This is the fourth post in a series of Nikon D850 tests. The series starts here. In addition, you should be able to find all the posts about the camera in the Category List on the right sidebar, below the Articles widget. There’s a drop-down menu there that you can use to get to all the posts in this series; just look for “D850”.
With the D4/D4S and the D800/D810, it looked like Nikon was continuing in the direction that it had started with the x and h versions of earlier flagship D-series cameras, but with a twist. With the earlier cameras, there were high-speed lower-resolution, and lower-speed, high-resolution (for the day) models. The D4 was clearly a high-speed camera, although resolution crept up marginally from the D3/D3S. The D810 was the replacement for the D3x, but for the first time, it wasn’t a no-holds-barred pro camera. And it wasn’t priced like one. Good move, Nikon, at least in terms of the marketplace.
So, when the D5 came out, it seemed like a logical successor to the D4S, a low-light, fast-handling monster with prescient AF abilities. I expected the D810 replacement to push the resolution up significantly, hopefully to 70 MP or so. Of course, I was disappointed. Instead of much of an increase in resolution, Nikon chose to make the D850 more of an all-around camera, upping the frame rate and improving the autofocus.
I felt the same way about Sony and the a7x line of cameras. They came out with focused versions of them: the a7S and a7SII for video, the a7 and a7II for middle-of-the-road, and the a7R and a7RII for high-resolution. When the a9 was announced, it was also a focused camera that sort of attacked the D5 space. I had hoped for a big jump in resolution with the a7RIII, especially after the small one with the a7RII.
Again, my hopes were dashed. The a7RIII, like the D850, appears to attempt to be an all-around camera. Both the D850 and a7RIII may prove to be smart product management moves for Nikon and Sony. But I really want higher resolution. I realize that the only reasons to want more resolution are to print big and fill 8K monitors (which are thin on the ground at present, and in any event, if you ignore Bayer CFA losses, the resolution of both the D850 and the a7RIII surpass that of a 7680×4320 monitor). So most folks don’t want or need it. But I want to get all I can out of the great lenses we have now, and am delighted when I get an opportunity to make a big print.
Sony has said that they will ship a 100 MP 33×44 mm BSI sensor in 2018. It’s probably be in Fuji and Hasselblad (and maybe Pentax) cameras in early 2019. I guess I’ll just have to wait for that. I can’t see spending $40K for a heavy, bulky, soon-to-be-obsolete 100 MP Hassy or Phase One camera right now.
Mike C says
So does that mean you’re not going to test the a7riii? 🙂
I was disappointed with how incremental the improvements were, but I’m still going to get it as a high end street photography/travel camera (I’m a casual shooter and I figure the improved AF and stability will open up some interesting possibilities).
JimK says
No, I’m going to test it. It looks like a worthy set of improvements, just not mostly in the direction I was looking for.
Erik Kaffehr says
Hi Jim,
I sort of feel the same. A lot of usability improvements.
Going 100 MP on large sensor MFD doesn’t make a lot of sense for you, I guess, as the fine lenses you have are probably not designed for 54×40 mm sensor size. But, I guess you may be in for a looong wait for 100 MP on the GFX. I know that feeling, I was waiting for the A7rII. The A7r did not tick all my check boxes, so I had a looong wait for the A7rII. The A7rIII may have a lot of usability improvements.
My guess is a bit that you want small pixels rather than just a lot of them, for clear rendition of fine detail. What is your take on that?
One surprise, the A7rIII has many of the hallmarks of a “9-level” camera from Sony. Triple presets, external PC sync.
My guess is that we will see a A9r, else they could just release the A7rII with a A9r designation, but they did not.
Best regards
Erik
JimK says
I’m for lots of pixels. I think what Fuji did with the microlenses in the GFX makes for impressive measurements, but I don’t think that on balance, it helps the images.
Matthew says
I’m for lots of pixels. I think what Fuji did with the microlenses in the GFX makes for impressive measurements, but I don’t think that on balance, it helps the images.
Can you elaborate on this statement?
Thanks!
