Well worth the wait. Extraordinary DR, extraordinary beauty.
Thanks for your diligence.
The dynamic range of today's camera spoils me from where we came from in the film era. This particular DR was accomplished by panoramic stitching. One shot facing down, slightly lighter, the other up, around f13 - I don't care if I lose a little sharpness when shooting the horizon as we naturally feel like the orton effect should be taking place in this zone anyway and it results in a better sunstar. Two shots essentially accomplishes your Focus Stack, and Dynamic Range. This is important when light is changing fast, plus you can hand hold if you don't plan to print ultra large. Stitch them together, you easily get the same DR as the $50k phase one IQ4. That being said, I'd love to just be able to take one shot... although the IQ4 would just make my focus stacking issue more apparent, and the post processing with such large files... well now that I'm on this new AMD chip, the 3950x, I think I'd be alright. But previously that type of data crunching would have just crashed my system. But regardless, I'd need two shots with the IQ4 just the same to solve my focus stack issue, so in the end I still carry this d850. Although I'm going to be watching the results of Sony's new lens, the 12-24 F2.8 with interest. The one pound I'd lose in my bag from going to mirror-less is becoming more and more attractive. I only carried the 24MM F1.4, and 70-200MM F4 on this trip because of weight issues, and it probably caused me to miss a couple shots not having that super wide focal length.
-MD