Nikon Z equipment question: What are you guys using (or recommend) for wildlife photography now?

[ShunCheung]

10 hours ago, Mary Doo said:

Actually I was surprised that you were surprised. I've always thought that Nikon has a significant presence among wildlife photographers, particularly with the Z9 and Z8. Has there been any formal survey on this?

As of the late 2010's, i.e. around 2018, 2019, it was pretty clear that Sony mirrorless was gaining a lot of customers from Canon DSLRs, but the R5 and 100-500 have been popular since the R5's introduction in mid 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. The Nikon Z9 is not quite two years old yet and all Z Nikkor lenses that are over 200mm were introduced with or after the Z9. (Only the 100-400 was introduced with the Z9. Everything else, and there are 6 lenses, were introduced in 2022 or 2023. If Nikon is gaining popularity big time with wildlife photographers, it is fairly recent.

[bgelfand]

On 10/19/2023 at 9:19 AM, ShunCheung said:

Why? Mary travelled to Kenya for a photo safari with a group of photographers, and that group happened to have a high percentage of Nikon users. That could be merely an aberration, as Nikon is now a distant third among mirrorless users, with Canon being #1 and Sony #2. Or perhaps Nikon's strong AF and super tele offerings from the last two years is now attracting a lot of wildlife photographers. The makeup for that particular group Mary travelled with is the same regardless of where this question is posted to. But the makeup for one group is meaningless. If we can survey 20, 30 of such groups, perhaps we can notice a trend.

I see now that you were referencing Mary's second post. I thought you were referring to the replies on this thread which would have been biased in favor of Nikon.

My apologies.

[ShunCheung]

40 minutes ago, bgelfand said:

I see now that you were referencing Mary's second post. I thought you were referring to the replies on this thread which would have been biased in favor of Nikon.

My apologies.

No worries. I hear some discussions that certain pros and wildlife photographers are switching to Nikon, mainly because of the lenses such as the 800mm/f6.3 PF and the super teles with TC built in. But I don't have enough field observations to spot any trend.

[Mary Doo]

On 10/20/2023 at 10:24 AM, ShunCheung said:

As of the late 2010's, i.e. around 2018, 2019, it was pretty clear that Sony mirrorless was gaining a lot of customers from Canon DSLRs, but the R5 and 100-500 have been popular since the R5's introduction in mid 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. The Nikon Z9 is not quite two years old yet and all Z Nikkor lenses that are over 200mm were introduced with or after the Z9. (Only the 100-400 was introduced with the Z9. Everything else, and there are 6 lenses, were introduced in 2022 or 2023. If Nikon is gaining popularity big time with wildlife photographers, it is fairly recent.

So it appears not everyone changes brands based on trends or "objective analysis".  Brand loyalty remains strong. For example, many in this forum, including you, stick with Nikon no matter what.  Aside from the other Olympus user and a Sony user, the photographers my my group were not newcomers to photography.

[ilkka_nissila]

3 hours ago, Mary Doo said:

So it appears not everyone changes brands based on trends or "objective analysis".  Brand loyalty remains strong. For example, many in this forum, including you, stick with Nikon no matter what.  Aside from the other Olympus user and a Sony user, the photographers my my group were not newcomers to photography.

I can't speak for others, but I don't think it is a question of brand loyalty but a result of a process, a path that lead individual photographers to where they are. People choose the gear that solves their photographic problems, find their way to a solution in the beginning, and once they have a working system, it becomes very costly and often/sometimes counterproductive to switch to another manufacturer. Other manufacturers may have advantages in specific areas but invariably I have found them to also come with disadvantages. While photography is technical but it's also an art form and a passion, and in order to continue, one has to be able to produce results that one likes, and also enjoy the process of producing them. What each of us like is inherently subjective and everyone tends to gravitate to their preferred gear, subject to financial and other limitations such as time (many don't have time to explore a lot of equipment). Some of us try out other gear from time to time, have used other equipment over the years and use Nikon  because of personal preference (either to the results, the process, in many cases both) and not because of loyalty towards a company.  

