raczoliver

I did not find a better way than the smiley face to indicate irony, but I was trying to make a joke on the fact that all the items on mother's day sale (when people are likely to buy gifts for their mom) were relatively high end gear, or at least not something most of us would think of buying for our mom, unless she is a professional photographer.

Thanks for clearing that up, it was not very obvious from the interface. I felt like stabilization was better with the non-VR 85mm lens than the VR zoom, but it might have just been a misperception.

 

So I suppose I am not able to use the "sport" mode with the 70-200 f/4G lens then? That lens does have a normal/active switch on it, but I think that active mode on the lens is different from the sport mode available in the body. My understanding is that "active" is to be used when the photographer is on a moving platform, such as a vehicle, while the in body "sport" mode is used for panning moving subjects, where normal mode would try to correct for the panning motion and result in jittery frame movement. If the camera menu item is greyed out and disabled while using a lens that has a VR switch on it, it is not possible to select between normal and sport mode on the IBIS.

What a wonderful opportunity to pick up an entry-level Z8 with a basic telephoto lens and finally get my mom started in photography! ;-)

I am a little confused about VR capability of my Zf when paired with an F mount lens using the FTZ II adapter, and was wondering if someone could shed some light on it for me. I frequently use the AF-S 85mm F/1.8G, as well as the AF-S 70-200 F/4G ED on the Zf, the latter of which has VR in the lens. When I mount an adapted F-mount lens that has no VR in it, I can choose between normal, sport, or off from the menu as usual, and enjoy several stops of VR. Obviously, this is using the in body image stabilization system of the camera, since the lens has none. However, when I mount an F-mount lens that has VR built in, the Vibration Reduction options are greyed out in the menu, and show either on or off depending on the position of the VR switch on the lens. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me like it is only using the VR in the lens, and IBIS is not available in this case. Why is IBIS available with adapted non-VR lenses, but not with adapted VR lenses? I do not have a native Z mount lens that has built-in VR, but I would hope one could use any combination of IBIS, lens VR, both, or none.

4 hours ago, ilkka_nissila said:

The Zf's sensor is not locked in place when the camera is turned OFF and the clunking sounds can be heard when you turn the camera around (powered OFF) without any lens attached. 

 

Some lenses like the VR 70-200/2.8 G II also do not lock their VR groups and the group flops around when the lens is not powered by a camera. Some other lenses lock the group into position. 

I think that's what it is, because you can hear the sound and feel some movement inside the body even without a lens on. I'm not worried about it now, just found it a bit surprising initially. 

10 hours ago, ilkka_nissila said:

It's the sensor which moves freely when the power is off or when LV is not active. In other models such as the Z8, the sensor is locked in position. I believe Nikon changed the ibis design to squeeze it into the thinner body of the Zf.

Makes sense. I didn't think they would just let the sensor rattle around when the camera is not in use, but I guess they made sure that a reasonable amount of shock that the camera may experience will not damage anything inside.

10 hours ago, Sandy Vongries said:

Both my Df and Zf, the latter, so far comparatively little used, are virtually silent. Just the tiniest little click on the ZF, quieter by far the the shutter sound.

I just realized I wrote Df in the subject line when I meant to write Zf, sorry about that. It took a while for me to get used to Nikon cameras starting with D instead of F, now it will be a similar process to get used to the Z prefix. I assume the Df does not make the same noise that I am referring to. 

Correction, the sound can be heard and movement felt whenever the LCD screen is off, regardless of whether the camera is powered on or not. 

Yesterday I finally bought my first mirrorless camera - a Nikon Zf with the 40mm kit lens. I also got the FTZII so I can use some of my F Mount lenses. I am still setting up the camera and going through all the customization options, but it seems like a very nice piece of gear.

 

I noticed that when the camera is turned off, if I tilt it from side to side, it makes a subtle clunking sound, and it feels like something is moving inside the body. I suspect this is normal, and may be related to the IBIS system, but thought I'd confirm here with people who have more experience with mirrorless cameras, or maybe particularly with the Zf. This sound and movement is not present when the camera is powered on. Any ideas? Should I be concerned? 

