arbitrage wrote:
I think Nikon had to put the stacked sensor into the Z8 because they haven't figured out how to get top end AF without it. But that is really a win, win for Nikon shooters as the stacked sensor brings the smooth EVF experience when actively firing the shutter and tracking a fast subject at a killer price point.
Sony and Canon have figured out how to have their top end AF in non-stacked sensor cameras. Which is nice that you can get down to a ~$2K body and have AF close to the top end stacked cameras but you don't get the other benefits of the stacked sensor until you jump to the $6-6.5K price point. Canon has done the best with non-stacked in the R5 with the 1/60 scan speed. Sony is pitiful in that arena, so despite the A7RV having AF which IMO is better than A1, the camera is still not suitable for fast action due to EVF experience. I'm not familiar with how the other Canon cameras like R6II, R7, R8 do for EVF in ES compared to the R5??...Show more →
Well, you know, the X-H2S can do all of that A1 / Z9 stuff at half the price. 😊
amci4 wrote:
I’m not talking about how well the AF functions, I’m talking about the Nikon choices for AF modes. I do not have a Z8 or 9, my experience is with the Z6/7 line of bodies, but I doubt the modes are very different as there hasn’t been a single indication of that being the case.
Things like being able to resize the AF box in pretty much any mode on the Fuji, Olympus, and Sony line (Can’t speak for Canon as I’ve always disliked their control scheme), yet you can’t on the Z line of bodies. That was the biggest annoyance to me honestly. ...Show more →
Your contribution is not untypical on these pages. But at least hold a camera in your hands and turn it on before declaring it deficient. The Z8/9 AF modes are very different to the Z6/7.
I have so far found the autofocus functions of the Z8 to be intuitive and easy to figure out. I really like how in the quick menu you can change the subject to detect, a feature which requires menu diving in many cameras.
If Nikon makes a Z500 I'm probably going to need heavy convincing to keep the XH2S if it's basically the same camera, but with less twitchy AF algorithms. amci4 wrote:
Well, you know, the X-H2S can do all of that A1 / Z9 stuff at half the price. 😊
Jesse Evans wrote:
I have so far found the autofocus functions of the Z8 to be intuitive and easy to figure out. I really like how in the quick menu you can change the subject to detect, a feature which requires menu diving in many cameras.
Many folk assign their Recall to this function. Then even the i menu is not needed. But of course Recall is then not available for any other purpose. I wish that Nikon would allow more states for Recall. That would address much.
amci4 wrote:
I’m not talking about how well the AF functions, I’m talking about the Nikon choices for AF modes. I do not have a Z8 or 9, my experience is with the Z6/7 line of bodies, but I doubt the modes are very different as there hasn’t been a single indication of that being the case.
Things like being able to resize the AF box in pretty much any mode on the Fuji, Olympus, and Sony line (Can’t speak for Canon as I’ve always disliked their control scheme), yet you can’t on the Z line of bodies. That was the biggest annoyance to me honestly. ...Show more →
The Z8 and Z9 allow for setting up 2 custom sized WideArea AF modes in addition to the fixed sized L and S that you have in the Z6/7. So it is much better than the Z6/7 in that regard.
Sony doesn't allow any AF size customization. I would like Sony to allow customizing the Zone size as I could certainly find some use to that. Canon does have Zone customization now.
arbitrage wrote:
I'm not familiar with how the other Canon cameras like R6II, R7, R8 do for EVF in ES compared to the R5??
Apparently the R6II's ES is slightly faster than the R5's.
I shot CPS R3, 5 and 6 loaners last fall for football and bought the R6II in December. The R6 was slightly worse than the R5's rolling shutter, but was still usable for 99.5% of (American) football photos. R6II seems a hair better for rolling shutter than the R5. It's more noticeable improvement over the R5 and R6 is somewhat better EVF smoothness, particularly when coming out of a sequence and the 'normal' live feed resumes. It's less jerky most of the time (but not always). This was something that really annoyed me with the R6 when trying to quickly jump from target to target after one to two shots of each in quick succession (youth hockey). The R6's EVF jump/jitter at times made me lose track of subjects. I suspect it's possibly as much CPU related as the new sensor in the R6II, since it uses the same EVF panel as the R6. Still some general lagginess though and find myself a fraction of a second behind erratically moving subjects. In those situations looser framing is advantageous. But I know R3 users who complain of the same thing, so maybe it's just inherent lag in EVF systems, though I'd expect the R5/6/6II have higher lag than the R3, a1, Z8/9, etc.
