My first purchase of a Nikon was after seeing a friend shoot with his D700 in low light, that was all it took for me.

Very true this. One of my kids who lives in Seattle, WA sent me a couple large prints that she took with her latest I-Phone. I thought it was a Christmas present and couldn't understand why she was sending these very large (poor) pictures from off the coast of Washington. I thought they were perhaps some professional pictures that she thought I would enjoy. As it turns out she meant to have them shipped to herself and then when she told me that she said she had shot them with her I-phone. If the camera makers are having to compete with the likes of those pictures then they aren't competing with much in my opinion. I have a Samsung phone and use the camera all the time but not for fine photography. Good cameras have always been for fine photography, not what you can do with a point and shoot. Admittedly one day the cameras on phones may be just as good as my wonderful D850, but not now.

I consider the Nikon cameras the most wonderful cameras for the money to ever be on the planet. Perhaps some medium and large format film is better than what comes out of the D850 or for that matter the Z7 but nothing else comes close.

I hope Nikon is around for a very long time, at least as long as me.

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My Pixma Pro-10 shows any flaws and requires you to start with a good image to print a good image. My D850 shooting at ISO 64 will out print any 35mm film and rival medium format. It is amazing what cameras and printers do today.

I have had several Tamron lenses, even more Nikon/Nikor lenses and only one Sigma. I switched from cropped sensor to full frame some years ago and had to replace several lenses. The only real stinker I have ever had was a Nikon, their 70-300. I use the Tamron 24-70 as opposed to the Nikor and love it. I have the Sigma 14mm 2.8 and it is quite nice. One of the nicest lenses is the Tamron 150-600G2 I really get great shots with it. One of the most surprising great lenses to me has been the Old Nikon Push Pull 70-210 f:4 constant. Wow what a sharp lens.

They all seem to make pretty good primes, and used they are mostly inexpensive. I have the Nikor of the 50 f:1.4, 85 f1.8 and an older 105. I like all the lenses I have now. That is what happens, you get them and get rid of the stinkers and never want to get rid of the ones you learn to like and get very familiar with. I used to keep way too many but found that I mostly used the same half dozen all the time and none of the others, they gather dust so I either sold them or gave them away.

Newer cameras allow you to focus adjust individual lenses to the camera and that has really helped me to get tack sharp pictures even shooting the D850 at full resolution.

If you want to get a used lens my recommendaiton is buy it if you don't like it sell it for what you paid for it. Keep trying until you find the kit you like.

Good luck, it's a fun process.

The D 3400 is by far and away the best entry level camera that allows you to get professional looking pictures. There are two problems that may have caused you to not get focus. The D3400, pretty much all Nikons and probably all cameras that don't use sonar to focus don't like to focus on a single color area or low light so you need to get some lines or contrast in the focus area somewhere. Someone else mentioned the focus point lock. On the larger cameras this is a simple off and on switch on the 3400 you will have to go digging for it but that is likely your problem, once it gets turned off your focus point could be anywhere.

If you keep taking pictures you couldn't have picked a better camera to start with. If you get serious you may want to go to a more robust camera but until you do you can take some truly awesome pictures with what you have.

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I started taking pictures seriously in the 60's then in college got a job with the school to work on the paper and yearbook which helped pay my way. After that it was just a sometimes hobby until Digital and Photoshop. After those two things and of course kids it became a serious hobby. In old age it is a wonderful hobby and to me it IS ALL about the qulity of the photo. Some hang on my walls, my kids walls and friends walls. At my funeral I expect a few will be around and I want something worth looking at and someone to say He sure raised some good kids and was a great husband but then I also want someone to say, "wow, he sure could take a good picture."

I shot DX and thought it was ok until I saw a D700. I couldn't believe FF could make such a difference, it does.

There is an expense to FF, a lot of $$ for glass. I have been mostly sucessful buying used glass to reduce that burden a little.

Since buying the D850 I have not been able to take a bad picture. Perhaps thats a bit of an exagguration but not much. You don't have to worry about exposure, even if you screw up there is so much dynamic range you can recover. If you over do the highlights you can lose it but not on the low end of exposure. I do have the grip and never worry about battery life, I go weeks without ever thinking of charging and when birding 9 frames a second is good for me, faster than any otgher camera I have had. My longest lens is 600mm so even when birding I often have to do substantial cropping, it is simply amazing how much you can crop with nearly 47 megapixels.