12 hours ago, ilkka_nissila said:

Well, yes and no. You can use it in this way (set max ISO in the menu at a low value and override using the dial) but the smallest maximum ISO setting is 200, not 100.

 

The camera uses the ISO dial setting as a suggested ISO in auto ISO mode that it defaults to if it can achieve correct exposure by adjusting the other free parameters that the user has given it. Only if it cannot achieve correct exposure using the ISO set by the user will auto ISO take action and override the user's ISO choice. It is the same in  all Nikon cameras that support auto ISO as far as I know.

That makes sense, however, I would really like it if it was possible to set base ISO as the highest value used for auto ISO, even though logically I can see why that is not offered.

 

I suppose I never noticed that my cameras tried to default to the manually selected ISO even when auto ISO was turned on is because with auto ISO enabled, I almost exclusively use M exposure mode, which gives the camera very little to work with to try and achieve correct exposure (without changing the ISO).

 

It is mostly tripod-mounted landscape, night city, or studio flash photography  when I have auto ISO turned off and the ISO value manually fixed at base ISO. I was hoping there was a way to switch without diving into the menus or assigning a custom button, of which there are not very many on the Zf. 

Can someone please confirm that the ISO dial on the Zf sets the maximum value with auto ISO turned on, but only if the value selected is higher than the max ISO set in the menu? In that case I think I would set 100 as maximum in the menu, and simply use the dial to set the maximum. Most of the times I want the ISO value either fixed at base ISO, or have auto ISO on. I could simply achieve the former by turning the ISO dial to 100, even with auto ISO enabled. 

Does anyone know whether on the Zf one can use the shutter speed dial to set a shutter speed, then use the command dial to override it within +-2/3 stops? I think the Df had that option. I have been trying to find this info in the reference guide to no luck. 

I tend to lust for most goodies when they are announced, as long as it's something I can afford. Some time of unavailability ensures I don't make rushed purchases, and by the time the product becomes available in my area, my initial buying impulse has vaned and any actual purchase is based on (slightly) more rational thinking. This might be undesirable for Nikon, but as an amateur consumer, I don't mind having a forced cool-down period before I spend my hard-earned money. 

My understanding is that every iteration of VR is different. Manuals of earlier VR lenses explicitly said VR should be turned off for tripod use, and the advice spread like general wisdom, but it seems this has not been an issue with newer lenses. If the manual doesn't say otherwise, I'd leave it on, and turn it off only if it causes problems.

Towards the middle of the teaser video for a few seconds we see a close-up of the man's eyes. Could this be a hint that the lens will also have close focusing capabilities? A large aperture near-macro bokeh machine. 

Most likely the 135mm lens that has been on the roadmap for quite a while.

On 6/21/2023 at 4:31 AM, mike_halliwell said:

So, what where Nikon thinking about to include it in the first place?

Management clash? Daft!

With the two comeras being so similar, I'm sure there's a lot of copy-pasting going on when writing manuals, descriptions etc. :-)

4 hours ago, mike_halliwell said:

Statistically irrelevant.

Cosmic Ray damage maybe...😱

 

Meh... One or two out of "hundreds of users" is significant enough if it's going to brick a $5500 camera. That person may have been doing something wrong, but still it is significant, and it should be figured out what it was that they did wrong, and users should be warned about it.

As a sidetrack to the frames remaining counter, did it get more accurate on recent models, or is it still the case that those numbers err very much on the conservative side?

 

I remember on my D700 I generally got close to 50% more shots on one card than what the camera told me I would get, and on the D850 it's even more. What's the situation with the Z bodies? 

If they did away with the mechanical shutter on the pro cameras, I think this is going to be the new norm on all their future releases. I haven't used a Z9 (or Z8) yet, but I very much like the idea of being completely silent. I'd have to try to know for sure, but I think I would keep the sound off as long as I can get some visual feedback in the viewfinder (if I'm not mistaken there's an option to have flashing bars at the edges of the viewfinder image) that a shot is being taken.

