p.61 #1 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
arbitrage wrote:
The handoff process is easy enough. If you are a shutter button AF guy then you have say Wide Area Large on the shutter and programs AF-ON to be 3D or Auto. Then it is just like Sony, holding in the AF-ON will override the shutter AF setting.
When I mentioned preferring the A1's AF methods it is because of what you describe. We can use all the AF modes in non-tracking and tracking and like you do I also have the button to instantly change my regular (non-tracking) modes from the shutter button into Tracking.
Nikon doesn't work this way. The only mode that you can aim a single (relatively small) AF point at a subject and have it track all over the frame is 3D. Auto will track over the frame but is like Sony Wide where it makes the decision of what to focus on and track.
The Wide Area modes will allow subject detect but will only track as far as some of the subject is still touching the boundary of the given Wide Area box size.
Nikon's single point mode doesn't do subject detect. You can make a Custom Wide Area down to a 1x1 square to have subject detect work but then to track anywhere you need to handoff to 3D or Auto.
I made a bit of an error in my reply above when I said people were using the recall button to turn off tracking. It isn't tracking they are turning off it is just subject (eye) detect. That is different than what you were asking. You don't really turn tracking on and off on the Z9. You just use 3D or Auto if you want full sensor tracking, Wide Area for more limited area tracking and Single or Dynamic have no tracking feature. All you can turn off and on is subject/eye detect so if you turn that off then 3D will just track the object and not look for subjects/eyes. Wide area would just dance the red squares over the nearest object like Sony Zone without tracking would do.
As far as the Z cameras being ready to bring back the Nikon DSLR users, I think it is ready to and the lenses for birds/wildlife are enough to do it for most even if the cameras may not be as good in all areas as the competition.
The lenses brought back Steve Perry and Steve Mattheis from shooting some hybrid Sony/Nikon combo to using Nikon all the time now. Z9 AF was up to par or "good enough" to make it worth ditching the Sony gear and concentrating on just one system with the new TC lenses....Show more →
Let’s also be clear, the differences are only going to show up in the edgiest of edge cases, like shooting swallows in flight. These discussions happen constantly but ignore 99% of likely use cases.
p.61 #2 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
groob wrote:
Let’s also be clear, the differences are only going to show up in the edgiest of edge cases, like shooting swallows in flight. These discussions happen constantly but ignore 99% of likely use cases.
How the modes work and how you control them affects 100% of use cases. And IMO is actually more important than how well the camera tracks once it starts tracking. Once these cameras start tracking they all track. It is the process of getting to the point of them tracking what you want them to track where the important differences/nuances lie. This is where I find the biggest differentiating factors between these different flagship systems.
p.61 #3 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
"Then it is just like Sony, holding in the AF-ON will override the shutter AF setting."
Perfect
"The only mode that you can aim a single (relatively small) AF point at a subject and have it track all over the frame is 3D."
This is what I understood about 3D which I've tried (almost never used) in DSLRs. This is not the most important feature for me, but I'm used to it with A1
"You just use 3D or Auto if you want full sensor tracking, Wide Area for more limited area tracking and Single or Dynamic have no tracking feature. "
Yep, I get it. I was talking about 'tracking within frame' than the focus distance change. It's a far better replacement of old 'Focus, reframe and shoot' method we used since MF days. Sony focuses even after the reframe if the subject move.
"I think it is ready to and the lenses for birds/wildlife are enough to do it for most even if the cameras may not be as good in all areas as the competition."
Got it. I started thinking about Z8 because I wanted to get more background blur than my 200-600. Sony 600/4 is natural choice. Then I thought I can get Z8 and 800PF for same price, but lighter. I might get a used Z8 and make sure it will work for me. There are few things I like about Z8/Nikon in general
1) 800 PF and 400/4.5 lenses
2) Ergonomics/body size
3) LCD that tilt vertically
4) Buttons that lit up
5) OOC skin color for my type of skins (this is purely personal taste)
6) Auto WB is more stable for indoor mixed lightings. This is also related to family/people pictures
Obviously A1 has lots of advantages including AF (I know not everyone will agree here).
Thanks again for the detailed reply.
arbitrage wrote:
The handoff process is easy enough. If you are a shutter button AF guy then you have say Wide Area Large on the shutter and programs AF-ON to be 3D or Auto. Then it is just like Sony, holding in the AF-ON will override the shutter AF setting.
When I mentioned preferring the A1's AF methods it is because of what you describe. We can use all the AF modes in non-tracking and tracking and like you do I also have the button to instantly change my regular (non-tracking) modes from the shutter button into Tracking.