With the R6II I usually feel like I'm slightly behind if trying to time decisive moment type action. For example with hockey, I could usually exactly time stick on puck slapshots with the1DXII but with the R6II I need to anticipate the shot farther in advance and I have to shoot a sequence. The camera's release timing doesn't feel 'hair trigger' and consistent like the 1DXII. Basically, if I see the stick already coming down from the windup through the viewfinder and shoot, I've missed it, which wasn't the case with the 1DXII. I haven't had enough time with the R3 to know where it sits relative to the R6II and 1DXII, in this respect. If I'm shooting events where I don't have to watch how much I shoot, then yeah, I just spray n' pray at 20 or 40fps. I don't use the RAW pre-shot feature because it locks up the R6II between the time you let off the shutter release and the buffer clears, which even with a fast UHS-II card can be 5+ seconds of missed action.
1bwana1 wrote:
.... Nikon's own CEO admitted to being late to the mirrorless camera market because he made a mistake and didn't believe that photographers would accept the new technology.
Was he previously at Ricoh/Pentax? I guess he hasn't spent much time on the forums, such as the Sony forum here the past ~5 years as that system matured and enticed a lot of converts.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I could have switched to mirrorless with the a9 in 2017 and been content with it over Canon's 1DXII. It was IMO the first acceptable mirrorless DSLR replacement for my needs/wants, but the native lenses that I would have wanted were lacking, so I waited for Canon's R system to mature a bit, since the DSLR still did the job.
gdanmitchell wrote:
I think that what Sony did when they moved from their DSLRs to their early mirrorless models — in particular the FF mirrorless series — is a remarkable story. I write this as a person who did not move to their cameras, who continued to use a competitor's equipment (Canon), but who uses and likes a mirrorless system from another company (Fujifilm).
I've long held that Sony did something that neither Canon nor Nikon could have done at the time, and the point above about the "deficiencies in early mirrorless Sony cameras" is right on target. Basically Sony leveraged there _weakness_ in the DSLR market and their strength in sensor design to disrupt the entire market.
The early Sony cameras were, aside from the sensors, functionally inferior to the DSLRs of the time. Folks didn't like to talk about it (though they are more open about it now), but the cameras had serious AF issues, relied almost entirely on other manufacturers for lenses, and had a clunky interface.
But Sony found a way to make it not matter. It was brilliant marketing and a very wise business move, though there were risks. ...Show more →
Sony's early mirrorless cameras appealed very strongly to those who populated the old Alternative board here on FM. Many were interested in adapting lenses from various systems onto another system. It used to be that Canon EF was the host system of choice due to having the shortest DSLR lens mount to sensor flange distance. Remember the Leitax adapters (you can still get) to adapt various Leica R, Contax C/Y, Olympus OM, Nikon F, to Canon EF, etc.? But with Sony's FF mirrorless, you could do all that and also adapt rangefinder lenses!! And Canon FD and any other vintage SLR manual focus system glass that wouldn't adapt cleanly to Canon EF.
A friend of mine happened to work at Sony and briefly loaned me a preproduction a7. I think I was one of the first people worldwide to shoot a large range of rangefinder lenses with it (just simple test photos) that I posted here and on Flickr... and my Flickr account blew up. There was that much interest in knowing how well (and often times poorly, it turned out) those rangefinder lenses performed on a FF mirrorless camera.
So I think it was those photographers who provided Sony an early FF mirrorless lifeline that allowed Sony to stumble where otherwise Canon and Nikon would have been shredded by their user bases. They shot mostly in manual focus and maybe they'd use Canon EF lenses too via the Metabones adapter, that in some countries Sony bundled with their cameras. Maybe AF sucked, but some photographers don't photograph moving subjects and would be fine with the performance level - it would be like using the first generation of Minolta's AF SLRs back in the 80s. Remember how painful those were? (An example of where Canon was late to the party - AF - but launched with arguably better, more forward looking products.)
If AF follow-focus performance wasn't critical for you, then the early mirrorless cameras were usable. In some respects they offered features that DSLRs didn't or at least were smaller than using a DSLR in live view (and had EVFs).
