While I was away practicing night photography in the eastern Sierra, my new Nikon D850 arrived. Today I got to open the box, configure the menus, figure out where a couple of  controls that had (inexplicably) moved from their placement on my D810 had landed, and generally get to know my new go-to photographic capture device. The path to knowledge is practice; hence, the two versions of a photo of a very small flower I made in my garden today with my D850. I also plan to use my new beast to photograph on my light box tomorrow.

I haven’t grokked everything about this beast yet, but it is pretty clearly a powerful and well-designed tool. I like the added resolution in the RAW files. Compared to the D810, the sensor has gone from 36.3-megapixels to a whopping 45.7-megapixels, a gain of about 25% over an already high-resolution professional camera. I also like the new LCD screen, which is a bit larger, folds out into different positions, and is touch sensitive (yeah, I know, what took so long?).

In preliminary conclusion, if I weren’t a professional with the need to deliver very large prints to collectors and customers, would I have spent the considerable money to upgrade from the D810 to D850? Hard to say, but easy to say that this is a remarkable tool for pursuing the craft of photography.

Note: I have no professional relationship with Nikon, other than that Nikon has occasionally licensed my images for use in various publications and on the Nikon USA website. I paid for this camera with my own cash money.