In 2016 Nikon released the D5 and D500 with the latter being a baby D5. Eighteen months later Nikon released the D850, a camera that was like the all-rounder that the FM3A had been at the end of the film era.
And soon after in 2018 the Z-mount mirrorless camera system was introduced marking the beginning of the end of the DSLR era.
In other words, Nikon threw a farewell party for the DSLR but still in 2026 that party is still ongoing.
For the nine year old D850 camera to be still manufactured and available is simply incredible.
I bought one new this year. Not out on a whim but on reflection of just how good the peak pro lenses worked with the excellent condition secondhand D500 I bought the previous year. It dawned on me that it wasn’t that my lenses were bad but that D610 body was not pulling its weight in the image quality department. I wasn’t getting results from the lenses until I bought and paired the D500 with them.
Looking at the other available bodies as well as checking older bodies I realized that the D850 would give me something other camera bodies including my D500 couldn’t—image quality. The pixel count after cropping was a little less than the D500. Or to put it another way, the 45.7MP translates D850 being a full-frame version of the D500 (and not the D5) sensor.
The images on the D500 were already fantastic. Now imagine that image quality in full-frame.
This is the reason I considered the D500-D850 combination. One is about speed and reach (sports and wildlife), the other is about image quality and flexibility (landscape and lowlight).
I consider this an unbeatable combination given that the DSLR system is all but closed.
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