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I borrowed the 180-400 F4 from NPS last year for a job, used it adapted on my Z9 and it was really, really nice. The handling was great and the "hot-swap" 1.4X was very much appreciated, it makes for a very productive combo. But...it is heavy and I imagine that at some point, Nikon will come out with something in the Z mount that will build on the F mount version's strengths. For now, I have replaced my 100-400 S with the new 180-600 and overall, it is noticeably sharper and likely on par with the F mount 180-400 even if a fair bit slower in light gathering. I figure the 180-600 will get me through while I wait to see what Nikon does next. But I too have been captivated by the "reasonable" prices on the otherwise five figure 180-400.

Mine is a couple hundred higher than that serial, great lens so far.

I put an NPS order in for it last Tuesday via B&H and t has shipped already, I get it Wednesday. I have the 100-400 and like it a lot, like to pair it with my 24-120 for all day on the ski hill shoots. But miss that extra reach sometimes so I thought I would give the new 180-600 a try, sure can't beat the price. By the way, Kirk has a new Arca type collar for it on ready for pre-order, not sure if I will get it but I know some were looking for it: https://kirkphoto.com/replacement-collar-for-nikon-z-180-600mm-f-5-6-6-3-vr.html

It mounts to things like a pan-tilt handle for full control while doing motion work. This is super handy, I am sure I will be getting one.

I have and use the 24mm PCE and 45mm PCE lenses with my Z cameras and they work exactly the same as on an F mount body. I don't mind the adapter, especially the new one which allows more working space between the controls and locks. Nikon knows that in order to sell a Z mount version of a T/S lens, it has to be a good optical improvement over the current ones. I have no doubt they are well on their way to announcing one or more for the Z mount.

I just contributed my new 50mm 1.4 AIS serial number to him, it is a bit higher than his last noted. I also told him my 28mm F2 AIS bought new in about 2005 is SIC coated. He states that SIC for that lens started at 6134XX and mine is 613367. I had to send my F3HP off to Midwest this week as the shutter speeds lower than 1/125th are sluggish...hope it is not a bad board. I will send the 28mm 2.0 off a bit later but I did a great CLA to my 105mm 2.5 on my own and it is now flawless, it's a late model one that is within 1400 of the last SN he has recorded. This site along with youtube videos are super helpful with doing your own CLA although I am not brave enough to tackle the 28/2 with CRC, too many moving parts to muck up. Now then...you have been a bad / good influence on me. I just ordered a new 20mm 2.8AIS from B&H, a lens I used for years in the beginning of my career, love how small it is. Another lens I used a ton was the 180mm 2.8 EDIF AIS, if I find a mint late SN of that one I will have completed my nostalgic Nikon kit. I might sell my F100, 85mm 1.8G to offset this new fetish I seem to have...I have a ton of gear, the 85mm never gets used since I got the 105mm 1.4.

Not sure how I missed your reference to Midwest Camera Repair but I will likely send off my 28mm F2 and 105mm 2.5 to them. A quick question, how did you find out the last serial numbers on the 20mm and 35mm? B&H still has 3x of the 20mm 2.8 AIS, 2x 55mm 2.8 AIS and now just one 50mm 1.4 AIS left....I ordered one thanks to you! I have a super clean F3HP it will live on.

AIS glass on my FM2 and F3HP's in the 80's were a golden era of photography for me, still have an F3, FM3A and a few of the lenses. On that note, where does one send in AIS glass to get a CLA these days?

A buddy and I went to the pistol range on Sunday and I was wanting to try this but it was too busy. I figured this would be the outcome, 1/32,000th is pretty short.

Sea Turtle in holding tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Nikon Z6, 24-70 2.8.

If that were true then other high demand products would "fail" if they were in short supply for the first few months and that rarely proves to be the case. And it happens with a lot of consumer electronics products on launch, iPhones for example go for stupid money for a couple of weeks until everything settles down. I think it actually does the opposite of hurting a company, it fuels pent up demand. Now to Ford's credit on the Lightning, they are putting controls in place since they had to cease taking anymore orders for the truck for 2022.

