A week ago, Nikon announced its new D850 camera body. I haven’t taken a look at the technical specifications or studied any commentaries in detail yet, but initially there seemed to be little that was exciting about this new camera. Of course, it has a better, higher-resolution sensor than its predecessor (the Nikon D810) and better capabilities in many other areas, but that was only to be expected.
It was only after a while that I noticed that the D850 has what appears to be an exceptionally good viewfinder: “a class-leading optical viewfinder with approximate 0.75x magnification” (in Nikon’s words). And that was all that Nikon said about the viewfinder in its announcement. Here we have a leading company announcing a key product in its line-up, and the single, most important ergonomic element of that product (in my view, at least) seems to warrant only part of one sentence. Why is the D850’s viewfinder not highlighted in its own section in the product announcement?
Here is what Thom Hogan had to say about the viewfinder: “First up is a viewfinder with 0.75x magnification, producing the largest and brightest image we’ve ever seen through a Nikon DSLR eyepiece, and replicating the best we saw in the film era” (my emphasis). This is a comment from one of the best-known Nikon shooters in the world, and a photographer who is widely respected for his frank assessments of new products—and there are probably similar comments out there from other highly-regarded Nikon shooters. These are the kinds of statements that Nikon should be plastering all over its promotional material, if it isn’t doing so already.
Technical capabilities are certainly important, but I cannot help but feel that a key message—the experience of composing with the new viewfinder—has simply been lost in the official product announcement.