Nikon Z - your experiences with the viewfinder?

Now that the Z has been out for sometime. Those of you who have used this for sometime how do you find it in particular to the viewfinder? Any dizzy or zoned out or dissatisfaction with the viewfinder?

 

 

 

Cheers.

3, 4 years ago, when my local camera store Keeble and Shuchat was around, I used to visit during their semi-annual sales events where reps from a lot of brands would display their latest cameras. Back then I looked thru the viewfinders of Sony and Fuji mirrorless and didn’t care for those EVF. I look at some backlit scene and the entire EVF was super overexposed. Keeble went out of business in October 2016. That was how long ago that was.

 

When I saw the Z7 for the first time in September 2018, I was far more impressed. Its viewfinder is far superior. Now I have had a Z6 for half a year, I am happy with that. The EVF is one strength of the Z, although I expect other brands have also improved. I find the EVF on the Z wonderful under dim light. During the day it looks like viewing thru HD TV; it is very good but I still prefer an optical viewfinder. The Z’s EVF has a tiny bit of delay. It can be a bit of an issue if you shoot fast-moving subjects.

Shun, what is your local Bay Area camera store now? We've got Backscatter on Cannery Row that carries many of the top tier cameras at reasonable prices.

I have never been to Backscatter. Aren’t they better known for underwater equipment?

 

In San Francisco, there is Samy’s. In the south San Francisco Bay, there are San Jose Camera and Mike’s, but Keeble was larger and had more classes and events. The Z launch event I attended last year was hosted by San Jose Camera. Mike’s is a chain with 5 stores in Colorado and 5 in Northern California, but it seems like the store in Sacramento has most events.

 

Camera equipment is s declining business. Phone cameras are quite good and capable nowadays.

There will always be those who prefer an OVF to and EVF, at least until there is no further choice. Personally, I would never go back to an OVF. An EVF is superior in dim light, excellent for precise manual focusing, show accurate DOF previews, and provide more useful information. Delay is on the order of 1/60 second (1/120 for a Sony A9), which is negligible. More significant is the "freeze-frame" effect after shooting, about 1/15 sec, which interferes with following action. The Sony A9 fixes this problem, as will Nikon with further development.

Backscatter is primarily for underwater photography but they have a nice inventory of DSLRs and Mirrorless cameras. Interesting place even if you don't dive.

Looking into an EVF is like watching TV. It can be super ultra extreme high definition, but it will never be quite the same as watching the real thing. However, under dim light, when the real thing is too dark for our human vision, night vision can boost it so that watching an electronic image can be better in some situations. Nikon (and probably Canon) simply didn't get into FX mirrorless until the EVF and many other aspects of mirrorless are good enough to compete against DSLRs. Since I shoot a lot of wildlife action, DSLRs and the lenses available are still superior at this point.

 

On the other hand, any SLR must have a complex mirror system that will always significantly add to the overall cost, and lens designs must work around that mirror. Those are limitations SLRs, digital or film, will always suffer. It is like fixed focal length vs. zooms. There is no one best choice for all occasions.

Since I shoot a lot of wildlife action, DSLRs and the lenses available are still superior at this point.

Some would disagree. AF, speed and tracking are definitely in the mirrorless court. Much has to do with the equipment you are most familiar with, and comfort with its limitations.

Ed, some is the key word here. Most wildlife photographers would agree with Shun. Moreover, Sony are still at a disadvantage when it comes to supertelephoto lenses compared to Canon and Nikon.

 

I found the Z7’s evf to lag too much for my taste. Knowing it was Nikon’s first generation of FX evf, I compared it to what I would expect to be the ”best”; the Sony A9. It was perhaps slightly better, but still not good enough for me to prefer it to an optical viewfinder for bird photography.

 

Low light event photographers would probably prefer evfs. Horses for courses.

Some would always disagree regardless. For example, currently my two main wildlife lenses are the 500mm/f5.6 PF and 600mm/f4 AF-S VR. All of a sudden the 500mm PF is really important to me now, but that lens didn't even exist a year ago, and I never had one until January this year. A recent Nikon DSLR is really the only way to use a 500mm PF at this point; I don't even like to use the FTZ to adapt that to any Nikon Z body. I have had a few Canon DSLR users approaching me that they are considering switching to Nikon because of that lens and perhaps also the D850 body. (I wouldn't quite recommend switching brands because of a new body and lens or two, but I suppose grass is always greener somewhere else.)

