dSLR thread

snowhiker

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Rumor has it that the D850 will have a D500 sensor scaled up to FX, so around 45-46 MP. One D850 spec listed on the B&H web site is 8K time lapse video. Interesting.

8K Nikon preview trailer here. No info just 48 seconds of hype.
 

LunarMist

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Rumor has it that the D850 will have a D500 sensor scaled up to FX, so around 45-46 MP. One D850 spec listed on the B&H web site is 8K time lapse video. Interesting.

8K Nikon preview trailer here. No info just 48 seconds of hype.

That is just time lapse, not real video. BH already has an info page, but no price, so no pre-orders.
 

snowhiker

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"New: the D850 will be on display at the Photo+ Expo in October" per the Nikon Rumors site here. We'll have to wait till October, probably, before we get any real info. :(

Nikon's press release mentions the D850 is usable for "commercial sports" so maybe the rumors of 8 FPS is accurate. I doubt anything more than 6 FPS, 8 would be incredible.
 

LunarMist

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"New: the D850 will be on display at the Photo+ Expo in October" per the Nikon Rumors site here. We'll have to wait till October, probably, before we get any real info. :(

Nikon's press release mentions the D850 is usable for "commercial sports" so maybe the rumors of 8 FPS is accurate. I doubt anything more than 6 FPS, 8 would be incredible.

It seems to be arriving sooner rather than later, but never a good time for me. I think it will be 8FPS as that is the minimum considered acceptable nowadays for commercial sports. That should be easy enough at 48MP with the processor-integrated Sony sensors.
 

snowhiker

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Now the rumor for the D850 is that it will shoot "faster than 8 fps."

I wonder if sales of the D500 and D5 have dropped to a point that protecting sales of those models, by keeping the frame rate of the D850 artificially low, no longer matter? This will make the 5D4 seem "slow" at only 7 fps. Canon has no current FF body between 7 and 14 fps?

And if the D850 is 45'ish MP and say 10 fps there would not be need to buy a D500 ever, unless you needed a second body or price was the major concern. A D850 cropped to APS-C would yield the same MP as the D500 at around 20MP. Brilliant. So all the landscape/portrait/studio/fashion/real estate photographers that want to "dabble" in sports/wildlife/birding can do so with a "fast" D850.

Dream come true. I should start working a bunch of O/T so I can afford a D850.
 

LunarMist

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It's weird but when WD Easystore gets to about 30% the HDtune reports a bunch of errors. :carp:
On another computer is appears normal. How can that be happening on USB from the motherboard?
 

LunarMist

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The 6D MkII seems to have a gimped sensor in terms of dynamic range. :roll:

The sensor is similar to the previous version prior to the 2016 on-sensor ADCs. It's a cheaper, crappier hardware choice, so nothing that is "gimped" by software/firmware and can be improved.
Few buyers expected that and are complaining.
I don't assume you mean anything by using the word gimp, but is rather insulting for those of us with injuries and physical challenges. :(
 

LunarMist

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Oh, I thought this post was missing and it turns up in the wrong forum. :lol:
It's only on one computer, the Z97 (4790K). All three drives were showing the same errors, though not in exactly the same locations.
I tried different cables as well. Eventually I used the NUC for testing the last 4 and they were fine.
 

snowhiker

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My initial excitement for the D850 has cooled a bit. I was thinking the D850 would be a D810 + extra goodies, vis-a-vis: 1) Resolution bump from 36 to 46MP, 2) Improved AF system (D5/D500 system), 3) Tilt screen, 4) WiFi/Snapbridge, 5) 8-10 FPS, 6) Joystick to select AF point, etc, etc.

However, if the D850 is indeed a scaled up D500 (DX-->FX sensor resolution) with improved HIGH ISO performance, then, and here's the kicker, there has to be something sacrificed to get that better high ISO performance. I have the feeling now that the low end of the ISO scale is going to suffer and the DR of the D850 will be less than the D810. I don't think the base ISO of the D850 will be the same as the D810's ISO 64.

Then the decision becomes should you spend $4000 and buy a D500 AND a D810 to get the best of both worlds or spend close to $4000 and buy the jack-of-all-trades D850?

