this is my nikon D850 there are many like it but this one is mine I've owned it
for over a year I've taken tens of thousands of photographs with it and I
figured it was high time for a proper review I've used this Nikon d80 all
around the world I've taken pictures with it from a camel in Egypt from an
ATV in British Columbia from a helicopter
blowing sandstorms in Death Valley National Park or during spraying surf on
the coast of Oregon and everywhere in between I love this camera and I'm going
to show you the pros and the cons from what I have experience with this camera
so that if you are considering buying it or if you already own it and you just
want to feel even better about the purchase that you've made listen to my
review first thing is the glass it is so
important that when you have a camera body of this level of quality with a
sensor that takes as high-resolution photos as this one does then you had
better have high high quality glass to go with it it is a complete waste of
money to have a camera body like this and low quality glass and of course
Nikon has its nikkor series of lenses that are tried and true and there are so
many other aftermarket lenses that fit this camera and work so well with it
the nikon d850 has a frame rate of seven frames per second which is high and if
you buy the extra battery grip which costs about an extra thousand dollars
you can get up to nine frames per second that isn't something that I use as a
landscape photographer but if I was shooting sports then definitely I would
make that extra investment Nikon says that the D850 can buffer 51 full frame
RAW images at one time so that's a lot of images to shoot before those images
need to buffer out onto your card this is vitally important for a camera
that is used extensively by landscape photographers two cameras ago I had a
Nikon d800 I was splashed by a wave on the beach in Oregon and within one
second that camera was completely dead I don't think the same would have happened
with this D850 it has rubber protectors that snap over all of the ports and
Jack's generally it is protected from at least some level of water as well as
sand the weather sealing is very important and I'm certainly glad that
this camera has that the Nikon D850 has two different memory
cards it has a conventional SD card and it also has the relatively new format of
the XQD card when I first bought the camera I was upset about the XQD card
because it was expensive to buy and it was also difficult to get a hold of a
card reader but now I am so happy that the XQD card is part of this camera and
in fact I wish that the camera had two x QD cards instead of an x QD and an SD
and the reason for that is that the XQD card is so fast the camera almost never
even has to buffer when you're shooting in rapid fire mode the upload from the
XQD card into my computer is lightning fast I'm talking like it feels like
double the speed of an SD card this camera is built tough it is a tank
it's got a magnesium alloy frame it's got a fantastic grip that I'll talk
about later it has some weight to it and it just feels rugged it just has that
kind of feel to it you know in fact if I was photographing late at night on the
wrong side of town and someone were to come up and try and get this thing from
me I would use this as the weapon this thing is built like a tank they can have
my D850 when they pry it from my cold dead hands
the screen for the live view is absolutely fantastic
it's got 2.3 million pixels so you can zoom in and review your photos at 100%
it's also very bright so you can see the live view clearly on a bright sunny day
and this screen is also a touch screen so you can scroll through your photos
you can DoubleTap on them to zoom in you can also hit a button to rate your
photos using the touch screen you can use the touch screen to focus the camera
to also use it for focus peaking also the screen tilts up and down and this is
a great feature to have although I continually forget to use it two weeks
ago I was shooting at the famous Portland Japanese maple tree and I was
down on my knees needing to get low to the ground and I should have used the
tilting live screen but unfortunately I forgot about this feature it's a great
feature to have the sensor on this nikon D850 is
unparalleled it has 45.7 steaming megapixels of raw
14 bit goodness that gets saved on to that XQD card this means you have to
expect that your file sizes on your computer are going to be about 100
megabytes in size but what these large file sizes allow you to do is to crop
way down if there is the need for that in post later on when you're at home in
addition you don't have to be shooting at the largest file size in RAW the
camera has a setting where you can choose large medium or small raw file
sizes so if you're shooting the family birthday party you can set that file
size to raw small and then save the size on your hard drive
the nikon D850 has 153 focus points and 99 of them are the cross-type this is
great for moving subjects and it works fairly well it's not perfect but it
isn't really a feature that I use because I'm more into landscape
photography I prefer single point focus I prefer manual focus and it works
perfectly for me the live view on the back of this camera
is fantastic and I very much enjoy using it especially for shooting panoramas
where I'm moving that camera across a number of shots I do find that the live
view tends to suck the juice out of the battery quite quickly but when you use
live view you also have an added feature of silent
shooting and when nikon says we have silent shooting they really mean it
because it is silent and this is great if you are taking candid shots of people
or you are doing wildlife photography and you're trying not to alert an animal
with your presence on the back of the camera there is a
