100% Crop)


ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)


ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)


ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)


ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)


ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)


ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)


ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)


ISO 12800 (100% Crop)	ISO 12800 (100% Crop)


ISO 25600 (100% Crop)	ISO 25600 (100% Crop)


HI 1EV (ISO 51200) (100% Crop)	HI 1EV (ISO 51200) (100% Crop)


HI 2EV (ISO 102400) (100% Crop)	HI 2EV (ISO 102400) (100% Crop)

File Quality

The file quality settings available on the Nikon D850 include Basic, Normal and Fine for JPEGs, and the camera can also shoot 12- or 14-bit NEFs (Nikon's proprietary raw file format) and 8-bit TIFFs.

Fine (21.8Mb) (100% Crop)	Normal (12.0Mb) (100% Crop)


Basic (4.34Mb) (100% Crop)	Raw (91.6Mb) (100% Crop)


Tiff (135Mb) (100% Crop)

Night

The Nikon D850 lets you dial in shutter speeds of up to 30 seconds and has a Bulb mode as well for exposure times of practically any length, which is very good news if you are seriously interested in night photography. There is an optional long-exposure noise reduction function that can be activated to filter out any hot pixels that may appear when extremely slow shutter speeds are used, though we found no need for this when taking the photograph below at a shutter speed of 30 seconds, aperture of f/11 at ISO 64. We've included a 100% crop for you to see what the quality is like.

Active D-lighting (ADL)

D-lighting is Nikon's dynamic range optimisation tool that attempts to squeeze the full dynamic range of the sensor into JPEGs. Active D-lighting works “on the fly”, before the in-camera processing engine converts the raw image data into JPEGs. The available settings are Off, Low, Normal, High and Extra High.

Low

High

HDR Capture

The Nikon D850 offers the ability to shoot two differently exposed images in rapid succession, which are then blended in-camera to form a single, high-dynamic-range image. The exposure differential can be 1, 2 or 3EV, and you can choose from three different levels of smoothing (low, normal and high; with normal and high producing more realistic results than the low setting). Note that this feature is only available when shooting JPEG.

1EV

3EV

Picture Controls

Nikon's Picture Controls are akin to Canon's Picture Styles in being preset combinations of sharpening, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue. All Picture Controls can be tweaked to your liking, then saved and transferred to other cameras.

Neutral

Monochrome

Landscape

Flat

Crop Modes

The Nikon D850 is an FX camera but it can also shoot in one of four crop modes, including a 25-megapixel 1.2x crop mode, a 15-megapixel DX crop mode, a 30-megapixel 5:4 mode that uses the full height of the sensor but trims the sides, and a new "1:1" square mode. The boundaries of the cropped areas are denoted with thin black lines in the viewfinder, which otherwise continues to show the full FX view, allowing you to see what's happening outside the cropped frame - perfect for sports and action shooting.