Nikon D850 Specs are Official

[ChrisR]

Yes the flash question is a lurker .
(The quotes above came fromhttps://photographylife.com/everything- ... nikon-d850, by the way)

A question -
this camera has an SD slot and an XQD slot, and some "remote" abilities.

With only a few shots filling a Gigabyte, what's the quickest way to get the data files from a 500 image stack, into a PC?



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[mawyatt]

Yes the flash question is a lurker .
(The quotes above came from https://photographylife.com/everything ... nikon-d850, by the way)

A question -
this camera has an SD slot and an XQD slot, and some "remote" abilities.

With only a few shots filling a Gigabyte, what's the quickest way to get the data files from a 500 image stack, into a PC?

Chris,

I just unplug the card and plug into a USB 3 card reader, this is what I've always done. I've read horror stories of folks bending pins with CF and what not, but never had a problem with SD, CF or XQD cards. Just be careful and don't force anything. The XQD cards are really fast and very well mechanically designed, no wonder Nikon picked this for the D5 and D500. The pins are well recessed into 3 slots, and use controlled impedance interfaces. Very fast and rugged card and don't cost much more than an equivalent (speed and memory capacity) CF or SD card. They are slightly thicker and about 80% the size of CF cards.

Lexar has a 64GB 2933X XQD card with USB 3 reader which is what I have.

Best,

Mike

[RobertOToole]

More D850 info.

Just got back from a hands-on D850 release party. The Nikon rep was in NYC at the Nikon HQ briefing on the camera the night before.

Good news!

Nikon is marketing the silent shutter / Electronic shutter for time lapse photographers. Zero mechanical vibration and zero shutter wear and it will trigger flash no problem with electronic shutter. Fantastic!

The D850 uses the D810 battery but gets 50% better life but the rep says in electronic shutter mode it will get 1000s more images than the D810. That is great to hear, the D810 eats EN-EL15 batteries when shooting stacks.

Sensor photosites are gapless, a first for Nikon.

The rep claims 2 stops less noise than the D810 but his camera is on prototype firmware anyway and besides that I think 2 stops gain is hard to believe.

Focus peaking available in live-view. That will be useful for quick focus checks.

The camera handled nicely, AF was very responsive.

There are only 15 in the US. 1000 are coming in next week. Seems like a small shipment so I doubt I will get one that soon.

Manual is still being corrected and will be available online next week sometime.

Robert

[ray_parkhurst]

Excellent news all around. I'm in no rush...not an early adopter type. If all still looks good for PM use I'm hoping they will have stock for Xmas.

[mawyatt]

Robert,

Thanks for the update. Good news on the flash behavior with Silent Shutter, I was hoping it would work this way!!

I would expect that the D850 will use a compatible EN-15 battery system to the D500 and D810 (they say EN-15a), which should allow a battery adapter to be used. This gets tricky as Nikon made changes in the battery system from the D800 to the D500 even though they both use the "same" EN-15 batteries.

Some of the older factory EN-15 would not work with the new D500, Nikon offered an exchange for those incompatible older EN-15 batteries. Likewise, 3rd party batteries and adapters didn't not work with the D500. Later some 3rd party suppliers figured out the new battery system in the D500 and supplied compatible EN-15 batteries and adapters. So hopefully these will work with the D850.....soon we shall see!!

I agree about availability, I'm sure there are more Nikon Certified Ambassador D850 orders than the initial shipment can supply.

I did my homework the past few months and placed an order as soon as I was allowed at B&H, but I'll be trumped by the Nikon Certified Pros.

BTW the D850 is everything I had hoped for based upon the rumors going around, but I got totally surprised by the Nikon in-house designed BSI illuminated sensor...thought this would be the Sony BSI sensor.

Best,

Mike

[mawyatt]

An interesting thing about the in-house designed sensor is the cost of doing such. I can't say for sure what the development cost is with all the design time and test chips, before the actual production chips begin flowing. From my experience (not image sensors though), the total cost can get well north of $30M!! So Nikon must expect a long history with this sensor, which is good, otherwise they would not have made the investment and just used the Sony BSI sensor, assuming Sony would sell such to Nikon....which may be the very reason Nikon chose to develop their own sensor!

Best,

Mike

[ray_parkhurst]

Development costs are government-assisted. Once in production, assuming reasonable yield, the die cost is much, much lower than what they would need to pay Sony, so overall much better economics to make it yourself if the volumes and lifetime support it. Plus, supply issues due to earthquakes, tidal waves, nuclear meltdowns, etc have made parallel supply more critical in all markets. It seems the tipping point happened at Nikon and forced a change in plan.

[billjanes1]

Seems Nikon finally listened to some of the users and incorporated a few of those requests!!