There are features on the Z6 and 7 I would probably like but not the small size. I have large hands and love being able to securly operate the controls and handle the camera. I fell recently on rocks and my D850 crashed with me. I really feared I would have to replace it, it held up well with a few minor scratches.

I have gotten rid of all my cameras except the D850. I got rid of a D3200, D300. D700, D800 and my D810. I loved them all but they don't hold a candle to the D850. The low light performance of the D850 is very good. It isn't a D4s but for 46.7 megapixels it does VERY well in low light even better than the D700 which was excellent. There is no noise problem even at moderate ISO's, I don't think twice at shooting at ISO 3200, you get clean images and won't see noise unless you start enlarging quite a bit and even then Photoshop CC noise control will get rid of it.

The Z's have some great video abilities, I don't do video. The Z's are light weight, so? Who cares. My glass is heavier than my D850, heck my tripod is heavier than the D850, weight is my last concern, picture quality is my first concern and you get it with the D850. Yes the D850's are really pretty inexpensive now and if you are willing to buy used now is the time. So many people think they want mirrorless that are getting rid of their 850's so they can afford the Z's, it makes now an excellent time to steal one.

My feeling is it's all about the picture. It doesn't matter what the camera does if it takes superior pictures you want to use it. I have a son who shoots medium format at 50mpx, my pictures are usually superior to his. His is ok in the studio but on landscapes on locatation it sucks. The D850 shines out doors in the rain the snow the sand and dust. I can't say enough about how great it is. I have never spoken to anyone who had a D850 and was willing to get rid of it except people who wanted the Z's and haven't talked to them after the change.

DX and cropped FX are very similar so to me any advantage you might think you will have with the D500 are included with a D850 cropped. Yeah, DX glass is cheaper, for sure, but try cropping that 24mpx frame to 25% of the original and see what you have. You can do that with the D850 and nobody will know.

If you think I like my D850 you would be correct. Happy shopping!

In the last several years I have owned 5 different Nikons. I have owned several other brands but none of them compare to the D850. The Nikon D850 is big and heavy and will work with Nikon camera lenses that have been produced for the last nearly half century. The D850 resolution is supurb but there are other cameras with similar or higher resolution. What sets the D850 apart from any other camera is dynamic range, 15 stops. Of course 1/8000th of a second exposure is fantastic, ISO 64 is dreamy, a battery that lasts for well over a thousand shots is wonderful too. The tilting screen, bright viewfinder simplicity of operation, these are great features. There are some that will say simple operation? You've got to be kidding. The operation really is simple if all you want to do is take a simple picture, it's all the extra features that make the D850 sound complicated.

I took a sunset picture yesterday looking right at the full sun. I got the sun the water, sky and clouds. No blown highlights, perfect color, it is just a fantastic unbelievable camera. There are smaller cameras, there are other cameras that do much better in video but for stills the Nikon D850 is a photographers dream.

There are other cameras with slightly better low light capability, the D4, 4s, 5 and 6 are good examples of that. The D850 does low light AND high resolution, the others specalize in low light but not resolution.

I love my D850. I only hope there is no D860 or 900 or other model that might make me switch away from my awesome camera, at least not for a while.

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The XQD is very, very fast. At 46MPX you can shoot a lot without the camera going into buffer mode. The SD is a fast slot if you have a fast card but the XQD's are significantly faster. I use the SD for backup.

The viewfinder is larger and brighter, it's a significant improvement over the 810.

The 800E is almost an 810. You need the 850.

I liked my First Nikon, the D3400 after my Olympus. When I got the D300 I was disappointed but when I upgraded to the D800 I thought there could not be a better camera. When I upgraded to the D810 I thought there would never be a camera to match it. I have upgraded to the D850 and can't believe how good it is, I can't take a bad picture. The dynamic range is just impossible to believe. From brightest sunshine to darkest shadow in the same picture you can get it all. If I don't have a long lens with me I just blow it up and crop it.

There are more features than you can shake a stick at. It makes some fine video but is not the best camera for video but for stills you can't get a better camera for 3 times the price.

I've only had mine a little over a year but can't imagine ever replacing this beautiful camera. I use it with the Nikon grip which gives it 9fps.

