11 Best Features of Nikon D850 for Landscape and Astro Photographers

With the launch of NIkon D850, the brand has made an impressive comeback in this segment. With the Nikon D750 already winning hearts, this newly announced professional full-frame DSLR camera is a gem especially for landscape, macro and astro photographers.

This 45.7 megapixel is capable of shooting 4K video at 30 fps and that too UHD, and moreover it can shoot 8K time lapse. With ISO range of ISO 64-25,600, which can be expanded to ISO 32-102,400, the D850 looks like an ideal camera for low-light photography. The camera also ensures that you get accurate and faster AF by using its 153 focus points, out of which 99 are cross-type.

To me this looks like an ideal DSLR camera for landscape, macro and sports photographer, so I though of summarizing the key 11 features of Nikon D850 in the article below.

1. Pinpoint Auto Focus

The all new pinpoint AF mode in Nikon D850 is a great addition for acro photography who love shooting in live view mode. In this mode, the camera uses a focus area one-fourth the size of the conventional AF point. This ensures that you achieve precise focus while doing macro photography and capture minute details in the subject.

2. Focus Peaking Display

The focus peaking display in the Nikon D850 makes the job easy for the camera to confirm manual focus on the subject especially while shooting at wide aperture, when using the live view mode. This is done by detecting highest-contrast edges of the subject and highlights them in a particular color designated by the user. The level of sensitivity of the manual focus detection can also be adjusted between three levels.

3. Focus Shift Photography

Using the focus shift photography function you can now shoot landscapes, flowers or specimens and keep everything from the foreground to the background in sharp focus. This function enables the D850 to shoot a series of up to 300 photos, and with each photo the focus position shifts automatically from the start point to infinity. The shutter release interval can be set from 0-30 s, while the focus step width can be selected from 10 levels. Once you are done with clicking photos using this function, simply combine the photos using focus stacking technique in post production stage to get the desired result.

4. Silent Photography Function

This function when used in live view mode, does not cause any mechanical vibration as it uses an electronic shutter instead of the mechanical shutter or mirror movement. The silent photography function ensures that you capture sharp photos by eliminating the vibration and sound caused by the shutter/mirror movement, thus getting maximum results out of 45 megapixel camera.

5. Natural Light Auto White Balance Mode

This white balance mode in Nikon D850 allows you to capture best possible white balance under natural light by quickly responding to changes in weather conditions.  While shooting scenes such as orange sunset, it automatically enhances the warm colors, helping create even more impressive pictures.

6. 0.75× Optical Viewfinder

The Nikon D850 using its optical viewfinder, helps in easier subject confirmation by provides a wide field of view with a 0.75× magnification, the highest ever offered by a Nikon FX-format D-SLR.

7. 153-Point AF System and AF down to -4 EV

The Nikon D850 uses the same 153-point AF system used in the D5, but covers 130% more area of the frame as it features 99 cross-type points. THe center focus point can function at -4 EV, while other focus points can go up to -3 EV. This technology ensures that the AF is accurate especially in low-light conditions, which proves ideal for most of the landscape and astro photographers.

8. 3.2 Inch Touch and Tilting Screen

Nikon claims the D850 to feature the most extensive touch functionality found in any Nikon DSLR camera till date. Using the 2359k-dot high-resolution display, you can browse through the images and check the focus in detail. The tilting LCD monitor can be used to shoot photos from different angles, so be it a low angle shot or a photo from top angle.

9. In Camera RAW Batch Processing

As we know that capturing photos in RAW format allows us to extract way more details, but for some it could be a time consuming practice. To counter this issue, Nikon has introduced in-camera RAW batch-processing feature using which you can easily apply basic adjustment to selected images.

10. New 1:1 Image Area Option

The D850 features this cool 1:1 aspect ration image area option, which is ideal for social media use as the square image format has become popular off-lately. Using this feature you can save time as the file that you capture would ideally by in square dimension.

11. Button Illumination and Layout

Being a landscape or astro photographer, you ideally would be sometime shooting in the dark. To help you easily change camera settings and to navigate through the camera, the D850 features illuminated buttons on the rear left side and release mode dial.

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