Nikon doesn't work this way. The only mode that you can aim a single (relatively small) AF point at a subject and have it track all over the frame is 3D. Auto will track over the frame but is like Sony Wide where it makes the decision of what to focus on and track.
The Wide Area modes will allow subject detect but will only track as far as some of the subject is still touching the boundary of the given Wide Area box size.
Nikon's single point mode doesn't do subject detect. You can make a Custom Wide Area down to a 1x1 square to have subject detect work but then to track anywhere you need to handoff to 3D or Auto.
I made a bit of an error in my reply above when I said people were using the recall button to turn off tracking. It isn't tracking they are turning off it is just subject (eye) detect. That is different than what you were asking. You don't really turn tracking on and off on the Z9. You just use 3D or Auto if you want full sensor tracking, Wide Area for more limited area tracking and Single or Dynamic have no tracking feature. All you can turn off and on is subject/eye detect so if you turn that off then 3D will just track the object and not look for subjects/eyes. Wide area would just dance the red squares over the nearest object like Sony Zone without tracking would do.
As far as the Z cameras being ready to bring back the Nikon DSLR users, I think it is ready to and the lenses for birds/wildlife are enough to do it for most even if the cameras may not be as good in all areas as the competition.
The lenses brought back Steve Perry and Steve Mattheis from shooting some hybrid Sony/Nikon combo to using Nikon all the time now. Z9 AF was up to par or "good enough" to make it worth ditching the Sony gear and concentrating on just one system with the new TC lenses....Show more →
p.61 #4 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
The misinformation about the Z6 and Z7 = disaster/underwhelming etc on the www is propagated by trolls incapable of understanding simple facts, notably utubers posing as reviewers bashing Nikon. These get broadcast on photography forums by self anointed experts threatened/jealous of Nikon products, and particularly the rapid success of the Z System. This is of course a prime example of Sonyfanism: "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy with other equipment." to quote Roger Cicala, 2018
This is the well known tactic of the late unlamented Dr Goebbells - tell a lie often enough so it gets believed (at least by the gullible).... It is impossible to engage in a rational dialogue. It is pointless engaging with someone who distorts reality. Anything they post is unreliable. Such repeaters are better ignored in their echo chambers.
However, In the interests of this Nikon forum being a repository sharing reliable information about Nikon products, it is important to call out internet noise perpetuating nonsenses about the Z6 and Z7 being failures/underperformers... let alone a disaster. The reason for Nikon's lost marketshare is no mystery - the rapid loss of the big sales in consumer DSLRs and especially Point&Shoots to smartphones.
Back on terra firma with some facts. The reliable reviews tell a different story about the Z6 and Z7.
Nasim Nansurov's team tested six copies of the Z6 intensively, because they bought these cameras as they ticked many boxes, apparently. Those interested in the facts can read the reviews over at PL
Thom Hogan was critical of some features but concluded positively in Recommending both the Z7 and Z7 - the 12th and 13th Mirrorless cameras, respectively, designed by Nikon engineers since 2011. He cited the tear downs by Roger Cicala over at LensRental, who concluded "This is not marketing department weather resistance. This is engineering department weather resistance...."
Max Power wrote:
I disagree that the Z6/Z7 cameras were any form of disaster. They served and continue to serve many if not the majority of users well. In looking at the A7 line when they came out, granted a few years earlier than Nikon to be fair, I don't think Nikon would have chosen to put that quality level camera in the market. The handling of those early cameras was awful, the viewfinder chased many back to their DSLRs, and the menus were far from ideal.
I wont speculate on the strategy or subterfuge of it all, but I feel Nikon's first offerings to be far better than the Sony ones, given the advantage of time of course. Nikon got the free look at everything they didn't like about Sony, and did not repeat the mistakes.
Of course, Nikon has rarely been first to market with anything, they have always taken a "be patient and release a good product" approach, something that did not help their market share with the perfect storm of events. They may be back to number three, but by most accounts they are darn profitable. They will be around.
If I had to start from scratch I am not sure what I would choose. But Nikon should be in the running for anyone looking at the three major FF systems. ...Show more →
p.61 #5 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
Back to the autofocus of the Z8 and Z9. The ebooks by Steve Perry on MILC autofocus and the Z8&Z9 are well worth the money. There are also some in depth discussions and sharing of information on the BCG forum - custom settings and how Focus Persistence works....Helpful members over there.
Using this HandOver AF method with a Z8 is not too different IME for an experienced owner of the D500 or D850 in using optional AF modes on Function, PV buttons.... with Shutter Release or to stay with back-button AF as some still prefer. The Z8 gives you more custom options compared to the Nikon DSLRs.
