ilkka_nissila

I was told by Nikon's authorized service that the motors that are in frequent use tend to work reliably while ones that are stored away for long periods of time unused can be found not to start again with increased probability. So if you have a lens and you use it regularly it should work for a long time, on average. If it's not being used on a regular basis it might not work in the future. When buying used lenses, one can not really know what the usage history is, but it is probable that a lens that is being sold might have been unused for some time (why else would it be on the used market?).

The 70-200/2.8 FL is an excellent lens, and with the TC-14E III is is very good at f/5.6 or f/8. If your intention is to shoot at the long end and with TC, it's probably better to use a native lens that doesn't require a TC to get there, especially if you need to shoot wide open a TC rig isn't ideal. I think the 70-200 + 1.4X does a good job for landscape photos (well stopped down & on tripod). The 300 PF is sensitive to shutter vibration and to get optimal results one needs to use either (1) a tripod, (2) fast shutter speed, or (3) either electronic shutter or electronic front curtain shutter (EFCS) if working at intermediate shutter speeds (1/125s or thereabouts). If you have been using not quite fast enough shutter speeds, I am not surprised that you find it soft. The D780 allows EFCS to be used with Quiet continuous (Qc) mode, use that and you should get very sharp results. However, even the 300 PF is a little on the short side for bird photography, unless you have a hide and / or are willing to put in a lot of time. The 500 PF is much better suited to the task.

I also found the new bird AF works great. It's able to handle many situations in auto area. With swans I don't think I've had any previous camera return to the bird's face as consistently and quickly as the Z8 FW 2.0 did (after the neck has been submerged under water), using either 3D tracking or auto area. Especially 3D tracking seems to have improved over my past experiences. With people subjects, I didn't notice any obvious change but I had multiple people in the frame and focusing on human subjects has always been very good with this camera. I will do some tests of 3D tracking when the subject turns their face away temporarily to see if there is improvement in how the system sticks to the subject.

No, the 800 takes 46 mm and some other lenses take 52 mm etc. It just depends on the lens.

Nikon's peers have provided excellent bird subject recognition for autofocus since 2020 (Canon) and 2021 (Sony) without charging separately for that feature. I hardly think Nikon catching up in 2024 (or 2023 in the Z9 FW 4.1) warrants a separate payment for the firmware update. Nikon's market share is also not that good in the mirrorless market and so good support and (free) firmware updates are needed to win back the good will of the customers and perhaps eventually get some of the customers that went to other brands back. In this price class (Z8) Nikon is competitive in terms of overall functionality and features (though people still say the AF is not as good in some situations as Canon and Sony such as the Nikons too frequently focuses on human eyelashes instead of the iris, but at least Nikon is making an effort and providing some new features) but switching back and forth between systems is expensive and so they have an uphill battle. (I agree on the iris/eyelash issue but it is mainly a problem for close-ups at very wide apertures which is not typically my thing; normally for close-up head shots I would stop down to f/3.5 at least, but if there is little light it may be necessary to shoot at a wider aperture, resulting in many iris focus misses). In the video world per pay or per subscription firmware is common due to licensing costs of codecs etc. However, those cameras typically cost tens of thousands of euros and I wonder how long they can maintain those prices given the relatively low cost, light weight and advanced functionality of mirrorless hybrids also in the video domain.

Well, in this case it may have been simply the case that they had to release the FW update someday and there is always further development work that could be done. Rather than intentional crippling I would guess that this is as far as they got. Auto capture must be very resource-hungry as it is constantly viewing the scene and evaluating it for subjects, movement, etc. potentially for a long time. Bird-detection is likely much more demanding than (say) human detection because there are so many varieties of different shapes and colours of birds. Think of it as a work in progress, eventually I am sure they'll provide some implementation of bird-detection in auto capture.

Birds and airplanes are not an option in Z9 FW 4.1, as far as I can tell from the Z9 supplementary manual. Planes are available on the Z8 but birds are not. I guess the auto capture options are trailing a bit and there are some differences between models.

I've used the camera and this lens for a while now and also in colder conditions than today, and it never exhibited this kind of a problem before FW 2.0 installation. I read from another user who reported (also after FW 2.0 installation) the EVF going dark after pressing Fn1 or Fn2, and this was reported to be fixed by cycling through the monitor modes. I'm figuring that there could be some issue where the firmware has some variables whose initial values are not consistent with the current stored settings of the camera (right after the FW installation) until the settings are adjusted, after which the camera works (apparently) correctly. I could be having a related issue. Anyway I will try to use the camera as Nikon suggested with different lenses, and see if the problem repeats itself.

Nikon's response was that I should test if it occurs with multiple lenses, and depending on that, the problem could be caused by the lens or camera body. Then take the component to service which is exhibiting the problem.

I am not sure I actually took frames, but I'll need to check the results when I get home. The EVF display was bleached out, so I was waiting for it to bring it down which it did not. The exposure scale lit up and suggested several stops of overexposure but I had not applied +/- EC. The only way to bring it to normality was by turning the camera off and then back on. I've used the camera in much harsher conditions, so I am not convinced it was weather related. I was also shooting mostly wide open so it couldn't have been caused by a sticky aperture (which can happen in very cold conditions).

