My Z9 is setup and ready to go :)

If you would like to post, you'll need to register. Note that if you have a BCG store account, you'll need a new, separate account here (we keep the two sites separate for security purposes).

As a quick update, I had the camera out today a bit at a sort of local park. I drenched the camera (and the 100-400) in the falling, wet snow for about two hours with no ill effect. AF seemed really good. Subject Detection seemed to work pretty well for the birds and mammals I was playing with too. Not perfect (no camera is), but I'd tentatively say it's more or less on-par with the competition. Sometimes it did really well, sometimes it missed completely. Kind of like the R5 and a1 :)

It was nice not to have to fuss with switching between mammals and birds as I have to with the a1, and man, that startup time is super impressive. Easily the best I've ever experienced with a mirrorless camera. Powering on is very nearly instantaneous. Lots more shooting to do, but so far, it's a solid performer.

Yesterday I was visiting a swamp with a friend of mine, me with the z9 and 500 PF, and him with R5 and TAmron 150-600g2.
Both of us lied down, aiming a little island about 40/50mt far (I think) with some birds medium size (cormorant).
His R5 was having the eye detected, mine the body was detected, not the eye.

I noticed as well that , with the 500 pf so far, if the bird in flight is not filling the most of the frame, but less than 50% of the frame, is enough a little busy background and the full autoarea with detection doesn't get it, falling on the back 90% of the time.
I had once, for two weeks the R5 with the 500 f4 is, so I was new in the system because I had only nikon in my life, and was completely the opposite, using full auto area.
I had cases of seagals flying (that what we use to train us ;) ), with light on my favour, and far background, and the camera/lens straggled to lock them.

I'm waiting my 600 fl yet, late to come, so I have only the 500 pf, but I'm not seeing the 3d tracking working magically as Ricci shown with birds on the perch. Smae problem. If the subject is filling most of the frame, works pretty good (not crazy good) but if is less tha 50%, well, I had shots focused on the brench instead of the bird.

Did you have a chance to check the real life of the battery? Mine is shooting in still, airplane mode, no gps, lot of vr, no more than 1800 shots.

Lot of field to come and hope you're help will improve my skills

Cheers
 
Yesterday I was visiting a swamp with a friend of mine, me with the z9 and 500 PF, and him with R5 and TAmron 150-600g2.
Both of us lied down, aiming a little island about 40/50mt far (I think) with some birds medium size (cormorant).
His R5 was having the eye detected, mine the body was detected, not the eye.

I noticed as well that , with the 500 pf so far, if the bird in flight is not filling the most of the frame, but less than 50% of the frame, is enough a little busy background and the full autoarea with detection doesn't get it, falling on the back 90% of the time.
I had once, for two weeks the R5 with the 500 f4 is, so I was new in the system because I had only nikon in my life, and was completely the opposite, using full auto area.
I had cases of seagals flying (that what we use to train us ;) ), with light on my favour, and far background, and the camera/lens straggled to lock them.

I'm waiting my 600 fl yet, late to come, so I have only the 500 pf, but I'm not seeing the 3d tracking working magically as Ricci shown with birds on the perch. Smae problem. If the subject is filling most of the frame, works pretty good (not crazy good) but if is less tha 50%, well, I had shots focused on the brench instead of the bird.

Did you have a chance to check the real life of the battery? Mine is shooting in still, airplane mode, no gps, lot of vr, no more than 1800 shots.

Lot of field to come and hope you're help will improve my skills

Cheers
I cant answer why, but your experience is nothing like my experience with the Z9
 
Yesterday I was visiting a swamp with a friend of mine, me with the z9 and 500 PF, and him with R5 and TAmron 150-600g2.
Both of us lied down, aiming a little island about 40/50mt far (I think) with some birds medium size (cormorant).
His R5 was having the eye detected, mine the body was detected, not the eye.

I noticed as well that , with the 500 pf so far, if the bird in flight is not filling the most of the frame, but less than 50% of the frame, is enough a little busy background and the full autoarea with detection doesn't get it, falling on the back 90% of the time.
I had once, for two weeks the R5 with the 500 f4 is, so I was new in the system because I had only nikon in my life, and was completely the opposite, using full auto area.
I had cases of seagals flying (that what we use to train us ;) ), with light on my favour, and far background, and the camera/lens straggled to lock them.