Pure speculation of course. If the D850 is at least as good as the D810 for landscape/portrait/studio/real estate work, PLUS has all the additional goodies of the D500 it will be a wild success. But, if the D850 is not as good as the D810 for L/P/S/RE work then I think it will be a disappointment to the many people that want to upgrade their D810.
 

LunarMist

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Just wait until it is on the streets for a while. Nikon has a poor record of initial products lately. :(
Two cameras is the minimum I would take into the field since they tend to malfunction either naturally or due to damages.
 

snowhiker

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Well I guess I won't be able to rent a tele converter from LensRentals for my eclipse trip. Photographing the sun at 500mm will result in a small image so was thinking of renting a 2x converter. I guess I should have put my order in MONTHS ago. Motels are probably going to be $500-1000/night as well. Guess we'll be sleeping in the car or 200-300 miles from eclipse path and driving to the eclipse in the early morning.
 

LunarMist

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Well I guess I won't be able to rent a tele converter from LensRentals for my eclipse trip. Photographing the sun at 500mm will result in a small image so was thinking of renting a 2x converter. I guess I should have put my order in MONTHS ago. Motels are probably going to be $500-1000/night as well. Guess we'll be sleeping in the car or 200-300 miles from eclipse path and driving to the eclipse in the early morning.

Just buy a TC and resell it.
 

Stereodude

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Well I guess I won't be able to rent a tele converter from LensRentals for my eclipse trip. Photographing the sun at 500mm will result in a small image so was thinking of renting a 2x converter. I guess I should have put my order in MONTHS ago. Motels are probably going to be $500-1000/night as well. Guess we'll be sleeping in the car or 200-300 miles from eclipse path and driving to the eclipse in the early morning.
Unless you've been practicing shooting the sun and have the technique down cold I'm not sure what's you're trying to do is a worthwhile endeavor. You don't have a lot of time to get shots as the sun and Moon are moving and I'm sure the internet will be full of better pictures (at least vs. what I could take with my gear).

It's sort of like expecting to get things right and take great pictures at the very first wedding you shoot having never done it before or even practiced. Not impossible, but probably unlikely.
 

snowhiker

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Unless you've been practicing shooting the sun and have the technique down cold I'm not sure what's you're trying to do is a worthwhile endeavor. You don't have a lot of time to get shots as the sun and Moon are moving and I'm sure the internet will be full of better pictures (at least vs. what I could take with my gear).

It's sort of like expecting to get things right and take great pictures at the very first wedding you shoot having never done it before or even practiced. Not impossible, but probably unlikely.

Yeah of course there are going to be better pics on the internet, from NASA, etc. But they wouldn't by MY photos. I was thinking of just shooting 1080p video and call it a day anyways so not a whole lot of technique needed. Might just kick back and enjoy the show instead.
 

snowhiker

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Expanded list of rumored Nikon D850 specs here.

Highlights:

- 45.75MP full frame CMOS sensor.
- .75x viewfinder.
- ISO 64-25,600.
- No AA filter.
- tilty-flippy screen.
- XQD and SD (UHS-II) card slots.
- D5/D500's 153 point AF system.
- AF point joystick.
- 4K, no crop, video. 30p? or 60p?
- 2K, 120p video.
- 7 fps, 9 fps with grip and EN-EL18a battery.
- Silent shooting (no mirror/shutter) @ 6 fps, or 30 fps @ 8MP.
- buffer of 51, 14-bit raw frames.
- focus stacking.
- $3600.
 

Tea

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Help!

Tannin has gone mad with the credit card and I don't know how we are going to be able to buy groceries for the next 10,000 years.

At first he just bought a 7D II, a 600EX II, and a couple of Mark III teleconverters. But then he got the taste of blood in the water and ordered a 100-400 II, 5D IV, a 600/4, and I rather fear that there is a 16-35/4 on the way as well.

The only thing I can think of that might be worth trying is to sell him to North Korea.
 

Tannin

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I've got myself into a bit of a pickle, Dave. I normally run four bodies.