I found today a bug which leads to overexposure by several stops on random occasions (auto ISO, aperture priority). Turning the camera off and back on resolves the issue, but it returned twice. Admittedly the temperatures were low (-15 C) but this hasn't happened to me previously with the camera and I suspect it might be FW 2.0 related. I'll monitor the situation and see if it happens also in less frigid conditions and then report to Nikon if it persists.

I'm not sure how fast the constituent shots are taken but they're for sure further apart than 1/2000s. The camera has to do a certain amount of processing on the data before it goes on the card and that dictates how fast the images can be captured. Most subjects that move, including landscape in windy conditions would move too fast for the pixel-shift sequences, especially with 32 images. I think it's mostly a feature you can use in a studio or other fully controlled environment with controlled, continuous lights. (Flash is not supported, apparently.)

NIce video, summarizing also some of the smaller features one might miss from the rather long text. 😉

Downloaded and installed. It's good to see substantial and also smaller improvements to the camera. I particularly dislike the light that turns on with the self-timer so I am very glad they added exposure delay mode for tripod-based shooting when one doesn't have time to connect a remote release and yet does not want to introduce vibration due to touching the camera.

Maybe you intended to post in the Nature photography forum? 🙂

Well, the Z8 is to get some of the features the Z9 got earlier, in a firmware update due in the first half of 2024, including the bird AF subject detection mode and usability improvements. For me the EN-EL15c battery is fine and the vertical grip works generally well too, although there have been some random contact problems with the A slot. Being able to use the same batteries with many other cameras is a positive. Sluggish release of seemingly trivial firmware updates (i.e. significantly delayed Z8 firmware compared to the Z9 which has many of the same components) is not a Nikon novelty. 😉 Sony just released they will add shutter angle in a firmware update to the FX3 and FX30, compact cinema cameras that have been several years on the market. (Adding shutter angle option is about as trivial-to-implement a fw change as can be.)

Nikon said that bird mode will come in a firmware update to the Z8 in the first half of 2024, along with other improvements. They also said in a video that auto capture will soon come to the Z8 in a FW update, which didn't happen so far, and Nikon removed that part of the promotional video. So I'm not quite sure what will come to the Z8, but it seems clear that Nikon wants to (artificially) keep the Z9 sales going even though the Z8 has almost the same hardware so its potential is underused. It seems silly to play these games. If I had known that Nikon will keep giving to the Z9 and not the Z8, I would have bought the Z9 instead of the Z8, but at the time of its launch the Z8 had more AF subject recognition modes than the Z9. So how is one to know which camera to get? To add, the Zf has more options in custom AF box sizes and shapes than the Z8, and a subject-recognition mode for manual focus (where there will be confirmation of the eye in focus on CPU-equipped lenses but not CPU-less ones, but even those can benefit from the punch-in-zoom to the eye feature). So in a way the Zf is ahead of the Z8 and Z9 in some ways. VR too, and low-light AF.

Right, it should make a big difference if you specify what type of animal to detect. Humans are mammals and will probably resemble some other mammals sufficiently to be detected at times. There are so many different shapes, sizes, head positions and orientations of birds and other animals that it's a wonder that it works at all. Quite frankly I am disappointed by the bird detection in the current Z8 animal mode and how often it'll not focus on the head of the bird when in various small bird in forest scenarios. But I'm hopeful the future firmware update with its bird mode will improve things. For humans I find the Z8 (and Zf) to be very good in detecting subjects and eyes.

We had a very cold turn of the year and first week in Finland. Some "sea smoke" over the sea south of Lauttasaari. Z8, Z 100-400mm. Floating pieces of ice before they merge and form a mosaic. D850, 24 PC. In Emäsalo, on the way there I noticed the air temperature on the road signs had gotten as low as -27 C. Z8, Z 100-400.

Every Nikon interchangeable lens autofocus camera that I remember was the same way: the box in the viewfinder is a bit smaller than the actual sensitivity field of the autofocus system. My guess for the reason is that the phase-detection sensor doesn't have a sharp boundary in its sensitivity.

I don't think the camera will focus on an area that is too far outside of the box (in the wide-area AF modes); it may identify the subject and focus slightly outisde of the box though, but as long as one is aware of this it shouldn't be too much an issue. One may sometimes need to select single-point or 9-point dynamic area to handle such situations though. I haven't used DX crop mode on these cameras. I prefer having the extra room around the subject and when possible, use as much of the sensor area as I can for the subject.