Will be interesting to see how the silent shutter and flash work together, soon we shall see

Best,

Mike

I don't think that flash will work very well with the electronic shutter, since the readout time to terminate the exposure is likely too long. See Jim Kasson's blog for some details and test methodology for some other cameras. Readout times are often around 1/30 sec. The 850 may have faster readout, but not likely an order of magnitude greater.

http://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/13858/

Bill

[mawyatt]

Development costs are government-assisted. Once in production, assuming reasonable yield, the die cost is much, much lower than what they would need to pay Sony, so overall much better economics to make it yourself if the volumes and lifetime support it. Plus, supply issues due to earthquakes, tidal waves, nuclear meltdowns, etc have made parallel supply more critical in all markets. It seems the tipping point happened at Nikon and forced a change in plan.

Ray,

How do you know the Japanese government assisted Nikon in the development cost, I was unaware of this? The standard model for production cost for a high volume production chips, that's not state of the art, was around 70% ROI back in 2000. This included all development costs, testing costs, yields and whatnot.

I would expect a premium on these Sony chips, since they are SOTA, to be much higher than 70%. Agree, this may have been the driver behind Nikon developing their own sensor chip. I expect they get about 50 potentially good die per 300mm wafer, so if the wafter cost is ~$3K, then $60 per die. With test costs and package then it's probably more like $100 per die. So Sony's cost to Nikon might be close to $200 per die. However, the real reason may be that Sony did not want to enable their direct competitor in the high end camera business, so Nikon was forced to develop their own sensor.

If you know much about advanced semiconductor physics and design, then what Nikon chip designers have done is remarkable. Producing the same or better DR than the D810 sensor with a physically smaller pixel. Just look what Canon did with their 51MP sensor, this is what you would expect with a smaller sensor!! So hat's off to Nikon engineers for a chip design well done, very well done indeed!!

Best,

Mike

[mawyatt]

Seems Nikon finally listened to some of the users and incorporated a few of those requests!!

Will be interesting to see how the silent shutter and flash work together, soon we shall see

Best,

Mike

I don't think that flash will work very well with the electronic shutter, since the readout time to terminate the exposure is likely too long. See Jim Kasson's blog for some details and test methodology for some other cameras. Readout times are often around 1/30 sec. The 850 may have faster readout, but not likely an order of magnitude greater.

http://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/13858/

Bill

Bill,

What Nikon might be doing is not reading out the entire chip to get the exposure, only read out sections of the chip. This could be done quickly enough I would think.

For us macro users, most would likely use manual exposure (which is what I do), so readout time doesn't matter.

Best,

Mike

[billjanes1]

Seems Nikon finally listened to some of the users and incorporated a few of those requests!!

Will be interesting to see how the silent shutter and flash work together, soon we shall see

Best,

Mike

I don't think that flash will work very well with the electronic shutter, since the readout time to terminate the exposure is likely too long. See Jim Kasson's blog for some details and test methodology for some other cameras. Readout times are often around 1/30 sec. The 850 may have faster readout, but not likely an order of magnitude greater.

http://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/13858/

Bill

Bill,

What Nikon might be doing is not reading out the entire chip to get the exposure, only read out sections of the chip. This could be done quickly enough I would think.

For us macro users, most would likely use manual exposure (which is what I do), so readout time doesn't matter.

Best,

Mike

Mike,

I hope you are correct, but I have doubts. The time it takes for a shutter curtain (mechanical or simulated electronic) to traverse the height of the sensor is known as the shutter rate. The first (front) curtain opens and after an interval equal to the shutter speed, the rear curtain begins to close. With a mechanical shutter the rate may be 3 or 4 milliseconds, and this limits the synch speed. At shutter speeds below the shutter rate, the entire sensor will be illuminated for at least an instant and the electronic flash can fire when the sensor if fully exposed. At shutter speeds above the shutter rate, the rear curtain will begin to close before the front curtain has completed its traversal and only part of the sensor will be exposed.

With EFCS the front curtain is opened, exposing the sensor. The sensor is then reset column by column in a rolling fashion to begin the effective exposure, say from bottom to top, and the exposure is terminated by the rear curtain closing and moving in the same direction and speed as the reset. With a fully electronic rolling shutter (found in all dSLRs), the exposure is effectively terminated by reading out each column in the same order and speed as the reset. The shutter speed is limited by the readout rate, which may be 33 ms or more as in Jim's post. This would limit the top synch speed to 1/30 s, or slower since some tolerance must be allowed. A good article on this topic with illustrations is electronic-shutter-rolling-shutter-and-flash-what-you-need-to-know.

Many cameras with fully electronic shutters do not even allow flash. See here for a discussion involving the Sony A9 and the Olympus OMD em1-ii. (look at the very end of the article).

Hopfully the D850 will have a faster readout than these two cameras. A synch speed of 1/30 sec would be doable if the ambient light were kept low enough that it would not contribute significantly to the total exposure at this shutter speed. As I understand things, manual exposure has no bearing on the matter.

