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Breaking in my new Nikon Z7... 2 questions about set up.


michael_matsil

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Hi all...

Breaking in my new Z7. Paired it up with a Zeiss 50mm f2 Makro Planar as my new landscape shooting rig.

 

1] It's a manual lens, so I'm using peaking as the focussing method as I have with other digital cameras mated with manual lenses. With other cameras, the peaking indicators within the scene usually disappear when the shutter is half depressed. Is there a setting I'm missing where you can control the focus peaking in that way? It would be great to see the scene without that when you are focused and ready to release the shutter.

 

2] Also, I would like it if there was a display setting where ALL of the camera information were to go away completely and just be left with a clean view of the subject. The "DISP" button only allows for full information, partial information, partial info with histogram, level indicator and finally the 'i' info screen. Just a plain view of the subject would be great. I find no setting that let's that happen... there's always some info on the screen.

 

Thanks for your help... Mike

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In answer to your 1] question you might be able to assign either the F1 or F2 button to toggle the Peaking. The Z7 manual on page 26 lists Peaking Highlights as an option.

 

I currently have a cat on my lap so cant check it for myself at the moment. :rolleyes:

 

 

Edit. Just tried it and no it doesn't toggle Peaking On/Off it gives you the option to vary the Peaking Level.

 

Sorry.

Edited by Mike Dale
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Is there a good place where I can register that suggestion? Do these kind of requests really get considered?

 

Nikon recently claimed they do like feedback. For what it's worth, I've been meaning (for over a year) to get a list of feature requests together and see how much interest they have, rather than sounding like a sole voice when talking to Nikon. I actually do expect to sort that this holiday season, so if you don't manage to suggest it, I'll tag it on my list and try to ensure it's included.

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I am not sure if this detailed review covers your issue, but it is pretty complete and the most detailed I have seen to date on the Z7. .

 

Nikon Z7 Review - Photography Life

 

For what it is worth I have emailed Nikon thru NIKONUSA with suggestions for improving and fixing problems with Nikon View NX-i. And they have responded. I would give it a try.

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In answer to your 1] question you might be able to assign either the F1 or F2 button to toggle the Peaking. The Z7 manual on page 26 lists Peaking Highlights as an option.

 

I currently have a cat on my lap so cant check it for myself at the moment. :rolleyes:

 

 

Edit. Just tried it and no it doesn't toggle Peaking On/Off it gives you the option to vary the Peaking Level.

 

Sorry.

Thanks... I understand, the cat rules the household ;). But thanks for checking! On my Ricoh GFX, the peaking disappears when the shutter is half pressed. I am surprised that Nikon did not provide this. Also all the shooting data that is actually ON the image area! These two items could be very easily corrected through firmware updates. I'll take Joseph Smith's advice here in this thread and do what I can to inform Nikon. It's a new camera system so there will be things that don't please all shooters. But the flexibility of programmed camera controls can make virtually any configuration possible.

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I am not sure if this detailed review covers your issue, but it is pretty complete and the most detailed I have seen to date on the Z7. .

 

Nikon Z7 Review - Photography Life

 

For what it is worth I have emailed Nikon thru NIKONUSA with suggestions for improving and fixing problems with Nikon View NX-i. And they have responded. I would give it a try.

Thanks. I'll do that!

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Others (including that Photography Life article) have complained about the lack of a plain view, so hopefully it's on Nikon's radar. PL point out that the viewfinder view doesn't have the problem because there's space for the image information to appear below the image, whereas the rear screen on the Z7 (unlike the D850) is 3:2 and doesn't have spare pixels.