thumb stick and this can be used to move the focus point using live view so you
can change your focus point around quite quickly this is a great feature to have
I really don't use it all that much but still I like having it in case I do need
it I love the time-lapse feature on this
camera in Live View mode the nikon has a built-in time-lapse function and this
means that you can shoot 4k time lapse videos without the use of an
intervalometer like you need on other cameras like the sony a7R3 the nikon
d850 saves video time-lapse files in mp4 file format and you can also shoot 8k
time-lapse if you are using the full shutter what's nice about the time-lapse
feature in 4k mode is that you're not actually using the shutter on the camera
and you're not wearing that thing out it's all an electronic function and
again it's saving the video file as an mp4 and it's completely silent you can
even set a timer within the camera to start shooting time-lapse and to turn
the back screen off to save your battery this is great if you want to shoot a
time-lapse of a sunrise but you don't actually have to be up in the morning in
order to shoot that time-lapse you can do the whole thing pre-programmed on a
timer I really like the viewfinder on this
camera it has a point seven five times magnification it's wide it's bright and
it also has the little shutter opening on it so that you can shut off the light
from leaking into the camera during very long exposure photography
video is very important for me because I am shooting stills and I'm also shooting
video in the field this camera shoots 4k video at 30 frames per second that's not
really a big deal because every camera these days shoots video at that type of
a standard what I wish this camera had was in-camera stabilization for the 4k
30 frames per second video it doesn't have that and it needs that nikon if you
are listening please put the image stabilization in on the 4k video the
camera also shoots 1080p video at 120 frames per second so you can slow down
the motion of anything that you're shooting the video uses the rear screen
while you're shooting I find that the focus system is good for subjects that
are staying in the same place but if we're talking about a moving subject the
focus system is not working all that well but again I'm a landscaper and my
subjects aren't moving all that much so the video system is great but it could
be better now the ISL functionality on this camera
is exciting for me the ISO goes down to 64 and at 64 ISO this camera has the
highest dynamic range of any camera in its class this is the most important
feature for me is dynamic range it means everything this means that the camera
can take a photo facing into a sunset it will capture the highlights in the sky
and also capture the darks in a dark foreground so having that 64 ISO is very
important to improve that dynamic range the ISO also goes up to 25,000 plus and
this is great for of course any type of low-light shooting or Astro photography
but I want to be clear that the dynamic range on this camera is nothing short of
amazing and dynamic range really is the most
important feature on an SLR camera for me as a landscape photographer it's more
important than having a massive size sensor to take these gigantic photos
that rarely any of us are printing 10 feet wide but the dynamic range means
everything and this camera performs it absolutely meets expectations it exceeds
expectations with dynamic range and again as a landscape photographer all of
my shooting situations usually involve situations with very high dynamic range
in between a sky and a dark foreground in terms of the Khans for this camera I
don't want to sound picky and I don't even want to sound entitled by even
mentioning them but if there were some things for improvement here they are it
is a little heavy but there's nothing we can do about that it's got a lot of
technology packed into this body I'm not going to complain about the weight but
it is something that when you're going on a long backpacking trip and every
gram of weight counts then this is a heavy thing to putting inside your pack
with the 4k video it definitely needs image stabilization in order to stay
modern and to compete with the other cameras that have it the camera does not
have a built-in flash which is a nice feature to have especially to control
other flashes with it the Wi-Fi system does not work well to upload your photos
using Wi-Fi and when shooting video the motion tracking focus does not work all
that well I just find that the shooting of video and the focus works best when
your subjects are not moving closer to the camera or further away from the
camera those cons aside this camera is a 10 out of 10 I bought it a year ago I've
taken tens of thousands of photos with it and I love this camera it was money
well spent I feel that it's an investment and I'm going to have it for
at least another three to five years this is like a companion I don't want to
leave home without it I certainly would never go on a trip without it because it
has given me the ability to create some stunning photos in situations where my
previous cameras would not have been able to perform but what I'm curious
about is your opinion and I like to hear what you have to say about
the nikon d80 do you own it or is it something that you've considered buying
what do you think about the features on this camera what do you think about its
capabilities please leave a comment below
I am always anxious to read what your opinions are because I learn a lot from
the opinions of others and if you found this video of value then please give it
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button and the little bell beside it thanks so much for watching I will see
you in my next video