I hope this is correct and not too pedantic,

Best regards,

Bill[/url]

[rjlittlefield]

A synch speed of 1/30 sec would be doable if the ambient light were kept low enough that it would not contribute significantly to the total exposure at this shutter speed. As I understand things, manual exposure has no bearing on the matter.

Agreed, but for studio stacking there's no trouble with long sync speeds. Unless the image got marred by noise accumulation in warm pixels, many of us would be delighted with fully electronic shutter that played nicely with flash at even 1 full second exposure time. After all, standard advice if somebody is wrestling with vibration from a mechanical shutter is to set second-curtain sync and use a 1-2 second exposure time in a darkened room.

--Rik

[billjanes1]

Older Nikon SLR bodies with full electronic shutters, the D50, D70 etc, could sync flash up to 1/4000th sec. no problem.

Robert

As I recall the D70 was CCD with a global electronic shutter. As far as I know, global electronic shutters are not available in CMOS dSLRSs, although some high end CMOS movie cameras do have them. Current dSLRs with CMOS all have rolling shutters, as far as I know.

Regards,

Bill

[mawyatt]

Seems Nikon finally listened to some of the users and incorporated a few of those requests!!

Will be interesting to see how the silent shutter and flash work together, soon we shall see

Best,

Mike

I don't think that flash will work very well with the electronic shutter, since the readout time to terminate the exposure is likely too long. See Jim Kasson's blog for some details and test methodology for some other cameras. Readout times are often around 1/30 sec. The 850 may have faster readout, but not likely an order of magnitude greater.

http://blog.kasson.com/the-last-word/13858/

Bill

Bill,

What Nikon might be doing is not reading out the entire chip to get the exposure, only read out sections of the chip. This could be done quickly enough I would think.

For us macro users, most would likely use manual exposure (which is what I do), so readout time doesn't matter.

Best,

Mike

Mike,

I hope you are correct, but I have doubts. The time it takes for a shutter curtain (mechanical or simulated electronic) to traverse the height of the sensor is known as the shutter rate. The first (front) curtain opens and after an interval equal to the shutter speed, the rear curtain begins to close. With a mechanical shutter the rate may be 3 or 4 milliseconds, and this limits the synch speed. At shutter speeds below the shutter rate, the entire sensor will be illuminated for at least an instant and the electronic flash can fire when the sensor if fully exposed. At shutter speeds above the shutter rate, the rear curtain will begin to close before the front curtain has completed its traversal and only part of the sensor will be exposed.

With EFCS the front curtain is opened, exposing the sensor. The sensor is then reset column by column in a rolling fashion to begin the effective exposure, say from bottom to top, and the exposure is terminated by the rear curtain closing and moving in the same direction and speed as the reset. With a fully electronic rolling shutter (found in all dSLRs), the exposure is effectively terminated by reading out each column in the same order and speed as the reset. The shutter speed is limited by the readout rate, which may be 33 ms or more as in Jim's post. This would limit the top synch speed to 1/30 s, or slower since some tolerance must be allowed. A good article on this topic with illustrations is electronic-shutter-rolling-shutter-and-flash-what-you-need-to-know.

Many cameras with fully electronic shutters do not even allow flash. See here for a discussion involving the Sony A9 and the Olympus OMD em1-ii. (look at the very end of the article).

Hopfully the D850 will have a faster readout than these two cameras. A synch speed of 1/30 sec would be doable if the ambient light were kept low enough that it would not contribute significantly to the total exposure at this shutter speed. As I understand things, manual exposure has no bearing on the matter.

I hope this is correct and not too pedantic,

Best regards,

Bill[/url]

Bill,

My note about manual exposure is that you don't need to read out the sensor to get the exposure, it's set manually. Thus you just use a long exposure and trigger the flash sometime during the long exposure, the key here is to let the flash be pretty much the only light that exposes the image.

As mentioned by Rik, long shutter period and rear curtain synch solves this with conventional mechanical shutters. This is usually what I use with the D800, but this "long" is a couple seconds to allow things to settle in the camera. Hopefully with the D850 it can be pretty quick, even if 1/30 second or longer, it should be much quicker than using the mechanical front curtain...so no need for 1 to 2 second exposures.

I'm optimistic and soon we shall have these answers. Certainly interesting times!!

Best,

Mike

[RobertOToole]

Older Nikon SLR bodies with full electronic shutters, the D50, D70 etc, could sync flash up to 1/4000th sec. no problem.

Robert

As I recall the D70 was CCD with a global electronic shutter. As far as I know, global electronic shutters are not available in CMOS dSLRSs, although some high end CMOS movie cameras do have them. Current dSLRs with CMOS all have rolling shutters, as far as I know.

Regards,

Bill

Thanks for the D70 details Bill, I believe you are correct.

Robert