 

5 years ago, EVF lag was quite poor essentially across the board. The EVF lag on the Z6 and Z7 seems to be pretty short now, but if I use that to follow some birds in flight, I can see that could be a problem because what you see in the viewfinder is a little behind, and your final subject could be slightly off the frame if you are cropping too tight.

Edited May 27, 2019 by ShunCheung

The viewfinder thing. It keeps me permanently undecided about the way to go.

My Fuji X100F have a hybrid system. From what I have read, its EVF is considered "reasonably" good, but by far I prefer the OVF. I find the EVF quite useful, even necessary, to get certain shots (maybe 5-10%, most of the times because the low ligh), but I still hate it.

If I were buying a Z6/Z7 (never tried them), I`d need -at least- a weekend trial period before taking a decision. If not, no way.

Shun`s point is dead on, it´s like watching thought a HD TV. I wonder if it will change the way I visualize the scenes... nothing bad, I guess.

Shun`s point is dead on, it´s like watching thought a HD TV. I wonder if it will change the way I visualize the scenes... nothing bad, I guess.

 

Visualize?? I don't have the Mirrorless but I heard the Mirrorless crowd say that the EVF is WYSIWYG and there is no visualization needed. What you see in the viewfinder is the same as the final image.

Out of curiosity (!).. what's the delay on the back LCD screen of the D850 compared to the EVF of the Z6/7?

Out of curiosity (!).. what's the delay on the back LCD screen of the D850 compared to the EVF of the Z6/7?

One way to find out is to video a strobe light, with the light and rear screen (or viewfinder) simultaneously visible. You can determine the time lag to the nearest frame. Any decent MILC can shoot at 120 fps, and some (e.g., a Sony MX0) up to 998 fps (4 seconds max).

@Shun`s point is dead on, it´s like watching thought a HD TV. I wonder if it will change the way I visualize the scenes... " Mike

 

In some ways like looking at a TV screen instead of actually being there.

The viewfinder in a DSLR is basically a 2D image projected onto a translucent screen. Reality, really?

The viewfinder in a DSLR is basically a 2D image projected onto a translucent screen. Reality, really?

 

Closer to reality than an image captured by sensors and electronically processed. I've still not seen a EVF that's as good as an OVF for my purposes. But I don't shoot at ISO 25600.

I guess I'm instrument rated, ready to fly at night (or day, too high to read road signs).

 

Seriously, the Z6 and Z7 have what appears to be the same viewfinder as the Sony A9 and A7Riii - 3.8 MP or so. To me it's as clear as glass. I use it to actually see the effects of DOF, and probably shoot at 25,600 at least once a week at events and concerts, for the latter in complete silence. I would think eye-AF would be as much boon to wildlife photography as it is for people. Come to think, I usually shoot wide open indoors, a risky proposition with DSLR AF. Eye-AF works for pets too

 

 

I would say the EVF topic includes two sections:

First, the sharpness, the delay, the artificially increased luminosity, etc.

Another, for me also very important (perhaps even more), the electronic medium that must be activated to be used and result in a screen that looks very different from a direct or "real" vision. For whatever the reason, comparatively, this may seem a barrier to unprofessional use, and maybe, an obstacle to spontaneity.

Well, I think that in the same way we moved from film-based media to digital media, we can now switch to the new EVF tool. Actually, it may be a minor change. And the final product will be closer, I guess.

Cameras (or technology) force aesthetics by the way they are used (e.g., wet plate images actually look different than Leica ones), so at the end it will simply modify the aesthetics of the images by a bit (this change will surely please the majority ).

For those of us who still live in the cave, this is just another added concern. And cost increases it, of course.

Edited May 28, 2019 by jose_angel

Visualize?? I don't have the Mirrorless but I heard the Mirrorless crowd say that the EVF is WYSIWYG and there is no visualization needed. What you see in the viewfinder is the same as the final image.

