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Nikon mirrorless ?

J

jagsiva

Active member
Play d with the Z7 in the flesh today. My last dabble with mirrorless was an A7R that I used for a week and gave up on.

Build and feel - just awesome. Feels solid and the button pushes, especially the shutter feel the same as my D850

Viewfinder - you almost forget this an EVF. The contrast was a little high on the one I used, but otherwise great. One major concern is blackout. It took a while after releasing the shutter to get the view back. Interestingly, if I kept the shutter release pushed down, the EVF image returned right away. Hoping this is pre-prod FW issue.

Focus -as good as my 850 on native lenses. Tried f mount lenses with the adapter. With the 58 and 105 1.4 lenses, I thought it was pretty close to what the 850 does.

Bottom lines that its a very complete and familiar offer for Nikon SLR users. Available Sept 27th according the Nikon reps in Canada.

PS. Looking at the size of the mount I can’t help but think Nikon will drop a MF 33x44mm 100mp chip in this thing one day!
 
GrahamWelland

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
TBH I'm ignoring every youtube 'review' until production cameras get used in real world environments. The typical same cast of youtube 'reviewers' are just regurgitating the same content based on press junkets with the same group of attendees and a cadre of lifestyle models in a controlled environment. Heck, they all shoot photos of each other there ... and they're all rushing to push out content as fast as possible as they need the click bait.

As regards Jason Lanier, well he misses the point that most Nikon shooters are not going to junk all their lenses to switch systems. They just aren't.

With respect to the cameras, I really think that it'll be the AF performance that will make/break this system. The problem is that the D850 is such a great workhorse of a camera today that the bar is set pretty high for the Z6 & Z7 cameras.
 
D

Duff photographer

Active member
This is from a wildlife photogapher's (and Nikon user) viewpoint but there are observations that will be of interest to general photographers...

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMTtAi5oPoo

As a fellow wildlife pro' I find Steve Perry's stuff on the ball.

Looks like I'll have to stick to getting in a D500 or maybe the D850 but hopefully, there'll be a price drop on these now that the Z's are out.
 
Jorgen Udvang

Jorgen Udvang

Subscriber Member
ptomsu said:
The take of Jason Lanier (a long time Nikon pro shooter who switched to Sony mirrorless some 5 years ago) on the release of Nikon mirrorless (and Canon) ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJhUT8g_qyw&frags=pl,wn
Click to expand...
What a sucker! The most important feature of the Z6/7 is that anyone with a current collection of Nikon lenses can buy one of these cameras, mount his lenses and keep on shooting, mostly with full functionality... AF, VR and whatever else. That's where their primary market is, which is also what any sales and market analyst worth his salt will tell you.

And he keeps on ranting about battery life and memory card slots, after dpr told their viewers that the Z7 that they use worked fine after 1,500 shots plus some 4K video. It would btw. be interesting to know how many photographers actually use the second card slot as backup. I never did. I'm sure Nikon has asked around.

Oh well... I hope he's a better photographer than market analyst.
 
Jorgen Udvang

Jorgen Udvang

Subscriber Member
ptomsu said:
Jorgen,

I see you love these 2 cameras and why not just call it a day and get at least one of them. Should make you pretty happy!

Maybe not all contributors in this thread (forum) follow the same way of thinking ....
Click to expand...
I have one practical issue that I hope to solve in the future:
I shoot digital and film, and with Nikon, I would be able to shoot both using the same lenses. Apart from that, the Nikon RAW files are very very nice.

The advantage switching between Nikon and Panasonic is that the user interfaces are very similar.
 
iiiNelson

iiiNelson

Well-known member
Jorgen Udvang said:
I have one practical issue that I hope to solve in the future:
I shoot digital and film, and with Nikon, I would be able to shoot both using the same lenses. Apart from that, the Nikon RAW files are very very nice.

The advantage switching between Nikon and Panasonic is that the user interfaces are very similar.
Click to expand...
I found the Panasonic menus to be like the Leica ones... at least for the Panasonic Cameras that I’ve owned... admittedly though I’ve only owned the G1, GF1, and the GH2 (very shortly).
 
Jorgen Udvang

Jorgen Udvang

Subscriber Member
iiiNelson said:
I found the Panasonic menus to be like the Leica ones... at least for the Panasonic Cameras that I’ve owned... admittedly though I’ve only owned the G1, GF1, and the GH2 (very shortly).
Click to expand...
Physical interface and menus changed with the GH3, which wa also the first body with two command wheels.
 
S

SrMphoto

Well-known member
A reviewer stated that the Z7 frame rate drops to 2fps once the buffer is full. This is with an XQD with 400 MB/s write speed. Nikon mentions that they will upgrade Z cameras to be able to handle CFExpress cards. The announced CFExpress cameras demonstrate 1000 MB/s write speeds. If the image transfer system can scale than internal buffer would be inconsequential, as the camera could be shooting at its 5.5fps all the time. Or not.
 
ptomsu

ptomsu

Workshop Member
Jorgen Udvang said:
What a sucker! The most important feature of the Z6/7 is that anyone with a current collection of Nikon lenses can buy one of these cameras, mount his lenses and keep on shooting, mostly with full functionality... AF, VR and whatever else. That's where their primary market is, which is also what any sales and market analyst worth his salt will tell you.

