Danish Open – Freestyle & Nikon D850 Firmware 1.03
Tested the new Nikon D850 firmware 1.03 shooting the Danish Open 2018 – Freestyle Windsurfing competition, an event at Klitmöller/Denmark. Pretty good occasion to check if the system freezes I had all these last months are now history for this camera with the new firmware. My main annoyance with this (apart from this problem) great DSLR. And yes: I had not a single freeze/system crash shooting roughly 3000 exposures, not a single freeze/hickup event since I updated to this firmware!
None! 
Bunkers beach – Klitmöller.
This is so much a relief that I will likely add another D850 to my arsenal of equipment /though the Nikon Z6 is also tempting for video work for next year. Overall these system stalls of the D850 and the firmware update now in October 2018 describe a perfect scenario on how to not do a non-communication with your user-base – and – especially with your pro user-base.
I was so annoyed by the system stalls and freeze events that I tried to let Nikon handle the issue. FSB Nikon in Berlin did a repair effort changing basically the mainboard of the camera. This made no difference. Next they send the camera to NPS to the Nikon HQ Germany Düsseldorf. NPS tested the camera and basically couldnt find a problem. NPS also stated that they cannot communicate an error to Nikon Japan when this problem cannot be reproduced. This was weird since I managed to reproduce this error even with the NPS D850 loaner camera. At that point it became clear that NPS had no info about this problem and no feedback from Nikon Japan or I indeed was the only one having this issue with this camera or (at that time more likely:) my lenses caused this problem.
Now it turns out Nikon Japan was already working on a fix to correct the problem. This fix might have been developed within weeks but I find it more likely that Nikon was already aware of this issue much earlier – since I wasnt the only one reporting the problem back to Nikon.
Now the strange thing is that nobody at Nikon send an info out like this one: “Dear customer, under rare circumstances the Nikon D850 can show system freezes or system stalls. We are aware of the problem and will provide a fix in due time. Thank You for Your patience!”
Basically this would have stopped every one from looking for a solution – since only a firmware update was needed. The modified D850 Review goes here:
http://soerenhese.de/?p=7167
Some shots also from the depression “Siglinde” – stormy days at the coast. The D850 performs now as expected even under extreme windy conditions, had a hard time to stabilize my setup on my Gitzo. With up to 10Bf there was also a lot of spray in the air. Overall I did 4000 shots last week mainly shooting the Danish Open and chasing waves with my exact usual setting (AF-C, 7fps Ch, Raw lossless, 3D-AF. The camera did not show any hickup at all. So this is exactly how the camera should perform. So this puts another D850 clearly on my list for 2019 – I will also check the Z-line in 2019 but its always good to not mix too much different camera layouts and I will likely go 100% D850 and will update my other D800 DSLR.
