Re: Z9...Another Week in Revenue Service...My Impressions
Nice images! I had posted this in another thread but moving it here as it is more appropriate and in hopes that this will become a Z9 thread:
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Finished shooting my first HS basketball game with a Nikon Z9 — moving to the Z system from a NikonnD5/D6. I had to file directly to the newspaper and haven’t had time to process the rest of the pictures so this is just a text review. Will post pictures later.
* The AF with eye-detect is beyond anything I have experienced or expected. Once it locks on, it truly doesn’t miss. Need to determine if the large area or small area AF is better for hoops — also need to determine the ideal “delay" setting I did blow focus on some pictures, but that was user/newbie error. It takes awhile to adjust.
Even if everything else on this camera was a step backward — and it clearly isn’t — the AF system on Z9 is so spectacular (and likely the Sony A1 and Cannon flagship) that it will be impossible to go “back” to a DSLR for action sports.
* Left to float, Auto ISO in the gym pegged it at about 5,000 at f/2. Looking at the files, I would say my D5/D6 files were just slightly cleaner out of camera. Not unexpected.
* Shot mostly at the standard CH-20 fps, and hopped up to 30 for a brief time. If you are coming from a high fps DLSR, plan on coming back with ~3X+ more pictures than you did for equivalent events. Buy CFExpress cards accordingly. I am hoping that as I use the camera and have a better handle on the AF, I’ll have better self control. Just too many files out of the gate. Frankly, I'm embarrassed to say how many.
* Couple things that will take some to to adjust to— I) I found the display on the top of the camera quite hard to read. 2) Out of the box, the camera is apparently set to go into sleep mode if inactive for a relatively short period. Pretty sure I found the way to turn that off. But I got stung a couple times trying to fire off a quick shot. 3) I need to figure out how to lock my focus point. I’m not sure if it’s just getting used to the new buttons and/or hitting the wrong ones in the heat of battle — but I was constantly readjusting. Likely user error.
* I shot with adapted Nikon glass f/2 200 and 85MM/1.4. I would say the AF speed is equal to or better than on the D5/D6. There is no FTZ penalty.
BTW — assume user error on all/most of these things that did not go right. I’m fighting decades of muscle memory in this transition, like many others. But I'm not officially sold on mirrorless.
FOR SALE: All my DSLR gear ...
Jan 24, 2022 at 08:07 AM
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