 

This isn't quite so. First, the LCD or the EVF creates its own light and how it is seen by a human observer depends on ambient light, among other things (with the OVF the light in the viewfinder is sampled from the actual ambient light). Further, the live view can only use relatively short exposure times, so visualization of the image with e.g., 1 second exposure times isn't possible (may be possible with specialized cameras such as the D810A designed for astrophotography or night time imagery). Also, in many cameras the EVF image tends to flicker, show jagging and staircase artifacts which obviously aren't going to show in the final printed image. The Z6/Z7 EVF is quite good though, very detailed and stable, unlike the Sony / Canon / Fuji / Panasonic EVFs I've played with (those others tend to show flickering in artificial light, brightness variations as focusing is initiated, staircase-like artifacts when panning etc., none of which I've noticed with the Z7). Nikon often gets criticized for their software, but I think the code behind the viewfinder implementation is among the best, if not the best (though some EVFs are faster in updating the screen, they seem to be less detailed in LV and show more artifacts). There is a slight delay noticeable when panning (could be partly due to the in-camera VR system's effect) but it seems quite manageable. I really like how detailed the EVF LV image is in the Z cameras, it's the first EVF where the pixelation doesn't bother me, and especially towards the outer parts or corners of the frame, it seems surprisingly detailed. There is still the feeling of looking at a digital creation, it's just that the difference between the Z EVF and an OVF is less obvious than in previous implementations. With Canon's R EVF I was especially annoyed to see the brightness of the viewfinder image change when the camera was focusing.

Edited May 28, 2019 by ilkka_nissila

The viewfinder in a DSLR is basically a 2D image projected onto a translucent screen. Reality, really?

Compared to the 2D EVFs, how is the 2D in optical viewfinders less realistic?

 

On an EVF related note, not every photographer has perfect colour vision. More men than women suffer from (more or less) impaired colour vision. Many are even not aware of it. If the photographer belongs in that category, then the colours EFVs reproduce matters little.

(Sorry, been away from the computer.) My issue with the WYSIWYG argument is that it's "what you see is what the camera will turn into a JPEG" (at best), and... I very rarely shoot JPEG, because I always tweak the images. It's not useless to see the viewfinder output, but it's not necessarily better than seeing a reflection of the scene; if I'm doing ETTR I certainly don't want to see a mostly-dark image.

 

I buy a number of other benefits of EVFs (light amplification, amount of overlaid detail) - and I shoot in live view when I want that information from my dSLR (admittedly at a cost to AF performance you don't get from a Z-series). If you always use the camera's JPEG output, I'm sure it's useful; if you don't, having the EVF trying to WYSIWYG at you is very much a mixed blessing, and I'd kind of rather just have one level of disconnect (scene vs final image) rather than two (scene vs EVF rendering vs final image).

Can the EVF be made to show the 'real' brightness as opposed to an up/down gained version.... bit like you have the choice of either on the backscreen of a conventional DSLR?

(Sorry, been away from the computer.) My issue with the WYSIWYG argument is that it's "what you see is what the camera will turn into a JPEG" (at best), and... I very rarely shoot JPEG, because I always tweak the images. It's not useless to see the viewfinder output, but it's not necessarily better than seeing a reflection of the scene; if I'm doing ETTR I certainly don't want to see a mostly-dark image.

 

I buy a number of other benefits of EVFs (light amplification, amount of overlaid detail) - and I shoot in live view when I want that information from my dSLR (admittedly at a cost to AF performance you don't get from a Z-series). If you always use the camera's JPEG output, I'm sure it's useful; if you don't, having the EVF trying to WYSIWYG at you is very much a mixed blessing, and I'd kind of rather just have one level of disconnect (scene vs final image) rather than two (scene vs EVF rendering vs final image).

 

I must say the WYSIWYG aspect of the EVF isn't all true even if you only shoot JPEG. As for your other benefits I actually don't like them. I don't want anything information in the image area that I am composing with. Outside the image area is fine but not inside the image area. Do you ever noticed that on the old Nikon high end there is not metering display, aperture or shutter speed in the image area? They took care to provide those information outside the image area. Comparing the viewfinder of the Nikon F2AS and the FM you will see they both provide the same information in the same fashion but the on the F2 non of the information protrude into the image.