These Custom Area AF modes work very well, particularly with Subject Recognition enabled.
p.61 #6 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
arbitrage wrote:
How the modes work and how you control them affects 100% of use cases. And IMO is actually more important than how well the camera tracks once it starts tracking. Once these cameras start tracking they all track. It is the process of getting to the point of them tracking what you want them to track where the important differences/nuances lie. This is where I find the biggest differentiating factors between these different flagship systems.
Geoff, you, yourself, said (months ago) that none of the current generation camera bodies have any trouble tracking something like a bufflehead in flight. The differences in systems is not really going to show up until one gets to something even more difficult than a small, fast duck. But the overwhelming majority of people are not going to be shooting anything more difficult than that.
An overwhelming majority also say that one of the wide area modes works for basically all their subjects and that auto works near perfectly for perched birds, even ones that are obscured by brush. Some people hand off; some don’t.
All of that is why I said that the differences are not going to have much, if any, impact for 99% of shooting situations. It sounds to me like you are suggesting that it is somehow difficult to get birds in focus in most shooting situations. If so, how is that not a pretty dramatic overstatement?
p.61 #7 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
I have a running Z8/Z9 tech container thread on Dpreview, where I share various technical details of the camera you may not find elsewhere. You can read it here. I just posted about how CFE card "full formats" work. Below is the content of that post:
When you format a CFE card inside the camera, the UI presents you two options:
* Full Format
* Quick Format
The documentation recommends a full format "for users who wish to ensure that all data are deleted or who feel that the speed at which the camera reads from and writes to the card has slowed and wish to improve data transfer speeds"
Based on this description and the fact that a full format completes in just a handful of seconds it's clear that Nikon is performing an NVMe sanitize operation, which electrically erases the NAND pages, both the mapping table and the actual user data blocks. Previous incarnations of this were termed a "secure erase".
Unlike magnetic data, NAND cells can't be ovewritten in place. The only way to change the contents of a user-addressable block is to write the new data to a fresh NAND page (one that's in an erased state). The NAND page holding the previous version of the data will be marked as "not in use" in a mapping table - that page will be erased/reclaimed by the card whenever it starts running out of fresh NAND pages. The host controller (camera in this case) can expedite the process by issuing an NVMe Deallocate command to the user-addressable block (aka Trim command), which will erase/reclaim the block either immediately or during the next idle period.
It's not clear if Nikon issues Deallocate commands when erasing images in camera. If it doesn't then you definitely want to use a "Full Format" frequently, otherwise you'll run into performance issues, esp on cards that you fill to capacity often.
p.61 #9 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
sjms wrote:
it also can reduce the overall lifespan of the card if used way too much.
Agreed. For cards filled to capacity it wont reduce the lifespan, since those blocks would have to undergo an erase cycle regardless to reclaim their capacity for new data. But if you don't fill your cards then performing a full format will erase blocks that otherwise wouldn't have needed to be erased in normal use.
Edit: On second thought, probably not. The drive should only issue the erase command to blocks that aren't already erased, so it actually shouldn't affect the lifespan of the drive.
p.61 #11 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
sjms wrote:
unfortunately not. not so selective.
SSD and NVMe drives support block-specific trim/deallocate commands, so it stands to reason that a full-drive deallocate would use that mechanism to iterate across all the blocks on the drive. It could either read each block to see if it needs erasing, or more likely, just consult the mapping table to determine which blocks are in use and erase those.
In fact it almost assuredly has to erase on a per-block basis - the alternate would be to supply erase voltage to all cells at the same time, which would exceed the power capacity of the interface.
p.61 #12 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
Thank you. Looks like I might miss only one major feature of AF. The tracking within frame even with single point. Even that may work with 3D. Not a big deal. My main interest is BIF and other action stuff.
How effective is the auto subject recognition compared to say animal, people or bids selected?
NikonClio64 wrote:
Back to the autofocus of the Z8 and Z9. The ebooks by Steve Perry on MILC autofocus and the Z8&Z9 are well worth the money. There are also some in depth discussions and sharing of information on the BCG forum - custom settings and how Focus Persistence works....Helpful members over there.
Using this HandOver AF method with a Z8 is not too different IME for an experienced owner of the D500 or D850 in using optional AF modes on Function, PV buttons.... with Shutter Release or to stay with back-button AF as some still prefer. The Z8 gives you more custom options compared to the Nikon DSLRs.