 

Out of interest, when can you get focus peaking to appear on the Z7? On the D850 I think you have to switch the camera to manual mode - I believe switching the lens mode won't do it, and I'm pretty sure that manual override of focus on the lens won't do it; it certainly doesn't show during live view autofocus, which is a shame because it would be nice to know what the camera decided to focus on. I've been a bit frustrated by this in the past, partly because I set focus peaking as an experiment, went back to autofocus, forgot about it, then wondered why I couldn't activate electronic VR for video shooting: having focus peaking "on" stops you doing so even if you're in autofocus and the focus peaking isn't actually working. But it would be nice if focus peaking was a bit more configurable. I don't know whether an AF-S lens actually tells the camera when it's switched to manual mode.

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Does EXIF tell you?

 

Good thought. I can't see anything in the output of ImageMagick's identify; exiftool says "AF-S" and "AF On", but that might just be the camera's view (and "AF-S" might be "as opposed to AF-C", not "as opposed to AF-D"). Perhaps I should experiment.

 

I've been wondering about using my AF-dead 600mm f4 AFS IF-ED II with the Z6 or Z7 with IBIS and Focus Peaking for astro/lunar stuff.

 

IBIS or SBIS? The IBIS stuff I meant was for video, which isn't all that useful for astrophotography - ideally you probably want a burst of images and try to sort out the atmospheric mess. Basically, don't start with a big sensor. I've not checked, but I've not heard anything about the sensor doing the kind of reverse earth rotation motion tracking for astro photos that Pentax can do. Doing it for anything but a tiny exposure on a 600mm is asking for trouble, though.

 

How does IBIS compare to VR regarding tripod use?

 

I don't actually know how clever it is when it comes to deliberate tracking, or indeed how good it is at sharpening blur within a frame - GoPro and the latest mobiles are pretty good at this, but then they have much smaller sensors with faster readout to worry about, and some have interesting sample patterns and effectively combine over multiple very short exposures. My experience with the D850's video IBIS went about as far as finally confirming how you turn it on (a couple of weeks after it would havee been useful and I was blocked by focus peaking), not actually using it for anything!

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I was thinking more IBIS for stills to cancel any lens/camera vibration and Focus Peaking in stills to tell when the lens is in focus. MF with a 600mm f4 on the moon is kinda tricky, even with zoomed LV.

 

want a burst of images

4K at 120fps?

 

Hadn't really thought about it, but I guess IBIS 'sees' the image moving and VR senses the lens moving?

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I was thinking more IBIS for stills to cancel any lens/camera vibration and Focus Peaking in stills to tell when the lens is in focus. MF with a 600mm f4 on the moon is kinda tricky, even with zoomed LV.

 

Yes; focus peaking ought to help (bearing in mind it's typically at the display resolution, so you might want to zoom in).

 

4K at 120fps?

 

Except you usually don't want the compression scheme artifacts, but yes. I believe the latest approaches do something clever with subsets of the image, but I might be giving them too much credit.

 

Hadn't really thought about it, but I guess IBIS 'sees' the image moving and VR senses the lens moving?

 

I'm not sure how much the camera's internal gyros come into it, but otherwise, yes.

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Hadn't really thought about it, but I guess IBIS 'sees' the image moving and VR senses the lens moving?

 

I believe both use measurements of acceleration as basis for compensation of the movement of the camera and lens rather than look at the image, if the image is shifting enough to notice then the shot is already blurred, and I don't think the camera has enough computing power to process 24MP or 45MP images at a image sampling rate of about 1kHz, which is what one would want to use for detecting movement.

Edited by ilkka_nissila
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I believe both use measurements of acceleration as basis for compensation of the movement of the camera and lens rather than look at the image, if the image is shifting enough to notice then the shot is already blurred, and I don't think the camera has enough computing power to process 24MP or 45MP images at a image sampling rate of about 1kHz, which is what one would want to use for detecting movement.

 

Oh, yes. The IBIS I was talking about for video just compares consecutive frames, and (since it doesn't work in 4K) that's 60-120Hz sampling, presumably unless you drop your shutter speed. It's intended to handle gross movements during video sequences, not short-term movements during a single exposure; the difficulty is that if you're shaking, even each single frame will have blur. You can directionally sharpen to some extent, but sampling different pixels out of the grid at different times during the exposure is a better way to try to manage sub-frame blur, and that's more the kind of small-sensor trick I was thinking of. It's a bit messier when it comes to giving the user a lot of flexibility in an exposure, though.

