Nikon

The Nikon D850 is official. It may be the very best DSLR ever built. The $3300 price tag is a really-good deal given all the features it packs, including 45+MP, 7/9 fps, 4K video, 8K timelapse, focus peaking, and lots more:  It's now available for pre-order at B&H, with shipments beginning on Thursday, September 7th.

On July 25th, Nikon’s 100th anniversary, some of the specially-made products Nikon teased earlier this year will be available for sale. That includes Anniversary Editions of its flagship Nikon D5, and the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8E , Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED, and Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8E ED VR lenses. They’ll all be in a unique dark gray, and come with various other goodies to help you celebrate. That’s not all though…

If you know the name Arri, it is probably from their century-long dominance of the cinema camera industry. However, now it is bringing its famous Alexa image sensor to the industry’s first all-digital surgical microscope – aptly named the ARRISCOPE. I got a chance to use one of the prototypes when the team brought the beast to Stanford for a talk this week. It is indeed impressive. You can learn more about it by reading the article I wrote for Extremetech.

After teasing us at CES with impressive 360-degree 4K video from its action camera prototypes, Nikon has finally announced the details of the three models in its KeyMission family of action cameras. Unlike Nikon’s under-performing entries in the mirrorless market, that never took off, the KeyMission cameras are designed to deliver state-of-the-art performance at very reasonable prices – pitting them squarely against the slow-to-ship Samsung Gear 360 and the incumbent line of GoPros, now updated with the new Hero 5.

We’ve written a lot before about the best of the best in point and shoots – typically a tight race between models like the Sony RX100 IV, Canon G5 X, and Lumix LX100. Now, Nikon wants a piece of the action. Today it introduced a new family of cameras – DL for Digital Lens – that offer a range of zoom options to meet a variety of needs. You can read more about the Nikon DL18-50, Nikon DL24-85, and Nikon DL24-500 in my article on Extremetech.com. You can pre-order the cameras from B&H at $846.95 for the Nikon DL18-50, $646.95 for the Nikon DL24-85, and $996 for the Nikon DL24-500 – although B&H doesn’t expect them to be available until late June.

I got to shoot with both the new Nikon D5 and Nikon D500 at CES, and they are each amazing in their own way. For no-holds-barred shooting performance the Nikon D5’s 14fps (12fps for up to 200 frames of RAW) and borderline-insane 3,000,000 ISO capability can’t be beat. But at over $6K and 3 pounds, with “only” 21MP of resolution, it certainly won’t be for everyone. It’s certainly the camera of choice for big-budget (and big backpack) wildlife and sports photographers, along with photojournalists who can deal with the size in exchange for unheard of low-light performance.

This has been an amazing year for long-lens shooters. For those who don’t want to break the bank and their backs with the Nikon or Canon 200-400mm models, there are now four exciting new options (three of which are available to both Nikon and Canon shooters):

• Tamron 150-600mm lens (which we reviewed earlier this year) (about $1,070)
• Sigma 150-600mm Sports (about $2,000)
• Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary (about $1,100)
• Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6 (about $1,400)

Before we dig into some of the details, having shot with these lenses, they are all pretty amazing for what they provide at this relatively low price point. They are all head-and-shoulders above the older generation super-telephoto zooms from these companies. However, they are also bigger and heavier than the classic 120-400mm and 150-500mm designs they largely supercede. Which lens is right for you will depend on your specific budget and needs, but I can easily recommend all of them as quality products that provide good value.