These Custom Area AF modes work very well, particularly with Subject Recognition enabled....Show more →
p.61 #13 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
You can set a Custom Area Group to as small as 1 by 1 which works more tightly on trickier subjects with Subject Recognition
I usually only shoot animals (!) so no need for Auto but I have tested Auto on horseshoes in an arena, and it was recognizing the rider in preference to the horse in 3D Tracking mode.
Jemini wrote:
Thank you. Looks like I might miss only one major feature of AF. The tracking within frame even with single point. Even that may work with 3D. Not a big deal. My main interest is BIF and other action stuff.
How effective is the auto subject recognition compared to say animal, people or bids selected?
p.61 #14 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
snapsy wrote:
SSD and NVMe drives support block-specific trim/deallocate commands, so it stands to reason that a full-drive deallocate would use that mechanism to iterate across all the blocks on the drive. It could either read each block to see if it needs erasing, or more likely, just consult the mapping table to determine which blocks are in use and erase those.
In fact it almost assuredly has to erase on a per-block basis - the alternate would be to supply erase voltage to all cells at the same time, which would exceed the power capacity of the interface.
yes, it doesn't do them all at once. i never said i was done all at once. it is done as you said on a per block basis but all blocks end up being done. it takes awhile.
i do believe that takes in account wear leveling too.
p.61 #15 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
1bwana1 wrote:
You forget that it was the poor performance, deficient specifications, and high price that set off the negative view of Nikon mirrorless in the press and industry. This criticism was well deserved. In regard to these two models, although the original issues have largely been addressed, that negativity persists to this day among many. The Z6/7 cameras damaged Nikon's reputation for good reason, and underperformed in sales as a result. This contributed to the huge fall in Nikon market share and financial problems. You may choose a different word than disaster to describe that if you like.
I never shot the early Sony mirrorless cameras because I felt the Nikon DSLRs were much better. But at release of the Z6/7 cameras the competing Sony cameras were far better. That was the environment that the Z6/7 cameras had to compete in, and they were sorely lacking....Show more →
Yes, I will choose a different word.....hyperbole. They were not overpriced, and they lacked only in one area. That somehow turned into a tsunami of forum and youtube warriors posting their usual clickbait. And that seems to persist to this day with the same crowd. Yes, upon release the Sony's were ahead, they had a 5 year head start. Duh. The original Z6 and Z7 cameras are still excellent cameras in almost every category. If you want the definition of disaster, look through the EVF of those early Sonys. Good luck not puking.
p.61 #16 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
Max Power wrote:
Yes, I will choose a different word.....hyperbole... If you want the definition of disaster, look through the EVF of those early Sonys. Good luck not puking.
Nice of you to cite such a great example of hyperbole.
p.61 #18 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
sjms wrote:
yes, it doesn't do them all at once. i never said i was done all at once. it is done as you said on a per block basis but all blocks end up being done. it takes awhile.
i do believe that takes in account wear leveling too.
Thanks, see your point. I just read through the NVMe spec again and also looked at the source to the Linux NVMe driver. Based on the NVMe commands available there are two methods Nikon could use to effect a full-drive format - a Sanitize command or a Deallocate. The specification doesn't delve into drive-specific implementation details but my reading of it implies a Sanitize will unconditionally erase all blocks, so if that's the command Nikon is using then certainly it will reduce lifespan as you indicated.
The Deallocate command marks the blocks as not-in-use, ie a Trim command, which marks it for erasing if the block is allocated/in-use. This would be a selective erase, so it's the preferable mechanism to achieve a performance-restoring full-format operation.
I have an M.2 NVMe CFE card reader, so this weekend I plan to experiment with the full-drive format on the camera and then mount the card on the reader and perform the above commands using nvme-cli to see which match the behavior/completion time of the Nikon operation.
p.61 #19 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
1bwana1 wrote:
But at release of the Z6/7 cameras the competing Sony cameras were far better.
This is just hyperbole at best. This comment doesn't in any way match the real world experience of using each system. You can search the archives at DPR or other sites that compared the Z7 to the Sony A7RIII or the Z6 to the Sony A7III and you'll struggle to find any reviewer calling the Sony cameras "far better".
p.61 #20 · Nikon unveils the highly anticipated Z8 camera!
Thank you. Will try it myself
NikonClio64 wrote:
You can set a Custom Area Group to as small as 1 by 1 which works more tightly on trickier subjects with Subject Recognition
I usually only shoot animals (!) so no need for Auto but I have tested Auto on horseshoes in an arena, and it was recognizing the rider in preference to the horse in 3D Tracking mode.
