Bought a Pro Mirrorless, sold it within a month

Hi All;

 

Just wanted to share my experience with the Nikon Z7. I bought the kit with the 24-70 lens and the lens adapter so I can use older nikkor lenses. The Z7 is an amazing camera, Nikon did their research quite well. I had a Sony a7 some time back and sold it because it seemed too much like managing a phone camera, the images were great nut I didn't care for the menu system. The Nikon Z7 was laid out extremely well, I especially liked the "i" menu with quick access to the most common things I usually tweak.

 

However, I found one flaw that I just cannot get past, and I suspect it's a mirrorless issue, not just a Nikon issue - night photography.

Now to be fair, focusing issues with night photography are nothing new, in fact there are many tutorials online about setting your lens to true infinity focus for this very reason. The real problem is not the focus (although the same issue does apply) but when shooting in very low light situations what you see in the viewfinder, or in live view is nothing more than dark static.

 

I recently took a trip to Alaska to shoot the northern lights, found a great location, scouted the site early and went back after midnight. Unfortunately I was left with no way to compose my shots, or even see what was in the frame. The lighting was low but not black, in fact I could see quite well what I wanted to shoot, without the camera. See the attached shot of one of the images where I got lucky, I am somewhat shocked that the camera could not show me an image in the viewfinder, or in live view mode of this.

 

The next day I found a great camera store in Fairbanks (Alaska Camera) and bought a D850. That night I returned to the same location as before. Both cameras refused to autofocus, somewhat as expected, however I had no issues at all viewing and composing the images in the virefinder. So, as much as I loved the Z7, I've sold it and I love the D850 even more.

 

I don't know if the Nikon Z has a "night view" option like the Olympus EM1 has.

It will "boost" the signal to the EVF so that the EVE image is brighter than the scene, so you could compose in situations like that.

I have to dig into the menu to set the EVF for that function, but it's there.

To be honest, I have had little success using an optical finder (Nikon D1/2/3) locating objects or composing images under a truly dark sky. Only the brightest stars are visible in the finder, if at all. Stars are quite visible in the EVF of my Sony cameras, but swirling noise patterns obscure anything in the foreground that isn't lighted.

 

I bought this device for assistance quickly locating a particular subject among many with a super-telephoto - a red dot sight. While many similar devices are available for firearms, this one is optimized for use with a camera and fits in the flash shoe. It is very light weight and folds into a compact configuration, and easily calibrated for center of view. You use it with both eyes open, with the LED dimmed appropriately. It does not shine forward, rather is reflected toward you eye through an optical grating that forms a reticule.

 

nikon red dot sight | B&H Photo Video

 

I have a similar sight on a small telescope (105 mm Maksutov) in lieu of a finder scope, and find it quite effective.

You can do the same thing with an accessory finder which fits in the hot/cold shoe.

Thanks for sharing your experience and the reminder about mirrorless' shortcomings. I'll prepare to look at that issue when GAS hits me again &/ try to get used to my existing accessory finders on the stuff laying around here. - TY! @SCL . I can't claim to have liked ground glass using in bad light so far. OK the DSLRs have bright screens but nothing beats RFs OVFs and such.

I think there must be a way to make the Z viewfinder present its image akin to an optical v/f. Your problem is that the vf was showing that the image would be underexposed because it was set to show this as an aid for general shooting. On my Olympus it is a simple menu change to make the image brightness invariant of metered exposure. I fear you just wasted your money when all you needed to do was to read the manual. There may be other reasons to prefer the D850 of course, but still...

I thought about that before I bought the D850, nothing in the manual about it, nor did changing the exposure compensation have any noticeable affect. I may have missed something, but I am loving the D850 so I'm happy at the moment

Did you toggle the D8 live view settings? Waiting for a clear night to test whether this functionality helps the aiming issue.

With the D850 I had no issues aiming, even at 3am with no light other than the stars and the northern lights overhead. Both the viewfinder and live view showed up basically as I could see it with the naked eye

It goes without saying but "not all cameras can do all job's". I have my Sony A7 which I just purchased but I kept my

Nikon D700 because the DSLR can do some photo job better I know it's 12 Megapixel's it's a full frame which I like.

Agreed, I almost kept the Z7 but kinda needed to offset the cost of the D850, both are amazing cameras

My Sony a7RIII and a9 do not have this problem. This is NOT a mirrorless issue, it's a Nikon issue.

I find it actually hard to believe that you cannot set your EVF to work in this kind of situation, otherwise a Nikon Z user would have difficulty shooting correctly with flash, for example, as the VF image would always be really dark. I suspect it is there in one of the menus, but with a non-obvious name. If you still had the camera then I would suggest looking in the manual's index under "EVF" or "Flash photography", "Viewfinder" etc etc. Perhaps a Z user will step up and tell us.

I agree with some of the other posters, it's probably not a "mirrorless issue". But I admit I've never photographed the northern lights

Fairbanks has a camera store? . shouldn't be surprised, Alaska had one of the last Blockbuster video stores.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/mmirrorless

Custom Settings Menu (pencil icon) > d Shooting & Display > 8 Apply Settings To Live View > Off

 

...should optimize the Z EVF for night shooting, this is the same type of setting you'd make on a Sony A7, Fuji X or Olympus for the same conditions. It has been noted by some Z users that Nikon stumbled a bit in this area: even with the EVF set to neutral as above, it isn't quite as clear or usable at night or dark indoors as some other cameras. The Fuji EVFs supposedly excel at this type of Aurora Borealis situation, for example. Possibly this could be addressed with a firmware upgrade, but Nikon being Nikon, who knows.

Edited March 21, 2019 by orsetto

The mobile application, "Photopills," displays the time of sunset and the various stages of twilight. The stages are described as "Blue Hour," to "Astronomical Night Time," which occurs about 2 hours after sunset in mid-latitudes (Chicago). The arc of the sun intersects the horizon at an angle equal to the latitude. In northern Washington State, it takes nearly 4 hours to reach astronomical night time. This may be academic if you are within 40 miles or so of a large city, which emits enough light pollution that it never gets really dark.

 

Not all darkness is the same. Shooting the Milky Way in the middle of Washington's Cascade range, 90 miles from Seattle, I could easily see the tree line well into astronomical twilight in the finder of my A7Rii. Visually, I couldn't see my fingers, or even the camera at that point. An hour or so later, I could see nothing in the finder but the brightest stars and a faint trace of the Milky Way (magnitude ~5). Composition was by trial and error, using 10 second exposures as a guide (the tree line was clearly visible in the image).

 

An auxiliary optical finder might work, but not a so-called OVF with a ground glass. The red dot would easily establish the center of the image. Unfortunately I had neither on this occasion. Sometimes you just have to do with what you have. Under dim light, the Sony EVF slows it's sample rate to 1/30 second or less. That adds enough lag to make pointing the camera difficult, but not enough light for a really dark sky. The Aurora Borealis might be bright enough. I don't know, because I've only seen it once or twice in the Chicago area, and just barely at that.