I'm waiting my 600 fl yet, late to come, so I have only the 500 pf, but I'm not seeing the 3d tracking working magically as Ricci shown with birds on the perch. Smae problem. If the subject is filling most of the frame, works pretty good (not crazy good) but if is less tha 50%, well, I had shots focused on the brench instead of the bird.

Did you have a chance to check the real life of the battery? Mine is shooting in still, airplane mode, no gps, lot of vr, no more than 1800 shots.

Lot of field to come and hope you're help will improve my skills

Cheers
Sadly, no BIF work yesterday. I did have a sandhill's head filling the frame though. As he walked, the camera seemed to stay with the eye, but upon looking at where the AF point was at the time of shutter release, it was a little bit all over his face. Still, one sample in a very weird scenario for the camera. Overall though, it did OK.

We also saw a hawk in a nearby tree. He was towards the top, against the white sky, only filling 25% or so of the frame. The camera saw the bird, saw the head and then saw the eye! I couldn't believe it - very impressive! (Full Auto AF, Sub Det. on)

My wife was along and she was shooting the R5. It was snowing and while the Z9 didn't seem to care, she was struggling to get and keep a lock - although I don't know what AF mode she was using either. Overall I think I had an easier day with AF than she did with the R5.

Still, way, way to early to really come to any conclusions. A few birds and mammals just isn't enough.

Also, your comment about Ricci is why I'm always skeptical of early reviews and analysis. If the reviewer has a bias, it's easy to film a bunch of sequences and then only show the ones that are what you want.

As for the battery, I was out for 800 shots in the cold and have been messing with the camera quite a bit - only down a single bar. So, for me. so far so good.
 
Last edited:
Okay, only spent twenty minutes with camera so far but I’m confused why my buffer is sooooo much better then what is being reported. ISO 400 F1.2 Lossless raw no jpeg, Delkin black 128mb card and I shot 500 images before I just gave up. I’ll check more in depth tomorrow but it seems odd.
 
Okay, only spent twenty minutes with camera so far but I’m confused why my buffer is sooooo much better then what is being reported. ISO 400 F1.2 Lossless raw no jpeg, Delkin black 128mb card and I shot 500 images before I just gave up. I’ll check more in depth tomorrow but it seems odd.
Were you shooting at 20 fps? Even at 15 fps it can go a lot longer, and at 10 almost indefinitely.....
 
@Steve.. You always taught to keep an eye on the ISO & crop less& i have been following it.
How ever i find that even high ISOs seem to give a pretty good picture with very loss noise(after a bit of denoising) even after cropping as this attached image would show (1/200 ,12800 ISO )
Hence can you share your expereince with high ISOs & what in your opinion should be the acceptable ISO with these flagship cameras.Is this also a game changer ?
DSC09394__PurpleRumpedSunBird_Orchards29Dec2021-denoise_cropped.jpg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
 
High speed ducks taking up a small percentage of the frame. No issues keeping af locked on
I reset the camera to the original settings, from the menu Setting again in my way all the Af modes/buttons
Went out to a place where are lot of seagals and wattlebirds flying around.
Night at the dog beach. and...And I'm still in shock how insane is this camera AF.
I made shot like this with the dslr, obviously, but not with this hit rate. I have full series of 40 shots (lossless, my Prograde CF express unfortunately isn't that good , look like) all in focus. And these dogs are light speed.
Just crazy
File out of camera raw, no editing
1/4000 4500 auto Iso 500mm 5.6 pf
_DSC2120 copy - Copy.jpg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.

_DSC2102 copy - Copy.jpg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
 
Last edited:
Sadly, no BIF work yesterday. I did have a sandhill's head filling the frame though. As he walked, the camera seemed to stay with the eye, but upon looking at where the AF point was at the time of shutter release, it was a little bit all over his face. Still, one sample in a very weird scenario for the camera. Overall though, it did OK.

We also saw a hawk in a nearby tree. He was towards the top, against the white sky, only filling 25% or so of the frame. The camera saw the bird, saw the head and then saw the eye! I couldn't believe it - very impressive! (Full Auto AF, Sub Det. on)

My wife was along and she was shooting the R5. It was snowing and while the Z9 didn't seem to care, she was struggling to get and keep a lock - although I don't know what AF mode she was using either. Overall I think I had an easier day with AF than she did with the R5.

Still, way, way to early to really come to any conclusions. A few birds and mammals just isn't enough.