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I just tried it with my 35mm/f1.4 AI-S with the FTZ on my Z6. There is no coupling between the aperture setting on the lens and the body. Therefore, the Z6 performs stop-down metering, which is less than ideal.

How do you stop the lens down? Push the DOF level? If you have the camera on A you push the level then release the shutter? If you don't care about metering and shoot on M then when you push the shutter release the lens will stop down to the aperture set on the ring?

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How do you stop the lens down? Push the DOF level? If you have the camera on A you push the level then release the shutter? If you don't care about metering and shoot on M then when you push the shutter release the lens will stop down to the aperture set on the ring?

As usual, you rotate the aperture ring on the AI-S lens to stop down the aperture. Please keep in mind that unlike a Nikon F-mount body, the FTZ adapter's mechanical aperture control is not spring loaded and does not press on the lever to keep the aperture wide open. The result is that you end up with stop-down metering. The FTZ also has no aperture follower tab to keep track of the current aperture ring setting.

 

These are the details about the FTZ adapter. Unless one has a strong interest to acquire either a Z6 or Z7 and use old AI-S lenses on it, I am not sure why we need so much detail. I still own a couple of AI and AI-S lenses, but I don't use them any more. My 35mm/f1.4 AI-S was supposed to be a great lens in its days, and I paid ~$450 or it in 1987, but my Sigma 35mm/f1.4 Art is a far better lens for digital and realistically much cheaper ($699 a few years ago).

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There are advantages to stop down with the FTZ, not that I have a Z yet to verify

 

You get an idea of the actual DOF for the photo, and an idea of what the bokeh results will be

No iris system inaccuracy

No issue from focus shift

Immediate feedback if the chosen aperture/shutter speed is way off, and probably some other advantages I am not thinking of.

 

I have been using adapted lenses on a Sony A7 for a while stopped down. With the Sony, focus peaking and focus at 100% zoom work fairly well with the lenses stopped down some. Focusing works well enough that I don't feel the need to open the lens, focus, then close back down unless I am going for some major f/16 DOF effect.

Edited by robert_bouknight|1
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As usual, you rotate the aperture ring on the AI-S lens to stop down the aperture. Please keep in mind that unlike a Nikon F-mount body, the FTZ adapter's mechanical aperture control is not spring loaded and does not press on the lever to keep the aperture wide open. The result is that you end up with stop-down metering. The FTZ also has no aperture follower tab to keep track of the current aperture ring setting.

 

These are the details about the FTZ adapter. Unless one has a strong interest to acquire either a Z6 or Z7 and use old AI-S lenses on it, I am not sure why we need so much detail. I still own a couple of AI and AI-S lenses, but I don't use them any more. My 35mm/f1.4 AI-S was supposed to be a great lens in its days, and I paid ~$450 or it in 1987, but my Sigma 35mm/f1.4 Art is a far better lens for digital and realistically much cheaper ($699 a few years ago).

If the aperture control does not keep the lens wide open then how would it work with G and AF-D lenses?

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If the aperture control does not keep the lens wide open then how would it work with G and AF-D lenses?

 

I assume it knows that G and AF-D lenses are there, and pushes the aperture ring explicitly when it detects an electronic lens is present.

 

This behaviour is actually news to me - I was under the impression that the adaptor held the aperture open until you're ready to shoot, then dropped the aperture lever before taking a meter reading. But I guess it would then not be able to report the reading to the user. Take your pick - you either have a lot of light and maximised out-of-focus for locking in the focal plane, or you have final DoF and meter - you could always use the old film DoF-plus-AELock shuffle to get an aperture-relevant meter reading. Anyway, I trust Shun's report of how it works, I just thought I'd heard the alternative version somewhere. Live and learn!

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