The new 24-120 is truly a great lens where as the F mount version showed it was a lens of compromises. I can get critical sharpness at any focal length in the corners on my Z7II and now the Z9 with ease by F8. As far as size goes, it is in between the 24-70 F4 and 24-70 2.8 as one would expect so while not tiny like the 24-70 F4, it still feels compact. As far as the Z9 goes, I have had it just under 24 hours so I am putting it through it’s workups and expect to do a job with it this week. It’s fast at everything, is as small as a grip integrated body can be and still be ergonomic. It’s really good to have dedicated buttons back, it is freeing up the “i” menu which in turn frees up the “My Menu” slots. Did I say it is fast? Because it is ridiculously fast at everything. Also, shooting under LED lights that used to cause bad banding no longer does at any shutter speed, huge improvement there. So far, I think it’s a winner for me.

I think Nikon is doing as good as one can expect any company to be doing right now given the short and long term effects of the pandemic. The fact that they put so much focus on the Z9 and have thus far, successfully put out a full blown pro mirrorless product that justifies that focus is 100% where they need to be right now. Also I feel the lens prices are not too bad considering the more than modest to truly stunning upgrade in optical performance over their F mount counterparts. Heck, the Z9 came in at a grand less than the last couple pro F bodies. The 400mm 2.8 FL is sitting right around $12K with no built in converter. To assert that the Z mount 400 2.8 will be closer to $17K (E15K) is a bit of a reach in my opinion, Nikon has always played the long game and that pricing is not long game strategy. I'd say take a wait and see approach on that, I personally suspect it will not top $14K. I have almost always been patient with Nikon since the products I choose to use have helped me play my long game. There are more great lenses and cameras to come and that glass is a lot more than half full. As for DSLR's, given how many formats and systems I use, I doubt I will use DSLR's again with mirrorless nearing full strength. I no longer own one.

Out of 60 days on location in the Faroe Islands, 43 were rainy to very rainy, often with 15-30mph winds that did wonders for mixing salt air with the rain. Among things like medium sized plastic bags, the rain cover and 3-4 terry cloth hand towels, I also carried a black shower cap. The shower cap did two things, it was a very fast deployable cover in using shorter glass for when I was getting the dedicated rain cover out and it also served as a light block for when there was direct light hitting the dark slide side of the film magazine during long exposures. But by far the best piece of rain gear I had for my camera was the dedicated rain cover. My Hasselblad lived in it, I was able to swap film backs under it and just keep on working. In my opinion, if you feel a dedicated camera rain cover is too much of a pain in the rear to use...then you ain't truly working in the conditions that it is made for.

Getting good snow these days. Here is a recent white out at 11,000 feet. Nikon Z7II, the new 24-120 F4 at 29mm F9, ISO 64 @ 1/125th with a Godox AD200 Pro off camera from underneath...

OK, so by your logic I should just say to heck with the Z9, buy a dedicated video camera that does 8K/60 and buy another D850 so I can have a physical sync port for my studio work. That makes sense….sure glad we got that straight. Must feel good to be right all the time…

OK, well I can weigh in here and I hope it helps at least from one person’s perspective. First off, it is less about getting the gear in a “hurry” and more along the lines of getting it in time for a seasonal workflow or in some cases, at all in a 6-9 month period. There have been instances like with the D3 that I either would have got it in 3-5 weeks or 8-9 months, not good on the latter end. In my particular case, Covid indeed did impact my income for 2020-2021 by seeing it fall by 65%. While I am able to weather that I still had to put off some things, quickly diversify revenue streams by for example doing more video as some clients wanted to consolidate the manpower footprint as in the case of my hospital clients for annual reports, monthly bulletins and TV ads. This ties up capital in unique ways and often constrains credit lines for longer than usual as was in my case. But specific to me waiting until the last minute to order it, in October-November of last year I did a two month long fine art project in remote North Atlantic Islands all on 120 black and white film that cost me well over $20K to produce all in. So not only did I spend a lot of cash reserves, I also turned down work to boot! So in not knowing what 2022 Q1 revenues might look like, I opted to the last moment to place the order. Now enter ski season and my ski area clients. We are in full swing in the middle of what appears to be a better than average season and to have a Z9’s AF and frame rate to do ad work and it’s 8K motion ability for some of those client’s 15 foot wide multi-panel live displays will put me on very solid footing for this year. If I get the camera in another month or two, then I will still have had a great season but might not have been able to pull off certain outcomes for these clients nearly as well and in the case of 8K video, not at all. I hope this very real scenario helps you re-think the shade you seem to want to cast on the NPS program and why some photographers might actually benefit from getting the gear sooner than later.