Circling back to the Alt board here - it was interesting to see how Sony's initial popularity was mostly about adapting vintage/legacy manual focus lenses. But as Sony's cameras improved and the native lens lineup expanded, the Sony-dominated discussions on the Alt board became more and more mainstream to where spinning it off to its own Sony board was overdue. But it also gutted the Alt board. A lot of long-time Alt participants shared a lot of general knowledge, but went to the Sony board where such info that might interest other Alt participants was more difficult to find amongst all the 'mainstream' noise...
CanadaMark wrote:
I had the opposite experience - it's something that I find is quite subjective and the more people I talk to, the more I find opinions vary a lot on this matter. All these cameras work great "out of the box", probably better than any DSLR, even at full default settings. I shoot mostly birds, and Sony's AF required the most fiddling to get it to perform the way I was expecting. Others may feel differently, but I just couldn't get it to do certain things as easily. One example is that bird and animal AF are separated (unless recent FW fixed this), which is a clunky experience around mixed wildlife, at least in my opinion.
The Z8/Z9 perform just fine if you do nothing, but nobody buys a ~$4-$6K camera to leave all the settings in default. Every camera benefits from tweaks to AF settings. I think I changed 2 AF settings off default to get the most out of the system, at least for what I shoot. For the most part you can just leave it in wide area and it has an almost uncanny ability to pick birds or other wildlife out of nearly any scene. It can also detect all subject types simultaneously which can be useful, especially if you have to hand the camera to someone who may not know what they're doing.
Anyway, there seems to be lots of info in this thread that makes me wonder if some people have ever even held a Z8/Z9, let alone shot with one for any length of time (I don't mean you - just in general). Whether you have a Z8, A1, R5 or whatever - you are going to have such a high keeper rate that the AF is probably the least of your concerns. Lens availability and ergonomic preferences are a bigger deal, at least in my experience. Anyone trying to claim major differences between any of the 3 flagships' AF as some kind of 'known fact' should be a red flag.....Show more →
As someone who settled on the Olympus OM-1 for birds, I’d add that camera to this list.
Not bait at all. Functionally it is on par with many of them even if you don’t like the sensor size.
Readout Speeds
A1 - 1/120
X-H2S - 1/180
Z8/9 - 1/270
This is only for still images, the X-H2S is at the top for video. Also, the X-H2S only has to move about half the data, so it is effectively faster for stills too.
arbitrage wrote:
The Z8 and Z9 allow for setting up 2 custom sized WideArea AF modes in addition to the fixed sized L and S that you have in the Z6/7. So it is much better than the Z6/7 in that regard.
Sony doesn't allow any AF size customization. I would like Sony to allow customizing the Zone size as I could certainly find some use to that. Canon does have Zone customization now.
I’m talking about the size of the individual focus points. The A73 and A7R2 I owned certainly allowed for this.
rscheffler wrote:
Apparently the R6II's ES is slightly faster than the R5's.
I shot CPS R3, 5 and 6 loaners last fall for football and bought the R6II in December. The R6 was slightly worse than the R5's rolling shutter, but was still usable for 99.5% of (American) football photos. R6II seems a hair better for rolling shutter than the R5. It's more noticeable improvement over the R5 and R6 is somewhat better EVF smoothness, particularly when coming out of a sequence and the 'normal' live feed resumes. It's less jerky most of the time (but not always). This was something that really annoyed me with the R6 when trying to quickly jump from target to target after one to two shots of each in quick succession (youth hockey). The R6's EVF jump/jitter at times made me lose track of subjects. I suspect it's possibly as much CPU related as the new sensor in the R6II, since it uses the same EVF panel as the R6. Still some general lagginess though and find myself a fraction of a second behind erratically moving subjects. In those situations looser framing is advantageous. But I know R3 users who complain of the same thing, so maybe it's just inherent lag in EVF systems, though I'd expect the R5/6/6II have higher lag than the R3, a1, Z8/9, etc.
With the R6II I usually feel like I'm slightly behind if trying to time decisive moment type action. For example with hockey, I could usually exactly time stick on puck slapshots with the1DXII but with the R6II I need to anticipate the shot farther in advance and I have to shoot a sequence. The camera's release timing doesn't feel 'hair trigger' and consistent like the 1DXII. Basically, if I see the stick already coming down from the windup through the viewfinder and shoot, I've missed it, which wasn't the case with the 1DXII. I haven't had enough time with the R3 to know where it sits relative to the R6II and 1DXII, in this respect. If I'm shooting events where I don't have to watch how much I shoot, then yeah, I just spray n' pray at 20 or 40fps. I don't use the RAW pre-shot feature because it locks up the R6II between the time you let off the shutter release and the buffer clears, which even with a fast UHS-II card can be 5+ seconds of missed action.