#1 - primary birding camera, attached to the best birding lens
#2 - dual-purpose wildlife and landscapes, attached to the 100-400 (I may have a 70-300L arriving by way of a swap for my old mark 1 100-400).
#3 - primary landscape camera, usually on the 24-105
#4 - dual purpose, wide angle and emergency spare (10-22 and/or 10-17 fish)

Up until recently, these were:
#1 - 7D
#2 - 1D IV
#3 - 5D II
#4 - 50D

This is the traveling rig, on arrival somewhere bird-rich I'd generally swap #1 and #2 to put the 1D IV on the 500/4 and then walk around with that plus one or both of #3 and #4

Then the 7D crapped out so I replaced it with a 7D II, and ordered various not-quite-so-ancient lenses and accessories, followed by the 5D IV.

The 5D IV is dual purpose. Mainly it is for landscapes with 24-105 or 100-400 (because I hate the brain dead 5D II AF system), but also for use with the 500/4 when birding in low light. (Rainforest especially.) That left me with:

#1 - 7D II (500)
#2 - 1D IV (100-400)
#3 - 5D IV (24-105)
#4 - 5D II with the 50D being sold. That requires a 16-35 or similar as the 10-22 is an EF-S. Unresolved was the question of what to do about the 10-17 fish, which fits on any camera but only produces its full zoom range on APS-C. I'm fond of that lens and use it quite a bit. There is no full frame equivalent. The Canon fisheye zoom is a bizarre and utterly stupid design which is no better, in reality, than a fisheye prime as you have near-zero zoom range without crippling vignetting. (I do not count a circular fisheye function as something any sane anthropoid over the age of 9 would ever use. Even Tea hates them.)

Then things got complicated. I had sent the 7D (mark 1) off for repair, more in hope than expectation, and it unexpectedly came back fixed, (Albeit with a $600 bill.) Now I have five bodies and I only need four.

The sensible thing to do would be sell the 5D II as it's such an annoying thing to use, and redeploy the 7D as #4 with the fish and the 10-22. But I had already sold the 10-22! Besides, for all of the 5D II's horrible AF function, it does produce beautiful low-noise images. On the other hand, the 7D is a joy to use. It's like having a brand new camera as although I've owned it for years it has always been used for birding with long lenses, practically never as a general walkaround.

I really don't need five cameras! If only I could have the 7D AF and handling with the 5D II sensor! I could sell both of them - seeing the back of the 5D II with relish and the 7D with tears - and put the money towards a 5D III in role #4, but that seems extravagant given that #4 is my least-used body. Besides, to use the fish I'd have to borrow the 7D II (which would be my only APS-C body) and I dislike taking bodies off the long lenses as I have learned the hard way that you never, ever leave yourself without suitable bodies on the birding lenses as the moment that you do some mega-rarity turns up and sits there in perfect light laughing at you. Believe me, this happens far more often than you'd think. Yes, I could work around that - both Mark IVs are very competent bird cameras - but it's a little messy, and it still leaves me spending even more of Tea's grocery money on a 5D III.

(The APS-H 1D IV is quite good with the fish too, by the way. You only lose the first two or three mm from the zoom range to vignetting, so it's effectively even wider than 10mm on APS-C. But all things considered it's still best to use APS-C for the fish where possible.)
 

Tannin

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One other thing I am considering is a pocket camera. I don't carry a smart phone and prefer real cameras anyway, but there are two circumstances where a shirt-pocket size camera would be of real benefit:

#1 Where I take a big, heavy birding lens on a long walk somewhere which is either familiar or not especially scenic, and thus not worth lugging a second DSLR and lens around for.
#2 Small country towns and public places where I feel like a complete tool waving a great big DSLR around. I mean they all know that you are a tourist, but you don't have to look like one as well.

So I have considered buying an EOS M mirrorless for this purpose, as it could also act as an emergency spare (via adaptor). (Remember, I travel into the deep outback regularly, and anything that is going to fail, in my experience, will nearly always wait until you are three or four days drive away from civilisation, preferably with a flooded river blocking the route.)

But it is quite a bit to spend on a peripheral purpose, and in any case, I doubt that an EOS M is truly pocketable. Given the size of an EOS M, wouldn't it make fore sense just to take one of my existing DSLRs and be done with it?

