Yes, you’re reading that correctly. In 2026, we’re updating the Phoblographer’s Nikon D850 review — and it’s for a very good reason. I bought one at the end of last year as a very conscious choice and after much deliberation. It’s now one of my work cameras along with the Leica SL2s and the Panasonic LUMIX S1R II. You can read the entire review here. But if you want to follow just the updated text, please check it out below.
You can buy the Nikon D850 for a really good price these days. Get one used on Amazon!
January 2026 Nikon D850 Review Update
It has been almost a decade since I reviewed the Nikon D850, and I didn’t think that I’d be updating the review in early 2026. There have been several notable firmware updates to the camera — mostly those involving Portrait impressions and making it work better with Snapbridge. But perhaps one of the biggest things about the Nikon D850 is that it didn’t really change all that much.
If you consider yourself to be a photographer, and your production output also mirrors that of someone who primarily shoots stills, the Nikon D850 is perhaps still the single best DSLR that you can get. But more importantly, I think that this camera still holds its own with the Nikon Z8 and the Nikon Z9. While we should all praise the innovations and risks Nikon took with these cameras by removing the shutter and giving us so much quality at a smaller price tag than competitors, it also shows a lot of how photography hasn’t progressed in a decade.
The biggest innovations that have come out are AI scene detection — which is as much autofocus performance as high ISO output is sensor performance. In truth, it all has more to do with the processing side of things. The Nikon D850 also has much less of a chance of getting rolling shutter issues, and that’s super important to those of us who primarily shoot still images.
There are also far fewer problems with things like using 3rd party flashes.
One might think that the lack of scene detection and face detection is a problem. But it really isn’t. It forces me to shoot slower, shoot fewer frames, and be more intentional about how I shoot. Many modern photographers use mirrorless cameras are devices that make the decisions for them and then the photographer pretty much just agrees or doesn’t. And that’s evident in many of the photos we see on places like Reddit and other social outlets.
I, like so many of you, are on a quest to fight brain rot, reclaim my human identity, and differentiate myself so much from generative AI. Clients hire me because I deliver a product that’s so unique and different from what anyone else does. And the way to do that is to do what I’ve been talking about for years: to go fully manual. That doesn’t just mean the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. But I also sometimes refer to the focus, the white balance, and even the imaging profile loaded onto the camera. If you get the image you want in-camera, then you did the work with full intentionality. If you do the work in post-production, then there’s a bigger chance that what you’re making is simply an afterthought if you haven’t learned to be really in-tune with yourself when you shoot and to make mental or written notes about how you want to process your images.
Here’s the truth: the only mirrorless cameras that really let you shoot with intentionality are Leica M cameras. Most mirrorless cameras these days are simply getting in the way of intentional photography. And it shows. Most of the camera brands don’t seem to get it either simply because their sales are going up. But what we don’t see are how many people are actually using these cameras to produce and share work. If you’re to trust Flickr, that number would be rapidly decreasing. But we also can’t really trust Reddit or Instagram because brands aren’t putting enough of an effort into content authenticity.
I refuse to be treated like a content creator. I’m a journalist for a living, a photographer for taxable income, and an artist that doesn’t rely on copying other visual mediums to make my work.