Paul_K Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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Although I had been an amateur level Canon shooter previously, I upgraded to Nikon in the late 70's / early 80's when I made my first serious steps into professional photography (by entering a professional multi years photography course at the Royal Academy of Arts - KABK - in The Hague)
While my Canon FTqL + FL lenses were undoubtedly solid and excellent quality, Nikon at that time undoubtedly was the pro choice to go with
Sure, like Canon (and other manufacturers like Pentax and Minolta) the camera and lenses were beyond reproach quality wise
But the reason Nikon stood apart from the rest as the pro gear to go for was the wider - Nikon and third parties - service and repair network, third parties lens options, third parties accessories, and much better and larger 2nd market for the aforementioned items (always nice when you can get something cheaper then for the MRSP)
While over the years Nikon at times faced sometimes just (slow AF on the F4, too long holding limited performance AP-C sensors on eg the D2X and D2H), and sometimes unjust (AF 'not as good as' Canon or Sony, too late - IMO thankfully not rushing into - new technological 'developments' like mirrorless) critisisms, I nevertheless held on to my Nikon gear
On one hand I'm not 'rich' enough to, with each new model or technical development, drop (and take the financial loss of selling) my old gear, including the many lenses I collected, as well as third party accessories (like flashes, radio triggers etc) over the years, to switch to, and buy a similar wide range of lenses and accessories in another brand and system
On the other hand I over the years have grown very comfortable, and familiar, with the UI of my Nikon gear, something IMO very important in a real life shooting situation
While e.g. the abundance of buttons on eg a D850 or Z6 may seem not as 'clean' as a Canon of Sony counterpart, the obvious WYSIWYG set up in a high pressure shooting situation allows to easily and swiftly find (and change) a setting if required
Ditto for the menu's, basically while based on the menu of the 2002 D1H, since then evolving with addition of the new options that came with the later models that succeeded it after the years
Sure, may sound a bit too lazy and apologetic.
But as recently as yesterday, during a studio shoot I witnessed 1st hand the difference in ease and transparency between eg my Nikons and the Sony A9 the collegue shooter was using
The set up was to shoot with four Bowens XMS (non TTL) flash units, to be triggered by a (universal) 'dumb' Bowens XMSR radio trigger.
With the Nikon it was pretty straight forward : mount the XMSR on the hotshoe, and you're set to go (both for triggering the heads, and changing the settings on the XMS units, although that could be done with the trigger on or off the camera).
With the Sony that however proved impossible.
The A9 simply wouldn't trigger the 'dumb' XMSR trigger when mounted on the hotshoe
And while the menu showed plenty of offered options, all seemed to be linked to AF, TTLL etc, while for some unclear reason 'just plain dumb' triggering was simply impossible
Which resulted in the XMSR being impossible to use on the A9, forcing the Sony to fall back on an old fashioned 6 feet flash cable (I fortunately got as a fall back option despite having the XMSR trigger) triggering one head, with the remaining heads with the optical slave cell (and having to manually dial in the power settings on each flash head, rather then remotely, which was a bit of an issue with the heads up to 10+ feet high)
In another situation the Sony shooter wanted to switch from 1 fps to 3 fps, in order to shoot the model while moving at the fastest fps rate possible that the XMS units could follow at the power settings dialed in.
On my Z6 or D850, I simply go the the several fps options (on the Z6 to be found in the LCD menu, with the D850 in the 'regular menu, with the options to, if you use it often, to, as I have, paste it in the 'My Menu' options for fast and easy access) where under the CL options I can dial in any fps (1 to max 5 fps) I want
The A9 only offers three options with the Drive Dial on the top left side of the camera: Continuous High, Medium and Low.
Unfortunately there is no further explanation on the camera to be found how many fps that means per option.
More importantly, there also is no options to set/change the fps rate to one's personal preference under those options.
Only in the paper/pdf manual are the pfs rates further clarified
Apart from the (IMO pretty dramatic) change in fps rate between Mechanical and Electronic shutter,
it turns out there still is no options to change the rate to personal settings.
The closes to 3 fps the A9 offers is Continuous Low at 2,5 (no 2,3, or 4) fps with mechanical shutter ,
with the caveat that the effective fps will also be determined by the lens used
As the Sony shooter was using a (native Sony) 2.8/24-70, for some unclear reason the A9 would only shoot 1 fps using Continuous Low with the 24-70, by far not what was demanded
The next, Continuous Medium, option at 5 fps, which was too fast for the XMS units to follow with the power settings (and consequently f stop and ISO on the camera) dialed in
Since I was only facilitating the studio, and the Sony user was the 1st shooter, I left him muddling with the limitations of the menus and settings on his, at least two times more expensive then my Z6, top of the line A9
While silently happy I shoot old fashioned and obsolete cameras, with practice proven, based on over a long time developed and evolved, UI and menus
And the AF, IQ, and (high) ISO aren't too bad either 
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