There is a well-known location in Finland where osprey are studied, observed and photographed. They have a number of hides around a pond, with suitable snags placed around the pond for the osprey to sit on and wait, and the maintainers of the site pour (alive) fish in buckets to the pond. The osprey are very picky about feeling safe and if they can see the slightest hint of human presence on the open they will not come for the fish for a while. At least in Finland photographers are quite used to the idea that food is given to the wildlife and they then pose for photos for the photographers who are hiding in the hides and the wildlife are pretending not to be aware of them. 😉 Even the BBC has come to popular wildlife photography locations (with full services including accommodation, feeding the animals and people, and hides of course) in Finland to take video of wolverines, wolves and bears for their documentaries. 😉 The problem the way I see it is that the backgrounds start to become very familiar over time even though there are dozens of (maybe hundreds) such sites. Also as the Finland-Russia border is getting fenced up in parts, the animals may not be able to move as freely as in the past so some of these facilities may have to be closed eventually for a lack of wildlife.

It's not really clear to me from the video if they placed the fish in all cases. It seems they used fish they caught and placed on rocks in the beginning to get confirmation that there is an osprey. However, in the later stages, it is not clear if they continued to place fish or if they simply photographed osprey catching fish that existed naturally. If there were no fish naturally in the fjord/lake, there wouldn't be any osprey hanging around there. On the other hand, the chances of a random osprey catching a fish a few meters in front of a floating hide seems very lucky. So maybe they did place the fish (under water? how?) in that case as well. I am surprised that the bird would accept dead fish as when I've caught too many fish and tried throwing the extra into the lake the birds such as gulls would come but reject the fish every time. Maybe osprey are just different and are not as picky. Amazing photos though. I have to say that it must have been quite an effort to not only get photos like that but also film the process (including the climbing).

FV lock should solve is this issue, if you can take a test shot and then lock it. There are also third-party flashes (Profoto) which give the option of switching from TTL to Manual and the starting point in the manual flash energy settings is equal to the previous TTL result.

I don't know where some of your numbers are coming from, but I would like to make a few points. First, the black parts of the camera don't by default get exposed with light as the lens projects its image (which often is flagged by a mask not to go outside of the sensor area) onto the sensor and then a small part of that light is reflected on the black surfaces of the interior of the camera and lens, but those surfaces are matte and so they produce mostly a small diffuse reflection that causes a small part of that small part to be scattered in various directions. Chasing more DR isn't necessary for a scene that is close to mid toned to begin with. But many images which people find interesting or fascinating have a large range of brightnesses, there might be the sun coming up in the horizon or between the trees, the sun could be hitting the hair of the subject etc. Those are the highlights of the image. In order to not overexpose those highlights, one needs to underexpose most of the image and then lighten areas of the image in post-processing. This is a standard technique of dealing with high-contrast scenes, and because the dynamic range of sensors is limited, many photographers put the camera on tripod and expose a set of different frames with different shutter speeds, covering, e.g., 6 stops in the brackets to be able to make a (relatively) noise-free image showing a full range of tones in each major area of the frame. Here is an article on the topic, with examples, though unfortunately the text is in Finnish: https://www.maisemanlumo.fi/artikkelit/dynamiikan-laajentaminen-maisemavalokuvauksessa-hdr-ja-exposure-blending/ I think you can get the idea of what kind of scenes benefit from high dynamic range in the capture process and appropriate editing. If the scene were dominated by reflections, bracketing exposures would not help recover more scene detail (as giving the sensor more light would simply increase the brightness of those reflections), but it does. In cinema, Hollywood seems to love ARRI cameras which are famous for their dynamic range. Most Oscar-winning movies were shot with their cameras. Arri Alexa 35 has about 16 stops of dynamic range https://www.cined.com/arri-alexa-35-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-latitude-plus-video/ Now why do the cinematographers care so much? They want to edit the images for stylistic effect and mood and so the final color might be quite different from the actual filming situation as seen with the human eyes. So in order to have that room for editing where the colours could be adjusted for dramatic effect, and the original scene can also have high dynamic range, it's beneficial to have the highest-quality data from the camera. Arri makes some lenses where the flare isn't even minimized but that produce artistic flare and ghosting. Often the scene is lit in such a way that the drama is emphasized by the lighting, and there can be highlights that are very bright compared to the main subject's brightness. In indoor scenes you may have contrasty artificial lights, and light coming from the window that is very bright in comparison to the shadows within the interior. Yet to look natural there should not be any clipping of the artificial lights themselves, or the scene behind the window. These situations can be best handled by a camera which captures as much scene information as possible. if you do photography in typical artifical lights e.g. outdoors or even in some homes, they're not lit like an office where you'd have very even lighting to make working easier. They're often moody and extremely high in contrast. The trick then is to make a natural looking image out of such situations as easily as possible. https://www.arri.com/en/camera-systems/cameras/alexa-35 BTW. Multiple images at different exposures will still have the same limit to their individual brightness ranges. And the light reflected back into shadow areas actually helps in revealing shadow detail, in the same way as the old trick of pre-flashing film did. The in-camera and in-lens reflections of the longer exposures in a bracketed landscape sequence would simply produce brighter levels with the same information if noise wasn't an issue. But it is, and more information is revealed using multiple exposures, because it overcomes the noise (despite increasing what reflections there are in the image).