RoamingScott
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A few thoughts after my first day with the camera...
(caveat: i only have 50/85 primes, which are lenses not typical for me, so my normal shooting/use cases have to wait a bit)
Things I immediately like:
- The front Fn1 and Fn2 buttons. Most of the functions that I put on a custom button on Sony required using my shutter finger. Nikon's method allows me to do some neat things, like put Spot Metering on Fn1 and AE Hold on AF-ON, allowing me to use 3 different fingers to quickly spot meter, grab the exposure I'm happy with, and quickly compose after, all without shuffling my hand around. Very, very cool!
- Top screen. I had missed this from my Fuji X-H1 days, much prefer this part of the camera to be used for a screen vs exposure dial.
- Menus. Very easy to understand and find what I'm looking for. Also very straightforward to reprogram the buttons.
- EVF (actual viewing). Although worse quality than the Sony, I can see more of it without feeling like I'm cramming my eyeball into it. I shot the R3 long enough to be comfortable with this resolution/refresh rate.
- NEF files. Colors are much easier to play with in post than Sony, in that they need far less massaging. The starting point is much closer to the endpoint.
- Some really cool quality of life features, like switching eyes easily when using EyeAF, or how the camera can remember AF points by orientation (that is DOPE).
- Shutter is very nicely dampened and is nice and quiet (I only shoot mechanical shutter)
- Firmware updates via SD card, much cleaner/easier implementation than Sony's tethered method.
- I like that you can punch into the frame with the + button in AF-C mode (even though it disables AF-C after first focus acquisition. Sony doesn't support this at all, so something is better than nothing.
Things I immediately dislike:
- Dpad instead of scrolling wheel. Sony has the much better implementation here, and it makes things like zooming into a photo or zipping through the photo library much faster.
- Buttons all feel squishy. This reminds me a lot of my Fujis...not a single button has satisfyingly firm feedback.
- Everything that tightens or loosens turns the "wrong" way. Why on earth do the backcaps of Nikon lenses turn the wrong way?! WHY?!
- Battery life is disappointing (but that was expected). Sony will spoil you here.
- AF-C in auto-area (wide) mode. I'll have to continue to play with this, but EyeAF stinks so far, and once you focus on something in area, the camera REALLY doesn't like letting go of it. You'd think the cam would weight the center of the frame more heavily in area, but quite often it's grabbing on to something in the edge of the frame (foreground/background) and refuses to let go of it as I try to recompose and force it to shift focus. Again...Sony leads the industry, and even the R4 will spoil you. It's like the camera can read your mind 90% of the time.
- No dedicated AE-L button. This feels like a big oversight, and I don't like that I had to repurpose a button to pull this off.
If you have any feedback or if you see me doing something obviously wrong, much appreciated. My main feeling is that the Nikon in general feels like it was made by people that understand photography and the needs of a photographer better than Sony.
Edited on Dec 12, 2021 at 12:30 PM · View previous versions
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