And he keeps on ranting about battery life and memory card slots, after dpr told their viewers that the Z7 that they use worked fine after 1,500 shots plus some 4K video. It would btw. be interesting to know how many photographers actually use the second card slot as backup. I never did. I'm sure Nikon has asked around.

Oh well... I hope he's a better photographer than market analyst.
Click to expand...
You confirm (whatever that is worth) that the Z6/Z7 are mainly for existing Nikon users that want a mirrorless FF and can also use their legacy F glass. This is exactly what I wrote back several entries ago. Unfortunately it again shows that this company is nothing but conservative, even at the launch of the "Mirrorless Reinvented" camera. And then they are marketing this as being smart (of course) and one does not need dual card slots and other batteries because the old ones are good enough (what a lie - just to keep there existing DSLR user base satisfied).

Suddenly a pro level camera does no longer need dual cards - just forget reliability - many want also to have their files in different places (RAW and MOV). But if Nikon says one card slot is enough then this is the truth - amen!

And where is eye AF, one of the greatest features of Sony and really well implemented and BTW also supported pretty well in the 2 year old Olympus EM1.2 although not as good as in the latest Sony's.

Sometimes I wonder how a vendor (or loyalty to one vendor) can influence clear thinking and cause symptoms of hypnosis - I am trying to stay polite.

PS1: on another note Jason Lanier is not a sucker - if you would once open your mind and watch some of his work (photography as well as youtube) you could see that - else you are ignorant. For me it was always important to listen to other opinions and try to understand other ways of doing things and thinking and not stating upfront that this is BS. The whole Internet would not have happened with that way of thinking!

PS2: most of us know your year long history with Nikon (at least as you sometimes shared it very openly in this forum) and your on/off relationship with that brand and other brands, so the opinions you are posting about this camera launch could have already been predicted - well if it would be worth doing it at all.
 
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iiiNelson

iiiNelson

Well-known member
This is a side note largely independent of the Z6/7 regarding YouTube reviewers. I know many of them get a bad name but I look at them as a business expansion device to be successful the same way video features are becoming more important to people that once only shot stills. The market evolves and professionals have to either be ahead of the curve or evolve with it and be relevant enough at that point t to still matter.

Regarding Jason Lanier - he has a “big personality” but he is a good photographer I wouldn’t claim him to be the best but he knows his way around a camera and gets good results for the type of work he does. He did a well known shoot out here in Kentucky last summer with the Angry Photographer and let’s just say if I was to judge by the pictures then that’s one YouTube personality that shouldn’t have an opinion.
 
J

Jan Brittenson

Senior Subscriber Member
I really agree with Steve Perry. IBIS is interesting, size isn't different enough to matter - lenses still need a bag of approximate the same size; maybe I can slip one additional lens in there. I couldn't care less for EVF, but any VF lag makes it a tool of the devil and having heard so many times how crappy EVFs are a thing of the past, check this one out - only to find the EVF is just as crappy and still a huge step back - color me intensely skeptical. One card slot is fine, since like Steve Perry I just pop a large card in my cameras. A grip is essential and I use one whenever practical. Battery life - no big deal, just bring a few more batteries. AF-S, never use it. AF-C - critical. I use it even when snapping informal head and shoulders as it only takes a fraction of an inch of head movement for focus to shift from iris to eyebrow, even when stopping down. The only way to deal with it is with AF-C continuously tracking head movement. Forget AF-S (too laggy, missed the moment), forget manual focus (misses the moment, other than the moment of critical focus, maybe).

On top of this, what does it do that a D850 doesn't? Err... uhmm... nothing, really. It just trivially changes the packaging. *shrug*

Okay, it does do a few things the D850 doesn't - perfect stealth silence for one. I don't personally care.

Now the red dot sight just announced... that looks potentially useful! But then sighting a telephoto is pretty easy by just keeping both eyes open...
 
pegelli

pegelli

Well-known member
Jorgen Udvang said:
What a sucker! The most important feature of the Z6/7 is that anyone with a current collection of Nikon lenses can buy one of these cameras, mount his lenses and keep on shooting, mostly with full functionality... AF, VR and whatever else. That's where their primary market is, which is also what any sales and market analyst worth his salt will tell you.
Click to expand...
Nope, only 70 of the 360 F-mount AF lenses will AF with the adapter. So "mostly full functionality" is a bit of an overstatement.
 
J

Jan Brittenson

Senior Subscriber Member
pegelli said:
Nope, only 70 of the 360 F-mount AF lenses will AF with the adapter. So "mostly full functionality" is a bit of an overstatement.
Click to expand...
Not being able to focus my AF-D 200/4 Micro would make it a no-go for closeups. Yeah, the screw drive is annoying as hell, but everything else about that lens is "from my cold dead hands" territory...
 
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