I've included a couple pictures taken with my D850. The first just days ago in my driveway of the leaves turning. Notice that the sky is not blown out and you can still see well in the shadows in the trees. Next was at Cumberland Falls Kentucky Note you can see the clouds in the sky and the shadows in the rocks. Next, the Corvette in the front yard. Notice that the clouds and sky are perfect yet you can still see great detail in the shadow portion of the house, you can count every brick. Next is a ceramic cresh. The only light were the tiny LED Christmas tree lights yet it looks like it came from a studio. The low light performance is incredible. Next is Cumberland falls with highlights from the sky. You can see all the detail of the sky and of the falls, there are about 15 stops of dynamic range in each of these pictures and I managed to capture it all without HDR multiple shots, one shot and you got it.

You could use a smaller resolution camera or just dial back the resolution in the D850 if you want smaller files for social media. If you already have Nikon lenses it's a no brainer.

While on a photography trip to Cumberland Falls I fell on some rocks, really messed up my knees. The camera took a very hard fall on the rocks but wasn't hurt, amazing.

There are simply not words that will do this camera justice. It's amazing!

Of the cameras you listed the D700 is by far and away the better choice. The 700 is still a great camera even compared to the latest greatest on the market today, it lacks high resolution but it's color and low light performance is right at the top of the list.

It was the D700 that made me a Nikon convert. A friend of mine took a picture of my tractor in the barn in extreemly low light and it came out like a studio picture. I have had a lot of Nikons and now use a D850, a very fine camera but still have great respect for the D700.

D700's are easy to find below $500.00.

Good Luck!

He is right. I have been experimenting lately using a method that requires a camera with pretty good dynamic range to work, instead of taking two pictures I try to get one that perhaps is not perfect for either and then cut back on the highlignts and raise the shadows in post.

I shoot with a Nikon D850 and it has pretty good dynamic range, I've not seen better yet in a full frame camera. When I took the first attached picture of the handrailed path the right side of the picture was near black and the sky was a little blown out. My experience says that the Nikons don't have a lot of head room, they don't recover much of highlights past what you see but they really recover shadows. I think I have decided that as long as I'm within about 4 stops in the shadows I can recover it and make it look pretty natural.

The next picture has a starburst in it. Any time you shoot the daytime sky especially when the sun is in the picture everything else will look dark, again I got the full range again.

You will have to have a pretty good photo editor and shoot raw to do it but most editors are pretty good these days. I can do it all in Adobe Raw filter. I don't think you said what you are shooting with so maybey it won't work for you but so far I'm feeling pretty good about what I'm able to get.

The third picture, well, the sky is always difficult but the sky and clouds together make it more difficult because the clouds are white and just pour light into your photo. The cliff across the river was dark but bringing up the shadows really makes a difference but you have to plan to do that. If you expose the sky correctly you may not be able to pull enough out of the shadow to get what your eye sees when you are really there.

The picture of the mist coming up from the Cumberland Falls was really a hard one. The sunlit sky is bright in the background but the clifs and trees are in shadow. Unfortunately I got there too late this year to get much fall color but I was able to raise the trees and cliffs to bring out what was actually there.

The last picture was on the way out of the park and I was again shooting into a bright sky and my shot included a lot of shade, very wide dynamic range but again by slightly overexposing the sky, just slightly, I could still barely make out the clouds, I then had plenty of room in the shadow end.

The pictures attached are from Cumberland Falls in Kentucky. I picked pictures that had impossible DR, they were very bright and had very dark areas in them.

I'm an old guy, I have a home in Kentucky and Florida, two beautiful places to get wonderful pictures. Yes I have gone to the deserts of Utah to the sea ports of the Atlantic seabord to the Chesepeak to the ocean and the skies but my favorites among favorites is fall color, and ocean sunsets.

I have trees in my own Kentucky yard that when I go outside in the early morning and see the low sun shining on the fall color of those trees my breath is taken away. As wonderful as fall color is I have a passion for sunsets. In Florida, especially the South West Coast you can get again, breath taking sunsets. It's the colors. I'm in awe of both the autum trees and the everyday sunsets.

My photography subjects are much varied but I enjoy most the colorful subjects.

When I got my first Nikon Digital I did so because a friend of mine showed me some of his shots from his D700. they were much better dynamic range photo's than I could take on my Olympus.

I'm now on my 5th Nikon, a D850. I can't believe the DR I get, I'm getting about 15 stops of DR and you don't need to stack or do any HDR tricks to get it, just shoot at low ISO and you have it. When I was shooting with the D810 I was very pleased with the DR shooting at ISO 64 but I swear it looks like the D850 has a full stop above the D810.

I'm loving the D850, there is little to complain about but the dynamic range is just incredible.