[Mary Doo]

21 minutes ago, ilkka_nissila said:

I can't speak for others, but I don't think it is a question of brand loyalty but a result of a process, a path that lead individual photographers to where they are. People choose the gear that solves their photographic problems, find their way to a solution in the beginning, and once they have a working system, it becomes very costly and often/sometimes counterproductive to switch to another manufacturer. Other manufacturers may have advantages in specific areas but invariably I have found them to also come with disadvantages. While photography is technical but it's also an art form and a passion, and in order to continue, one has to be able to produce results that one likes, and also enjoy the process of producing them. What each of us like is inherently subjective and everyone tends to gravitate to their preferred gear, subject to financial and other limitations such as time (many don't have time to explore a lot of equipment). Some of us try out other gear from time to time, have used other equipment over the years and use Nikon  because of personal preference (either to the results, the process, in many cases both) and not because of loyalty towards a company.  

You explain it better than I did.  Basically, I was responding to Shun's surprise that most of the photographers on my trip were using Nikon for wildlife.

[mike_halliwell]

Post 1999 cameras became incrementally more and more complex bits of tech once mainstream digital arrived, culminating in the flagship cameras from all the main players.

The learning curve when changing from, say, Sony to Nikon is nigh on vertical.

Many of the (non Nikon) birder photographers I know are a bit miffed about why their chosen body is being denied the lens choice that Nikon is bestowing on their users.... especially at the long end.

As an example in the Z line up, there are now 3 ways to get to 600mm, or 4 if you include the Z400mm 2.8 TC.

[ShunCheung]

Cameras are merely a tool to produce images. My interest is photography and now videography. I have been using Nikon for 46 years but it is not a matter of brand loyalty. The recent F mount to Z mount transition means I am essentially buying a totally new set of lenses. I could have jumped to another brand if that suits me better.

I actually started with Minolta in the early 1970's because my teacher and friends were all using Minolta, and I also bought a Leica back then. Fortunately, that was the first and also last Leica camera I bought, although we still use their birding scopes and binoculars. However, Nikon was the clear leader in the 1970's so that I switched over the Nikon in 1977. By the time AF came along, I briefly considered switching to the Canon EOS-1. Today, I know that I don't like Sony's small camera bodies, narrow lens mount and their CFexpress Type A and SD memory cards. I still may buy a Canon body and a couple of lenses to try things out, but once again Nikon is clearly the top brand for wildlife photography now with so many tele lens choices.

Some day if I need lighter camera and lenses, I may switch to Micro 4/3 as some people do in their 70's and 80's.

[Miha]

If I may join the debate...

I started my photography with a yashica 42 mm mount camera and a very limited choice of lenses in that time (not to speak about the prices).

When I could spend enough money for my hobby (around 1977) I bought my first OM2, later another body (one for slides and another one for BW films) and some superb Zuiko lenses. In the early 1990s my Olympus cameras were almost worn out. The service man told me there were no more spare parts to repair the old cameras. Then I switched to Nikon because Olympus autofocus was not so good at that time and they were using another lens mount system. I hoped that the Nikon F-mount would guarantee a long time stability. In the last 30 years I 'collected' a lot of lenses, Nikon MF and AF but also a lot of old modified and adapted East German and Soviet lenses. They all fit into my Nikon F-system.

After so many years I must now prepare myself for another system change. For me it is almost traumatic to change something so important as a camera system, but I hope the new system would not differ so much from my old one. And I hope to use most of my F-lense on the new Z-camera. Unfortunatelly many of old (but still good) lenses will loose AF. But the most important lenses for wildlife will not - my 300 pf and 500 pf witj 1.4x TC. Sadly I don't see something like my D7200 with 500PF and 1.4 TC equivalent (21x magnification) in the Nikon line. But maybe a high resolution camera with crop factor could replace it.

I'm also using a Sony 6000 with the three Sigma 1.4 lenses as a small system with fast AF lenses.

I don't think I would be happy with yet another system.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Miha

[mike_halliwell]

Well, if they can get 21MPix in a Nikon J5, they could easily get 40 for DX.

[ilkka_nissila]

11 hours ago, mike_halliwell said:

Well, if they can get 21MPix in a Nikon J5, they could easily get 40 for DX.

I'm sure they can, but at least the one that Fuji uses in their 40 MP camera (e.g., X-T5) is not stacked and so it might not be a better choice for action photography than a Z8 or Z9 even if it means shorter (and smaller) lenses could be used to achieve what you want to do. The stacked sensor model from Fuji (X-H2S) has 26 MP. These features like no blackout and short viewfinder lag, silent photography without significant rolling shutter, all depend on the stacked sensor.