Was he previously at Ricoh/Pentax? I guess he hasn't spent much time on the forums, such as the Sony forum here the past ~5 years as that system matured and enticed a lot of converts.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I could have switched to mirrorless with the a9 in 2017 and been content with it over Canon's 1DXII. It was IMO the first acceptable mirrorless DSLR replacement for my needs/wants, but the native lenses that I would have wanted were lacking, so I waited for Canon's R system to mature a bit, since the DSLR still did the job....Show more →
I stumbled across a breakdown of sensor readout speeds and it aligned with your experience exactly:
R6 = 1/45
R5 = 1/50
R6ii = 1/60
Alistair1 wrote:
Your contribution is not untypical on these pages. But at least hold a camera in your hands and turn it on before declaring it deficient. The Z8/9 AF modes are very different to the Z6/7.
Oh sure it’s that easy right? These cameras are on display everywhere right? Oh wait, they’re not! Oh and genius, they’re almost exactly the same with regards to the AF Modes.
Sure you have two more modes, but that doesn’t negate the points I made about the AF System being completely different compared to many of the other brands (they’re all very similar and Nikon is nothing like theirs).
amci4 wrote:
Oh sure it’s that easy right? These cameras are on display everywhere right? Oh wait, they’re not! Oh and genius, they’re almost exactly the same with regards to the AF Modes.
Sure you have two more modes, but that doesn’t negate the points I made about the AF System being completely different compared to many of the other brands (they’re all very similar and Nikon is nothing like theirs).
If you have never used a camera and don't even have access to one to evaluate, what advice can you offer and who benefits from it?
amci4 wrote:
Not bait at all. Functionally it is on par with many of them even if you don’t like the sensor size.
Readout Speeds
A1 - 1/120
X-H2S - 1/180
Z8/9 - 1/270
This is only for still images, the X-H2S is at the top for video. Also, the X-H2S only has to move about half the data, so it is effectively faster for stills too.
amci4 wrote:
Not bait at all. Functionally it is on par with many of them even if you don’t like the sensor size.
Readout Speeds
A1 - 1/120
X-H2S - 1/180
Z8/9 - 1/270
This is only for still images, the X-H2S is at the top for video. Also, the X-H2S only has to move about half the data, so it is effectively faster for stills too.
The A1 is a lot faster than that. I didn't realize the X-H2S was so slow. That is slower than an R5 in FF equivalent terms.
arbitrage wrote:
The Z8 and Z9 allow for setting up 2 custom sized WideArea AF modes in addition to the fixed sized L and S that you have in the Z6/7. So it is much better than the Z6/7 in that regard.
Sony doesn't allow any AF size customization. I would like Sony to allow customizing the Zone size as I could certainly find some use to that. Canon does have Zone customization now.
In addition to this, the Z8 and Z9 allow the size of the dynamic area mode to be adjusted (according to the size of uncertainty the user expects to have in pointing the primary point on the subject) whereas on the Z6II/Z7II the dynamic area is of fixed size. The Z8/Z9 have 3D tracking (Z7/Z6II do not) and the custom wide areas that you mentioned, where the user can adjust the size and shape of the rectangular area. These are all very substantial improvements in the AF area mode selection.
Finally, when using the camera (Z8 in my case) it just works much better even in single point mode than the Z6II. It can see detail and focus on surfaces which appear smooth to my eye and the Z6 II would not pick up.
For me as a D6 user the main focus area modes that I use on that camera are the custom group-area and dynamic area. Custom group area is similar to the custom wide area on the Z8, except that on the Z8 the subject selection plays a greater role whereas on the D6 the closest-subject priority is in effect in group-area mode, and the face-priority is available but it is kind of balancing its role with the closest-subject priority. I've found this mode to be highly effective in the D6, and it's very easy to switch to the Z8 with the similarity in modes there. When I need more precision I typically use 9-point dynamic area on the D6; again the Z6 provides similar functions. On the Z6II the only dynamic area available was so large that it wouldn't work for me in most cases.