Also, your comment about Ricci is why I'm always skeptical of early reviews and analysis. If the reviewer has a bias, it's easy to film a bunch of sequences and then only show the ones that are what you want.

As for the battery, I was out for 800 shots in the cold and have been messing with the camera quite a bit - only down a single bar. So, for me. so far so good.

About the battery problem, look like that after the third full charge I'm starting to have it right. Today 2140 shots and 64%
 
Yes, I believe so. I’ll check tomorrow.
Okay, so am I missing something. I use the Delkin Black 128gb cards that have the fastest write speed. Is there a mini buffer somewhere in the middle of the series that is so fast I don't notice it? What setting am I missing that I have no buffer up to at least 800, that's the longest I held it until I just stopped on my own. This clip is 350 shots continuous and I end it, not the camera. I am on 20 frames per second, Raw and Lossless. I open the files in lightroom and can confirm they are 49mb each. Use the link to see the clip. https://streamable.com/cp1536
IMG_2521.jpg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Hut
If I just go on the video you posted, there's approx 23 seconds of shooting to make 350 frames. 350/23 = 15.2 frames a second. You could confirm this by checking the image timestamps between the first and last. Could you have changed the high speed frame-rate down to 15 and not noticed?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Hut
How can it be? 🤷‍♂️
I don't know. The only setting I change is color from sRGB to Adobe but that would increase file size I think. Also, if you do the math it should be limitless in theory since its not dependent on the camera but on the card. The Delkin card I use has a min write of 1710 MB sec and 20 frames at 49-50mb is 980MB a sec so?!?!
 
If I just go on the video you posted, there's approx 23 seconds of shooting to make 350 frames. 350/23 = 15.2 frames a second. You could confirm this by checking the image timestamps between the first and last. Could you have changed the high speed frame-rate down to 15 and not noticed?
You are right! It is only shooting at 15 frames why? I just did a time check with stopwatch. I have it set to 20, I check and confirm. Something I am missing surely. So I have done it severely times now and always 15. I changed to 15 and got 15, then back to 20, and still only 15. 🤷‍♂️
 
Last edited:
There's the config setting (I forget which) that lets you select a shot priority of focus or release. I'd make sure this is set to release so that there can't be any delay with focus checking. It would also be worth doing the stopwatch check on 15 fps and 12 fps just to see what those results are.

Whilst the card may be 1710 MB minimum write, the camera processor is having to perform the exposure and turn the output from the sensor into a RAW file between each request to write a file to the card. We don't know how long that takes.. but it takes some amount of time.
 
You are right! It is only shooting at 15 frames why? I just did a time check with stopwatch. I have it set to 20, I check and confirm. Something I am missing surely.
Any chance you are in APS-C mode? That would greatly increase buffer depth. EDIT: looks like it says FX in your video...so I guess not.

Otherwise it may just be that it isn't shooting 20FPS. I would check all the settings or maybe reset to default and see if it starts hitting 20FPS. I'd assume it is some weird jpeg setting (Even if not shooting jpeg) that is slowing it. Also is Flicker reduction set to OFF? It should be.

Also make sure it is on Release Priority.
 
Any chance you are in APS-C mode? That would greatly increase buffer depth. EDIT: looks like it says FX in your video...so I guess not.

Otherwise it may just be that it isn't shooting 20FPS. I would check all the settings or maybe reset to default and see if it starts hitting 20FPS. I'd assume it is some weird jpeg setting (Even if not shooting jpeg) that is slowing it. Also is Flicker reduction set to OFF? It should be.

Also make sure it is on Release Priority.
At this point I don't know what to do. Ive tried everything. I reset, I try silent, try different cards, try all raw file types and still only 15 fps.
 
I reset the camera to the original settings, from the menu Setting again in my way all the Af modes/buttons
Went out to a place where are lot of seagals and wattlebirds flying around.
Night at the dog beach. and...And I'm still in shock how insane is this camera AF.
I made shot like this with the dslr, obviously, but not with this hit rate. I have full series of 40 shots (lossless, my Prograde CF express unfortunately isn't that good , look like) all in focus. And these dogs are light speed.
Just crazy
File out of camera raw, no editing
1/4000 4500 auto Iso 500mm 5.6 pf
View attachment 29600
View attachment 29598

So you are saying the reset settings did the trick after a less-than-ideal Af tracking experience shooting cormorants with the Z9?
 
Back
Top