Nikon Z8

For FrancophileFriday, here's a shot I took last year in NotreDame de Paris of the Saint-Marcel chapel. 📷: Nikon Z8 w/NIKKOR 17-35mm f/2.8D & FTZ

[...] I have incredibly fast CFx cards, an incredibly fast card reader, and an incredibly fast CPU in my desktop, but the simple reality is that reading tens (or hundreds) of gigabytes over USB takes a long time, and analyzing those files to determine if they're already in my large photo library takes a lot of resources too. [...] A RAW file from a Nikon Z8 is generally 50-70MB. If I left 300 photos on the card before going out for a shoot, that's tens of gigabytes of data to transfer and analyze before the software can get to the images I'm actually interested in. [...]

I doubt anyone is going wildlife shooting with a large format camera, for example. Not with true large format, but with the new Fuji medium format cameras it's starting to become reasonably possible to do faster work like wildlife at larger format sizes. The main issue remains, which is sensor readout speed, but the technology has gotten so much better that you can get results with things like birds-in-flight that are comparable to a FF DSLR camera from 10 years ago, with MF now, as far as speed, but at 3x-5x the effective resolution. Cost is still prohibitive though, I recently upgraded and really considered the new Fuji 100MP MF line, but ended up with a Nikon Z8 in the end for wildlife. [...] If I could double the resolution and get similar speed, it'd be worth it, IMO. [...]

I have a Nikon Z8, which can capture 60 fps 8K footage with (roughly speaking) the equivalent of 1000-nit HDR. [...] If you look at the raw footage on an OLED HDR monitor, it's like looking out of a window! [...]

[...] Most modern mirrorless cameras can be connected to a computer via USB and used as a video source. [...] My wife has the latest Samsung Galaxy S, I have an iPhone 16 Pro, we both also have cameras (her a Fuji APS-C body, me the Nikon Z8 FF body), and we walk around and take photos composed correctly within each camera. [...] A camera body is much better than a phone if you care about the quality of your work, and especially if you ever intend to print.

And in a lot of conditions, my Android phone takes better photos, by virtue of more advanced technology. I have tens of thousands of dollars of camera equipment -- mostly more than a decade old -- and there just haven't been advancements warranting an upgrade. A modern camera will be maybe 30% better than a 2012-era one in terms of image quality, and otherwise, will have slightly more megapixels, somewhat better autofocus, and obviously be much smaller by the loss of a mirror. [...] I thought the same thing, and then I went and rented a Nikon Z8 to try out over a weekend and I was blown away by the "somewhat better autofocus". As someone who used to travel with a Pelican case full of camera gear, to just carrying an iPhone, I'm back to packing camera gear because I'm able to do things like capture tack-sharp birds in flight like I'm taking snapshots from the hip thanks to the massive increase in compute power and autofocus algorithms. "Subject Eye Detection AF" is a game-changer, and while phones do it, they don't have enough optical performance in their tiny sensors/lenses to do it at the necessary precision and speed to resolve things on fast-moving subjects. [...] It's good enough that even though I upgraded my gear, I only bought one body when I traded in two, because my phone can handle short-focal length / landscape just fine, I don't need my Z8 for that. [...]

My personal pet peeve is how Apple used to be the Best of the Best in photography, including Dolby Vision HDR support for both video and still images, but now their software has failed to catch up to Chrome and fails at the most trivial operations. [...] It becomes a non-picture file attachment. My Nikon Z8 can generate glorious HDR HEIF files -- the native Apple image format -- which doesn't work either. [...] Because Apple software can't handle "HEIF", they can only handle the incredibly specific tiny subset of it that very specifically the iOS Camera app produces. [...] You can spend thousands on a camera, thousands on an iPhone or iPad, thousands on a Macbook and... they can't handle pictures. PICTURES! [...]

Holy cow, what are you shooting with!? I have a Nikon Z8 that can output up to 8.3K @ 60 fps raw video, and my biggest project is just 1 TB! Most are on the order of 20 GB, if that.