I know a lot of people like to use 3D tracking; this mode hasn't been my preference, as I find that it can lose track of the subject when the face is temporarily hidden (in DSLRs), it's just a question of working style I guess. I suppose it's possible the Z8 handles these situations better, what is the experience of Z9 users? In any case the Z8 supports 3D tracking while the Z6II/Z7II do not. The subject-tracking combined with AF that was available on the Z6II didn't work reliably enough to be usable in my applications, and the same was true of the auto-area AF. What I used on the Z6II was the wide-area AF with human face/eye detection and that was something I could work with especially for landscape shots; the shape of the area was not good for vertical orientation. Basically I would point the box towards the person I want to focus on and it would find the eyes reliably and focus on them. In the Z8 this function also exists and you can adjust the size and shape of the area to your needs depending on the situation, and it can be set so that it automatically chooses a different shape and position for vertical shots han horizontal shots; this way I can have a horizontal bar in the upper third of the frame when shooting horizontals, and when turning the camera into vertical orientation, it automatically remembers the settings previously used in vertical shots, and I get a horizontal bar in the top third (now it is along the short axis of the frame). This covers my typical ways of using a camera to photograph people and allows convenient switching between Z8 and D6 as the ways of setting up the AF system and working with it is so similar.
I set the lens FN buttons to activate AF and 9-point dynamic area mode so that if the camera is selecting the wrong person in the frame within the custom wide-area, I can quickly override it and point to the person I want it to focus on. However, this only works with lenses that have a function button. There are body Fn buttons available but I've so far set them for different functionalities. E.g. REC button allows me to select af area mode (across the full range of settings) so that I don't have to use my left hand to press the selector button. Fn 1 is now set to recall shooting functions (hold) and the way I set it up is to go to 12 fps and set the shutter speed fast enough to the action (1/800s or 1/1250s depending on what I expect) while in my normal mode the camera is set to either 8 fps or single shot mode at the moment, and the auto ISO minimum shutter speed is set to auto + 2 steps faster so it should stop most movement but might not if the person moves fast. Again there is similarity to the D6, except that it doesn't allow fps rate to be overridden by recall shooting functions so there is an improvement there. But on the D6 I typically have recall shooting functions (hold) remember faster exposure settings for a quick speedup of shutter speed by rising the ISO. On the Z8, my Fn2 is set to open My menu which contains e.g. flash control functions and other things I expect to need.
Recall shooting functions isn't available on the Z6 II or Z7 II. Quite a lot of differences, not only hardware, but software as well.
amci4 wrote:
I’m talking about the size of the individual focus points. The A73 and A7R2 I owned certainly allowed for this.
I didn't own either of those two cameras but I owned A9 which is same generation as A73 and same AF modes (until it got the real time tracking update in FW 5.0).
Sony has 7 AF modes: Wide, Zone, Center, Small Flex Spot, Medium Flex Spot, Large Flex Spot and Expand Flex Spot.
Are you talking about the S, M, L Flex spots when you talk about size of individual focus points?
I'm not aware of another setting that would change the size of the individual focus points?
Nikon has Single, 3 Dynamic sizes, Wide Area S, L, C1, C2, Auto, 3D. The Wide Area C1, C2 can be made as small as 1x1 square (same as Single point size) and up to a 19x11.
I really don't see much difference in those offerings. I do like the size of the green squares on the Sony compared to the size of graphics on the Nikon and I prefer the Sony way of displaying the dancing squares and the RTT square but those are just displays and don't have much to do with what is really going on at the sensor AF points.
amci4 wrote:
Not bait at all. Functionally it is on par with many of them even if you don’t like the sensor size.
Readout Speeds
A1 - 1/120
X-H2S - 1/180
Z8/9 - 1/270
This is only for still images, the X-H2S is at the top for video. Also, the X-H2S only has to move about half the data, so it is effectively faster for stills too.
The A1 is 1/260. Tested and confirmed by many including one of our own members.
X-H2S is actually scanning fairly slow. An A1 would scan the APS-C linear area in 1/390s compared to the 1/180 of the X-H2S. The X-H2S would be 1/120 in FF.
I guess he hasn't spent much time on the forums, such as the Sony forum here the past ~5 years as that system matured and enticed a lot of converts.