Quote Originally Posted by Steve Axford View Post
Do you think that the D850 makes sense as an upgrade to the D800? [/COLOR] ....
On the whole, for my purposes, it appears to be so.
EFC for me would basically make macro shooting 'easier' .. less risk of movement(I'm hoping) for greater than 1x magnification.

Like Swifty said, he's still using the D700!
Way back, when I contemplated the update/upgrade from the D300 to the D800, I actually wanted a D700 at the time of the release of the D800 ... thinking that the price would come down massively and the money money saved not getting the D800 would also get me some good lenses as well ...
But having seen some nicely made videos from the D800, for me the video feature was the decider. The massive pixel count (kind'a) scared me a little, as I'd been reading horror stories of people having PC slowness issues.
Wasn't a major issue on my lethargic and very old(back then) PC, except if I did any noise reduction on any image. It could take up to 2 mins on a single image(using CaptureNX2) just to finish rendering the NR routine from enabling it!
Saving the now tweaked image would take barely 5 secs or so .. just the trouble of using the NR routine in my software.
Other than that the extra pixels were nice to have, never really used them, and once I updated the PC to something with a CPU that actually moves data, the number of pixels are generally irrelevant.
They can be nice to have so that if using high ISO and maintaining the entire frame, noise is barely an issue for the most part.

So for me, D800 to D850 make more sense than not(for my purposes).
For someone else that doesn't need the EFC, or care for the larger brighter viewfinder, or whatever .. and predominantly sticks to landscapes only .. maybe not.


Quote Originally Posted by swifty View Post
Do you focus stack? If so, have you seen the automated focus shifting feature for macro photography? ...
I've done it a few times, but never manually. I can image how tedious it'd be for some situations.
My only focus stacking experience has been using ControlMyNikon (on a Windows Tablet) tethered to the D800E, using the Nikon 105VR, and the CMN software did it all for me.(basically coz I'm lazy, and get bored easily with tedious stuff).
So the software was set to shoot something like a zillion images, then set to open those images with another software(I think CombineZP), and it was scripted to automatically convert images to jpg and run the stack.
In the 5-10mins it took from when I pressed the go button to leaving the room so that my movements didn't affect the sharpness of the images, I made my lunch ate it, had a cuppa and came back 20 or so mins later to find it all done.
Wasn't overly thrilled by the overall mucking about trying to get the image looking 'nice' .. stupid 105VR 'focus breathes' too much for a macro lens.

Quote Originally Posted by swifty View Post
.... May as well factor in an overseas holiday if you're intending to purchase a D850 to get the GST back which would make it around $4550.
....
This is exactly what I was thinking of doing at some point. HK or SG .. not sure on what/where how .. maybe even Thailand(where they're going to be made).
But I haven't been out of the country for over 40 odd years, and I've always thought to do something like that one day before all my joints stop working completely .. ie. while I CAN!
Not for long tho(can't really do that) .. maybe 4 days .. or a long-ish weekend or something.
ie. go to said OS place, locate reputable shop selling camera for decent $s(incl conversion rate) .. wander around said OS location using camera, and take in some brief sights .. hopefully have saved close to $1K, which basically pays for the trip!