I feel my photographic journey has come full circle as I have gotten older, and I am possibly a little wiser! I used to chase megapixels, but now I chase pictures instead. Unfortunately, in my younger days, all I wanted was resolution to offer clients the best possible images during my professional sports photography career.
That mindset made me forgo possibly the best DSLR ever made – the Nikon D850, DCW's most loved camera, just because it wasn't 50 megapixels at the time and that was a MASSIVE mistake on my part!
At the time the method behind my total madness was that Canon had just launched the Canon EOS 5DS and 5DS R, 50.6-megapixel cameras – the highest resolution DSLR ever then – and even to this day in 2024!
It could capture up to 5 frames-per-second, had USB 3.0, and even had a handy built-in crop factor of either 1.3x or 1.6x giving you 30.5MP or 19.6MP stills respectively meaning it could be used for any client work and I was hooked!
I even remember being in talks with Canon about testing two of them with a 200mm f/2 and a 600mm f/4, preparing myself to jump ship from my familiar Nikon kit of 10+ years at the time to go with the Canon 5DS if it could keep up with my workflow. However, I was told by a Nikon rep to 'hold fire, you'll enjoy what's coming'.
I took this as a sign to stay with Nikon and that they would come out with a 50MP monster to tackle the Canon EOS 5DR – that camera was the Nikon D850, and I knew what it was going to be called through word of mouth by friends who will be unnamed here – back in the days before leaks online!
I was convinced because of the '50' in its name it would be a 50MP sensor, and when it was launched I remember being heartbroken that this new revolutionary camera was 'only' 45.7MP, and that put me off the whole camera entirety and made me keep my Nikon D800s – which looking back at it now was such a mistake!
Not because my D800s were useless. Far from it. In fact, I still have one D800 today that I use frequently! It was the fact I never gave the D850 a chance, I should have trusted in the brand I set my whole career on for over a decade, but I got so hung up on the megapixels that's all I could think about.
This is a total contrast to what I am shooting now. The Nikon D800 is my "high-res" camera, but my main camera is an 18MP Leica M-E – yep, that's right, an 18-megapixel camera. What was I thinking back in 2017?
I'm sure the Nikon D850 would have been the perfect camera for me back then, and it's on my 'to-buy' list when a good-priced one comes up – not that 45MP needs to be in my workflow these days – but let this be a lesson to anyone looking at new cameras. Never get caught up on the specs too much or its resolution. Go out and try it in the real world, only then you will know if it will work. It's what I should have done with the Nikon D850, it's what I have done with every camera since!
