johnec Loc: Lancaster county, PA

Greetings all. If I understand it correctly, my Nikon D500 has a crop factor of 1.5, so if I connect my Nikkor 200-500mm lens it essentially is equivalent to a 300-750mm lens on that camera. If I set the lens at 500mm for a shot, and then attach the same lens to my D850 and take the same shot, but then crop the pic from the D850 to the same dimension as the shot from the D500, will the image quality be the same, or does the higher resolution sensor on the D850, even cropped give the better quality picture?

BebuLamar

You will have about the same quality both cases. When you crop the D850 image to produce the same image the D850 image will only be 5408x3600 pixels. The D500 gives you 5568x3712 pixels so the D500 has a little bit more resolution.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I don't think cropping ever changes the image resolution, unless you "crop" to a larger size. Cropping say a face out of a large picture will have the same resolution, but of course the pic will be smaller, and subsequently fewer pixels. Re-sizing a picture may change the resolution, so if you blow up the face you cropped, to a larger size, then resolution goes out the window.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

The crop on the D500 is like cropping with a longer lens, the pixels count for the image will not change.

Cropping the resultant image from the D850 in an editor to get the same field of view as the D500 would be like a digital zoom, you will be throwing away the perimeter pixels (outside of the crop area). If the D850 has MANY more pixels for the image, you may not notice a difference.
If you take an image from the D500 and the cropped equivalent of the D850, zoom in the same amount on each, you will notice the pixels sooner in the digitally cropped image from the D850. this is providing the pixel count is about the same for each camera. If the D850 has twice as many pixels than the D500 (1.5 times minimum), you shouldn't notice a difference.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

It would be close to the same except if the light is not good. That's where the D850 will shine because it's sensor will not have as much noise as the D500 sensor using higher ISO settings.

I shoot Canon, but have both a full frame and a crop sensor body. I also have a 500mm prime lens. I use the ff body if the light is not great and the crop body if it's a nice bright day with good light.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

I think there is some misunderstanding going on here. If you mean that you take a shot a 500mm getting a FF field of view of 750mm on your crop sensor camera and then take a shot on your ff camera without adjusting the lens at all and then crop the resulting shot to match the field of view on the crop sensor image, then, yes you loose quality because you will be using less of the ff sensor. The D500 will have given you an image using 24 MP while the cropped FF to match will result in somewhere around 19-20 MP (less than half of what is available of the D850's 45MP) so the resolution will be effected.

BebuLamar

The D500 is only 20.9MP and the DX crop on the D850 is 19.4MP. Not that much of a difference.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

A home run is worth more than two doubles. So is a full frame camera.

johnec Loc: Lancaster county, PA

😊

johnec Loc: Lancaster county, PA

I believe that is what I was looking for, and I think echos a couple of the other comments. So, generally not significant difference, under decent lighting conditions. Thanks for all the comments, folks. This group is always helpful, and often‘entertaining’ 😉

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Thanks. I think I had the D750 in my head.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

A more accurate way to say it would be...

The 200-500mm is a 200-500mm, regardless what camera it's used on.

But...

When it's used on a DX camera like the D500, it will "act like a 300-750mm lens would on FX", if such a lens existed.

When you crop a D850 (FX) image down to DX format, you are left with 19MP.

That's slightly lower resolution than you get from the 21MP D500. But it's pretty close.

Some other considerations....

... In DX crop mode the image area is delineated in the D850's viewfinder.... effectively becoming 0.50X magnification. In comparison, the D500's viewfinder renders the same image area with 0.65X magnification. In other words, you'll see a larger and more usable image in the D500, than in the D850 when it's in DX mode.

Also, unless you add a battery grip and special battery costing a total of around $950, the D850 will have a slower frame rate than the D500.

Personally I'd never bother using the crop mode of the D850. The same crop can be done in post-processing with identical results. But instead doing it in post leaves you free to change the framing a little, if you wish. Maybe the subject is a little too centered. Or maybe it's an action shot and the subject was too near the edge of the image area, so you need to shift the crop a little right or left or up or down. If you use the in-camera crop... it's centered. What you see is what you get and there ain't much flexibility changin' it afterward.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

You are correct if the shooter has both DX and FX lenses. However, since I switched to digital, I have been an "APS-C" shooter - so I might use my DX {actually it is a labeled "DA", but I'm retaining your labeling} because I already have it. I might use in-camera cropping because purchasing a "FF" camera by itself would strain my budget.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The thin margin between success and the rest in photography is measured by the size of your pixels.