 

I had plenty of rolling shutter effect with digital SLRs with a mechanical shutter when photographing out of airplanes with the propeller in the frame. I just had to learn to choose the shutter speed more wisely. I'd rather have the propeller blades all blurred than appearing bent and sliced up.

6 hours ago, NHSN said:

If you ignore it, it doesn't matter.

And how am I supposed to have an identity or know who I am if I ignore my own badges?

Thanks for the reply, Andrew! It is becoming somewhat clearer through reading and printing lots of photographs. I bought some smaller size paper just for experimenting with different settings too. I must say the differences between different rendering intents are smaller after printing than they appear during soft proofing. Either way, I'm quite glad that I can get prints that are close enough in appearance to what I see on screen. Perhaps with more experience my requirements will get more stringent too.

I just started making my own prints, and have been reading up on color management and rendering intents. I'm certainly a beginner at this (not so much the picture-taking part), but the topic is perhaps not as mysterious as it appeared a few weeks ago.

 

When I read about rendering intents, all the sources seem to say that photographers should really only be concerned with relative colorimetric and perceptual. Some online posts on the topic don't even bother describing the absolute colorimetric rendering, they simply say you should never choose that as a photographer.

 

My question is why? That seems to be the most straightforward, "you get what you see" rendering. I know there's a good chance many parts will be clipped, but let me elaborate: I use capture one for my editing, and I made an export recipe with the paper's ICC profile selected as color space. If I enable soft proofing while that recipe is selected, I can edit the image while directly viewing a soft proof, with the rendering intent selected in the color settings.

 

If I edit an image in Adobe RGB color space for instance, then enable soft proofing, often I feel it is easiest to modify the edit to get satisfactory results with the absolute colorimetric rendering intent selected. It usually involves lowering the white point so the highlights are not clipped, and very little adjustment apart from that. With relative colorimetric, highlights do not get clipped out of the box, but the whole image seems to get darker, and it is hard to adjust for that without reducing contrast, particularly in the highlights. Saturation rendering intent is just way over-saturated, so I wouldn't use that, but I feel that the mostly recommended perceptual rendering often looks out of whack as well, almost no color looks like it's supposed to, and highlight separation also suffers. So I fail to understand why absolute colorimetric rendering is never recommended for photography (obviously with the necessary adjustments), while perceptual seems to be the go-to selection, even though it changes hue, saturation and brightness values that we carefully set during the editing process.

If you are after better AF performance, why would you use screwdriver, pre-AF-S style AF? In fact, for the best AF results, I pretty much would limit to native Z-mount lenses and fairly recent AF-S lenses, e.g. within the last few years.

 

If I buy a Z body, sure, I would slowly replace my lenses with dedicated Z-mount ones, but that would be a gradual process over a period of years.

 

Even when I got my D850 a few years ago, I thought the only thing I could imagine improving on it was AF performance (not that a D850 has bad AF, but I recently started photographing sports, or just children running around, and that can definitely be a challenge to keep up with), even though at the time I wasn't thinking my next body would be mirrorless.

 

Now I have seen a couple of reports about adapted lenses on the Z9, and while AF may not perform as well as native lenses, they still look promising, even compared to the D6. I am hoping that soon the technology in the Z9 will trickle down to the prosumer bodies, and I will be able to pick up a "Z7III" for under 2/3 of the Z9's price. Either way, I'm not in a hurry.

Are wee obsessing too much about compatibility with F mount AF lenses? Modern AF is great, but before AF existed we were able to make photos with manual focus. If I used one of my AF/AF-D lenses a lot on my Z camera I would replace it with a Z mount version.

 

It's not that it can't be done, but it voids the purpose of getting the latest and greatest body over anything that came out in the last 5 years or so, and many of us already have. The only reason for me to upgrade from the D850 is for better AF performance, particularly with moving subjects, so if I have to focus manually, buying a new body is useless.

This is very hypothetical, since I don't even have a Z body, but one of the reasons I didn't get one yet is because I use the 105 mm f/2 DC lens quite a lot. The new Z mount 105 marco lens is probably optically stellar, but it's an f/2.8, so I still would not be ready to part with the DC lens. In fact it is already the only screw drive lens I use on the D850.