So I am thinking about a true pocket camera. I have my eye on the Canon G9X, G7X, and the Olympus Tough TG 5, but I'm some way off a decision.
 

ddrueding

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Thank you Tony for making my camera situation seem just a bit more reasonable. I made my wife listen to me reading the entire post above (along with my annotation) and she seemed a bit grateful. With only 2 bodies and the largest lens I own being the 100-400II, I'm practically a minimalist.
 

LunarMist

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The main thing that sucks is that the 80-400 and 200-500 are not up to par off from the center.
If only there were some easy way to fit the Canon 100-400 II on the D850. :(
 

LunarMist

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BSI sensor :) "ONLY $3300." :) About $300 less than I expected. :) Specs look really good. :)

The only thing that sucks is that it costs $920 to upgrade from 7 to 9 FPS. Battery grip $400, EN-EL18b battery $150 and $370 for battery charger. :(

ANY cheaper battery chargers for the EN-EL18b battery?

The theory is that the 9FPS type of user will already have batteries and chargers for their pro D4/D4s/D5 bodies. There are some generic chargers, though not specifically listed for the b version of the battery pack they should work.
 

snowhiker

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$945 for +2 fps = suckage!

The theory is that the 9FPS type of user will already have batteries and chargers for their pro D4/D4s/D5 bodies. There are some generic chargers, though not specifically listed for the b version of the battery pack they should work.

True, for the user that already has those batteries and chargers. The new user is going to be boned with extra fees to get +2 fps. Almost forget you have to buy a battery chamber cover, BL-5 for $25 as well, according to the D850 accessories chart:

Nikon-D850-camera-accessories.jpg

$945 is a huge chunk of change to swallow. I could choke down the $400 MB-D18 vertical grip/battery pack expense if I could get the +2 fps using standard EN-EL15 batteries/chargers that I already own. The extra cost of 1) $150 EN-EL18b battery, 2) $25 battery chamber cover and 3) the ridiculous $370 battery charger is a real bummer.

The added cost of the grip/accessories needed for +2 fps is about HALF the cost of an entire D500 camera!
 

LunarMist

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Holy moly they are shippingcnext week. Maybe I should not have ordered some.
 

snowhiker

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This "generic" EN-EL18a battery charger is a reasonable $75.

It looks like an exact copy of the Nikon one here. Except for the black vs gray color.

I was actually, kinda, considering selling my D610 to my friend and upgrading to a D850 sometime in middle/late 2018 but the $945 "upgrade" cost to get to 9 fps reduces my interest. Might as well get a D500 and 10 fps. Same pixel density as the D850. Perfect for birding.

And other thing. The D500 achieves 10 fps with just ONE EN-EL15 battery while the D850 requires an EN-EL15 _AND_ an EN-EL18 battery?!?! Sure, 20MP vs 45MP but still.

I wonder if this "Battery + Battery chamber cover + Charger for $39" alternative would work with a D850 to get the extra 2 fps. Or does Nikon do some kind of "firmware/DRM" type check to ensure the battery is a "real" Nikon battery?
 

Tannin

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The difficulty will be the ability of the battery to deliver sufficient amperage. Whether Nikon do the scumbag DRM thing, I couldn't say. In Canonland, there are two identical-looking batteries to suit most semi-pro models: one can deliver more amperage and is required for the highest possible speed with a 7D II. It also ships with the 5D IV and possibly one or two other recent models. However you can use the old style battery (e.g., the one that shipped with your 5D II or 7D Classic) in a 7D II and it works fine, but you lose one or two FPS. This is an excellent arrangement as you get the benefit of the high FPS but you can still resort to one of your older batteries if you run the new one down.

PS: but to tell them apart, you need yor best reading glasses to read the fine-print model number. Why couldn't they have made the new battery a different colour? Marker pen doesn't show up on black, and I don't want to attach a label in case it comes off and gums up the works, so I just go cross-eyed and grumble.
 

LunarMist

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I've used various markers but the P-touch labels are resilient and don't fall off. I have a dozen LP-E6 type with labels on the end and about 10 LP-E4 type with labels on the side in a position that does not contact the battery chamber during insertion/extraction.
 
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