 

The question then is if it is cost-effective to develop a 40MP DX stacked sensor camera, and whether it would mean that Nikon as a whole would make more profit than they do without having such a camera, and placing their R&D money on something else, such as long focal length lenses of intermediate aperture (so that an FX kit can be portable enough) like they have been doing recently. Since the Fuji X-H2S costs about 3000€ now (in Finland), a 40 MP stacked sensor model might cost 4000€ or so, and that would mean one could almost get a Z8 for the same price. I suspect many people expect a DX pro mirrorless camera to cost the same as a D500 did, but that's probably not realistic given the cost of the technology.

 

Reasons for having such a camera would be to support cinema lenses that have super 35 coverage, such as those used for wildlife documentaries etc. Canon has a 50-1000mm t/5.0-f/9, for example. Try to get the equivalent of that in full frame ... But I think Nikon's main focus is on FX and they're unlikely to start making super 35 cinema lenses, even if they're more practical for video than the ultra-shallow-depth-of-field FX.

Edited October 24, 2023 by ilkka_nissila

[ShunCheung]

Fuji is either APS-C or medium format. Nikon's focus is FX with DX (APS-C) as a side business with somewhat weak support. Nikon is not going to compete against Fuji in the APS-C area and produce products that directly compete against their own FX products.

[Dieter Schaefer]

On 10/23/2023 at 5:04 AM, ilkka_nissila said:

I can't speak for others, but I don't think it is a question of brand loyalty but a result of a process, a path that lead individual photographers to where they are. People choose the gear that solves their photographic problems, find their way to a solution in the beginning, and once they have a working system, it becomes very costly and often/sometimes counterproductive to switch to another manufacturer.

That's exactly how I ended up with my Sony mirrorless system. Initially, more than a decade back, I got the NEX 6 to use some inherited Leica M-mount lenses. Turned out not to work too well - so I got some more modern Voigtlander M-mounts instead. Then the A7 appeared on the scene and it looked promising to move from DX to FX. Played with adapted lenses for a while and then lost interest, replacing them with native E-mount AF lenses. Got a nice little system aimed at mostly travel photography. Kept the Nikon DSLRs for the wildlife photography as well as some general photography. Considered moving fully to Sony just at the point when Nikon finally went FX mirrorless as well - with a not very convincing Z7. I realized that trading my Sony system for an "equivalent" Nikon system wasn't getting me anything better - it would just cost a lot (and take some time until Nikon released the equivalent lenses). Now I have pretty much relegated the Nikon DSLRs to occasional duty only, doing my wildlife photography with the Z9 and all the rest with Sony. Bound to stay that way for some time to come.

[ShunCheung]

I went to the Elkhorn Slough Safari this past weekend. It is a pontoon boat ride in the Monterey Bay, California area, and it goes up a slough/river in Moss Landing to watch wildlife. I took a picture of the boat returning from a previous trip right before us, but I was on a photo-specific trip with fewer passengers, perhaps 15 or so, and the boat was less crowded for us.

To my surprise, at least 4 photographers, including me, had Nikon Z8 or Z9 bodies with long lenses such as the 800mm PF. 400mm/f2.8 TC and typically the 100-400mm Z. I probably should have brought the 800 PF but thought that was a bit long to maneuver so that I opted for the 400mm/f4.5 Z + 1.4x TC, which also worked well. There were also a couple of Nikon DSLR users (one seems to be the son who went with his father who had the 400/2.8 TC) plus one Sony and a couple of Canon RF (mirrorless). Again, that is only one small data point, but maybe Nikon Z8/Z9 are getting popular among wildlife photographers.

[ShunCheung]

Recently I was photographing with a group of wildlife photographers in Costa Rica. The distribution of equipment is more to what I expect. First of all, there is zero DSLR (or film SLR) in the group. Everybody is using mirrorless with interchangeable lenses:

• Canon: one photographer with a pair of R5 and the 100-500 zoom.
• Nikon: only me
• Olympus: two, they are a couple, both husband and wife have their separate 150-400mm/f4.5 zoom with built-in 1.25x TC. That is a $7500 lens. If you are happy with the 2x crop, I am sure that is a great lens to have.
• Sony: four, one person has an A1 with a 600mm/f4, but their 100-400 is also popular.