JimK says
When Fuji reduced the size of the microlenses in the GFX from what seemed to be becoming the new standard of nearly-100% coverage, they made the pictures sharper. That really showed up on slanted edge testing, since that test is by design insensitive to pixel pitch, but very sensitive to pixel aperture. They also increased aliasing, since the smaller lenses increased high-frequency detail above the Nyquist limit. Although the small microlenses made for great test results, I don’t think all those benefits carry over into real photography. I’d rather have more samples than a smaller sampling window.
Fotonoto says
Maybe there will be an A9R, stacked sensor, high FPS AE/AF, same e-shutter, and of course no black out, around 60~70 Mp at 8~10FPS.
Sony didn’t specify how much FPS A7RIII does AE/AF detection. But due to the m-shutter and according to the EYE AF burst shooting performance test videos, I doubt that it’s crazy high. Will you test this part?
Andy says
With the A7rIII not getting a new sensor I suspect there will be an A9r next year, it would be a logical progression for the A9 range.
Eamon says
I think the market (in the form of Canon) led both Nikon and Sony in this direction. The EOS 5D Mark 4 (and Mark 3 before it) has sold really well, and is in very widespread professional use. Although it isn’t quite as high resolution as, say, the D810 or A7RII, it seems definitely aimed more at the do-it-all target — i.e. high enough resolution for demanding detail applications, but also a speedy, responsive camera for weddings, sports, editorial, travel etc. (The A7R2, for example, is irritatingly unresponsive in many scenarios.)
It’s clear that a large number (i.e. out-of-the-ordinary large, compared to past history) of pros make the 5D Mark 4 their main camera (and did the same with the 5D Mark 3). That was my clearest impression of the 5D Mark 4 when I reviewed it: if I was trying to make a living with a camera, there’s nothing besides really top-level pros sports, or the highest end product photography, that I could not handle easily with this camera. So I think Nikon and Sony are taking a lesson from the market leader here.
Erik Kaffehr says
Hi,
Most cameras are probably good enough for most users, I would suggest. Some users are looking for perfection. In many ways, I would actually think that going smaller formats makes a lot of sense. After all, perfection calls for big lenses. So, you get the Otus, or the Sigma Art prime. Both are big and heavy lenses.
To do a proper match, we would need a few hundred megapixels. But, in the real world we don’t need that kind of resolution very often. I would also suggest that the photographer’s skill set is often a limiting parameter.
Look at Fujifilm, they opted for APS-C and they seem to be stuck at 24 MP or so, right now. They decided to go 44×33 mm for the larger format and they designed their lenses for 100 MP, or so.
Video also plays a role, one of the reasons Sony stays at 42 MP may be that it plays well with 4K video at APS-C.
On the other hand, we will have 8K video in a few years. Forza Silicon has developed a 133 MP sensor for NHK. It samples four colours for each 8K video pixel.
One aspect that may limit pixel growth rate may be computing power. It seems that computers are not getting faster per CPU and it seems that image manipulation softwares are not that good at utilizing multiple CPU designs.
Storage has done incredible progress. When I started seriously in digital photograpghy, we had 250 GByte drives. Now, 4TB is quite mundane. On my MacPro I used to have dual 6TB in a RAID 1. Right now I am on a Lenovo Laptop connected to a 12 TB RAID 5 using 4 TB disks.
At the same time, we may be getting into diminishing returns. Print sizes and screen sizes are really to small to display all the detail of our images.
I may upgrade to 4K projection the coming months. So, I can show my 40 MP images at 8 MP resolution.
Best regards
Erik
Matt Anderson says
Hi Jim, I posted this on the Sony DPR forum, would love to hear your thoughts over there.
“Any thoughts on whether or not the Sony a7RIII will have a higher color depth ( compared to the a7RII)?
Secondly, couldn’t the Sony a7RIII potentially have a much much higher color depth ( RGB S/N ) with the pixel shift multi shooting?
What seems contrary is the faster sensor reads and the faster electronic shutters. Are CFA – Bayer layers less opaque, hence, having less color s/n, yet, color scores keeping going up. Like in the case of the D850 vs D810. But, with pixel shift, I see a huge potential better color s/n. ( assuming color profiles are robust enough to accomodate )
Nikon D850 Color Score 26.4
Nikon D810 Color Score 25.7
Sony a7RII Color Score 26
Sony a7RIII Color Score ???