And "horrific" weather is relative, I consider rain / snow to be a wonderful thing. I consider fire to be horrific weather.

But clearly that is for you and your specific case, right?

Unless they read into what that really means and that is a ton of these are shipping and will fill outstanding orders faster than the most recent estimates.

Good point about bags, I would whip one out and put it over the camera until I could break out the proper rain cover if I felt the need. Often times I could just wait it out and then remove the bag and get back to work.

For the months of October and November last year I shot hundreds of rolls of 120 film in my Hasselblads in the Faroe Islands during what is arguably their most rainy and windy season. These were by far the most challenging conditions I have ever photographed in and if I did not have proper rain gear for me and my gear, I would have been totally out of luck. I use a couple of Think Tank Emergency Rain covers for working in wet conditions as even with weather sealing, moisture can and will finally make it into the gear and fog it up, especially with external focus and or zoom lenses. The silicone cases are more for impact resistance, for moisture you need to block it out completely. The Think Tank line also has more feature driven covers (Hydraphobia) but I found I did fine with the much cheaper ones.

Yep, 30 years with NPS this year.

I bet it sells well... After being out of the country for two months I ended up ordering a Z9 on 12/18, I get it tomorrow, my first new "pro" sized body since the D3. By the way, the new 24-120 F4 S is simply outstanding, far better than the F mount one for sure.

Don’t you just hate a tabloid-like title on a post? Yeah…me too, but not nearly as much as the reality I and other film fans are facing in using their favorite rolls of film abroad. This Fall my wife and I have to be out of our house for 3-4 months for a remodel. Because my wife can not take time off but does work remote, she is simply going to spend the time at her mother’s place in Arizona. I on the other hand will have the ability to use this time as an excuse to travel and make new work. When in the U.S. I do this using an elaborate off road camper setup that allows me to be on the road as long as I want. And while I am planning some of that, I also want to do something really out there and go live in some cool North Atlantic islands for a couple months. All the travel and lodging logistics are well worked out and in budget but I am facing a big, BIG problem. One can simply no longer travel with film in tow overseas and expect to avoid the nasty new CT scanning technology with carry on luggage. This is such a significant issue that Kodak, Ilford and even Fuji put out bulletins about it last year, flying with film abroad is nearly a total non-starter. I went through the highly exhaustive process of contacting the security entities of each airport and there is simply no way to be assured of a hand check anymore. So flying with film abroad is for all intents and purposes, dead. I can have new film shipped to these islands via B&H or Freestyle but I am looking at two months here folks, that is at least 300 rolls of 120 for this kind of project, 500 would be preferred. I already have many times more than that in my freezer so I want to ship the film to this location ahead of me and not pay out the wazoo customs fees for film that is out of date and paid for long ago. And more importantly, I want to make sure it gets back safe and sound. Basically for the trip of a lifetime that would yield an amazing body of work and is already costing in the 5 figures, I want assurances….and I am not getting them. I have tried getting help from Ilford, Kodak, Fedex, Freestyle, B&H, DHL, ATA Carnet services, Logistics operations, Luggage forwarders, U.S. Customs, European Customs, etc. and keep getting no solid answers and quite a bit of run around. Ilford and Kodak basically gave me the virtual equivalent of a shoulder shrug and “Don’t know what to tell you”. Right now I am looking at using Fedex to ship a max of 360 rolls of the film to this place in a flat rate 10KG box for about $320, it would take me to the 25KG box to ship all 500 at a rate of $475. Then I will have to figure out a way back using DHL…and I will want it insured. It would not surprise me if I paid over $1,000 to get my film out and back and I have no idea what kind of insurance that would give me due to the oddities of customs when it comes to customs value vs carriage value. Why am I posting this out-loud-thinking one might ask? It’s real simple, for the long term we film users who want to use it abroad are going to need some serious minutia cutting help in executing this using shipping. I have worked on this daily for 2-6 hours per day for the past two weeks and let me tell you, it is maddening and draining. So I will conclude with a simple question, in regards to avoiding airport Xray, has anyone successfully shipped film out ahead to their destination and then when about to leave, shipped it back home without issue? And if so, what did it take? Thanks!