As anyone who is a Nikon photographer knows, the highly anticipated D850 finally started to ship today worldwide.  But instead of a flood of new cameras hitting the stores, it appears that Nikon was barely able to ship enough cameras to even cover the NPS orders.  So the common folk like myself are left holding the bag once again, just like with the D800.  To add insult to injury, I received this email from Nikon this afternoon.

Stupid Nikon Ad

Lets see, the wait is over? Really? What a Joke!!, when actually the wait has just begun.

It’s really amazing that a company such as Nikon can’t figure out how to cover a first day shipment of a new camera.  They had the same issue with the D800 and D800e when they were announced.  At first the D800 was hard to get, and the D800e next to impossible but after about 4 months the supply started to free up.

Lets move forward 2 years, Nikon announces the D810, possible the best DSLR they have ever made, but again there were supply issues and quality issues.  So those like myself who paid in advance, received a camera and had to turn it right around to Nikon to have the white dot issue fixed.

Now Nikon can’t even ship enough cameras to cover the NPS orders.  NPS, (Nikon Professional Services) is next to impossible to get into now as you have to have 2 other professional photographers sponsor you.  Ever try to get your competition to sponsor you?  Leaving NPS alone, it’s amazing to me that Nikon was not able to ship enough cameras to cover 1/3 to 1/2 of the first day orders.

Did Nikon just announce this camera, NO, it’s been in the works now for over 3 years.  Nikon has toyed with users for the past 6 months maybe longer talking this new camera up.  They pre-announced the announcement and received a ton of good press.  NOTE TO NIKON, when you start to see a lot of good talk on the photography forums, you might WANT TO START making some cameras.  NOT wait until the 24th of August of 2017 to start making cameras to cover all the orders you have received.

This is not a revolutionary camera, like the D800 was or the D810.  It’s just a upgrade to an already great platform with some nice updates to AF, LiveView, High ISO, and LCD (there are more for sure).  But either way, Nikon should have been more in touch with what they needed to manufacture.

There has not be an earthquake or a tsunami or any other type of catestrophic event that Nikon had to work around.  I have to wonder who is in charge over there.  It’s well known that Nikon is not doing the best financially, so this issue doesn’t make things look very good for them.  Surely someone in such a large company understands what forecasting is about?  Don’t they? Maybe not.

But of course cameras are showing up in places like Best Buy (really go figure) or Amazon (NPS cancellations), etc.  This happens every time, but just makes this process all the harder to understand.

I guess the best policy is to just keep the order out there with B&H, and hope that something frees up sooner than later.

Written by Paul Caldwell for paulcaldwellphotography.com 09/07/17