Lastly, I wonder why DXO doesn’t have 2 scores for a camera like the Pentax K-1. One score for single shot, and I assume, a higher score for pixel shifting.
Any thoughts on this ?
From DXO: “Portrait photography: Color Depth
Flash studio photography involves a controlled and usually maximal amount of light. Even when shooting with hand-held cameras, studio photographers rarely move from the lowest ISO setting. What matters most when shooting products or portraits is to aim for the richest color rendition.
The best image quality metric that correlates with color depth is color sensitivity. Color sensitivity indicates to what degree of subtlety color nuances can be distinguished from one another, often meaning a hit or a miss on a pantone palette. Maximum color sensitivity reports, in bits, the number of colors that the sensor is able to distinguish.
The higher the color sensitivity, the more color nuances that can be distinguished. As with dynamic range, color sensitivity is greatest when ISO speed is minimal, and falls rapidly with rising ISO settings. DxO Labs has focused on measuring only maximum color sensitivity.
A color sensitivity of 22bits is excellent, and differences below 1 bit are barely noticeable.””
JimK says
I have never understood exactly what DxO is measuring with this metric, why they are measuring it, and why they are reporting it in bits. I also hate the way they reduce vectors to scalars. So I am the wrong person to answer this question.
Erik Kaffehr says
Hi,
I am with Jim on this. What DxO is doing is measuring noise. They make a lot of noise about it.
Just to say, I think they have a lot of pretty good data. But, it is basically about noise. Boiling down all things into a single figure of merit makes a lot of sense for fanboys, but for no one else.
You can get a lot of good information from digging into data. They publish a lot of data. That may be more interesting in their lens tests, though.
Read it carefully, it may be a valuable resource. But, be aware that all tests have limitations. A test is pretty useless without a protocol.
Chambeshi says
A refreshing diagnosis of the recent changes in evolving niche boundaries of the Keystone players in the Greater Nikon Ecosystem. Your quest for pixels is interesting, as to my naive understanding of the electronic trade offs, more pixels [i.e. increasing higher sensor density] increases the noise overheads.
I agonized over the costs of investing in MTF, specifically Hasselblad but the D850 has knocked this on the head….. Yet, with glass of top quality am I right in saying that sensor resolution in the specs of the D850 still falls short of what the top optics can deliver? By top I mean Zeiss ultrawides, a 135 f2 APO Sonnar, and the 200 f2G Nikkor etc
Yet for landscapes and wildlife, I can still see the need for higher resolution for really large prints (as you say). The latter (large prints) are, admittedly, constitute a finite market and at higher production costs, including challenges getting such images. Perhaps, the practical tradeoff is to take one’s tactics back a couple of decades to the film days, where operating options were tight. Fujichrome 100 improved a stop or 2 on Kodachrome 64. But above all, one’s tactics were set by keeping ISO low but shutter speeds etc had to be managed carefully.
I would be interested to hear your views as to a approx estimate on what is the cap on high ISO in the D850 but still get images of acceptable quality? And in this respect, how big is a big print? My understanding is 3200 max but try and shoot under ISO 1000 where possible. With landscapes in nearly all conditions on solid support, I shoot the D850 at ISO 64.
Thanks
Phil Lindsay says
Does the new Sony A7R3 have the same 12 bit operation limitation in continuous shooting mode as does the A7R2? I think it would very convenient to be able to use continuous mode exposure bracketing instead of single mode bracketing as must do on my A7R2.
JimK says
I don’t know. I have one on order but don’t expect to see it until the first of December at the earliest.
Phil Lindsay says
Mine is also on order but I would like to confirm that the 12 bit limitation on continuous shooting has been removed before the purchase. Any suggestions for getting the answer? Would Sony Technical Support be useful?
It’s a big deal to me because I shoot landscapes at 100 ISO and use 1/3 stop bracketing. The continuous shooting mode is so much more convenient in the field!
JimK says
Look at this:
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4220179