Most higher end cameras like the Panasonic G6, Nikon Z8/Z9, etc. [...] You'll certainly NEVER see rolling shutter in any PRACTICAL application for video unless you pan like a true madman, either in photo or in video. (I am a professional photographer and videographer....) In fact for sports and wildlife, you'll NEVER see rolling shutter in pretty much any existing camera, either in photo or video. [...] I'd argue that the Nikon Z9 is a much better camera if not wanting flash sync due to its lower base ISO. So to reiterate, the main benefit is not the reduction of rolling shutter, especially since any camera in this price point already has minimal rolling shutter. Global shutters are COOL, and the reduction of rolling shutter is COOL, but not the main point, though of course most future cameras will probably switch to global shutters at some point if the base ISO can be lowered.

I have a Nikon Z8! [...] It seems to me you underestimate the amount of work your camera is already doing. I feel like you overestimate the raw quality of a mobile camera as well. [...] There may be the same amount of bits but that doesn't mean that it captures the same quality of signal. It's like saying that a higher amount of bits on a ADC correspond to a better quality signal on the line, it just isn't true. Megapixels are overhyped, resolution isn't everything for picture quality. [...] The features you are talking about are in just software after capture so it should be possible from the camera's raw. Perhaps you would be better of buying a high quality point and shoot camera or just using your phone instead of a semi professional full-frame camera for your purpose. [...] It feels like you are complaining about how your expensive pickup can't fit your family and suitcases when going on holiday like the neighbors SUV even though they have the same amount of horsepower and are build on the same chassis. They are obviously build for different purposes.

[...] I have a Nikon Z8! [...] The point I'm trying to make is that the RAW images coming out of a modern full-frame camera get very "light" processing in a typical workflow (i.e.: Adobe Lightroom), little more than debayering before all further treatment is in ordinary RGB space. [...] They also apply tricks like debayering that is aware of pixel-level sensor characteristics and is tuned to the specific make and model instead of shared across all cameras ever made, which is typical of something like Lightroom, Darktable, or whatever. If I capture a 20 fps burst with a Nikon Z series camera... [...] Why can't I merge multiple exposures with motion compensation to get an effective 10 ISO instead of 64, but without the blur from camera motion? [...] I'm talking about applying "modern GPU" levels of computer power to the raw bits coming off a bayer sensor, whether that's in a phone or a camera. [...]

[...] Nowhere in my comment did I say that they use UVC vs requiring software. My Nikon Z8 as an example can be used with OBS over USB very easily, but you must install a driver and utility. [...] There are many optics tests done of available modern cameras, including phones. Phones get nowhere close to the photographic quality of a proper camera, but are totally fine for viewing on another small screen or small prints. My wife has had prints of photos taken with her phone hanging in galleries, but even she (who prefers a phone as an artistic style preference) would never dream of printing anything larger than a 5x8 from a phone. [...] A photo from a phone is simply unusable for me.

I actually prefer 7-segment displays as a user over high-resolution alternatives. I love the 7-segment displays in my Casio watch, calculator, multimeter, lab PSU and until recently Canon 5D Mark IV (which had a 7-segment-ish display on the top). I switched to Nikon Z8, which unfortunately has a higher-resolution display, which I dislike the look of. [...] I like the jaggedness of 7-segment displays. [...] Unfortunately, all mirrorless cameras have those high-resolution smooth ones now (if they have the top display at all). [...]

[...] I don't /fully/ understand it, but the sensor readout data on the Rolling Shutter Project shows a Nikon Z8 would max out at 22fps in full-frame RAW, so no doubt they reduced this to 20fps to give them a margin of error. [...] The Z8/Z9 are 45MP cameras, so just doing a naive bit of maths, you could expect 80fps if you applied the same pipeline at the DX frame size, but given that there is already a video pipeline and they needed it to be capable of 120FPS, they already had their answer.

oh no my partner and I bought a Nikon Z8 (we are sharing custody)