Reposted from my computer. Definitely a better file.
Z9 photo thread
- Thread starter Wes Peterson
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Thank You and your results are outstanding as well. I have a 600VR and have yet to try it on my Z9. I actually use the 500pf more because I do a lot of walking around where I normally go in the mornings. Will be trying it soon and with converters soon! Thanks for the kudos!
I was going to get the A1 but decided to wait so I didn't have to start all over again. Luckily it paid off for me and I'm very happy with this camera. I'm sure I would have been equally as happy with the A1 after the learning curve!
I have those birds in the back yard every single day and have lots of photos of them. Unfortunately since I got the Z9 the weather has sucked!
Same thing happened when I got the a1 it rained for two weeks lol. If I had a 600 at the time I would have waited for the Z9. No regrets here but big glass is just to expensive to switch brands.Thank You and your results are outstanding as well. I have a 600VR and have yet to try it on my Z9. I actually use the 500pf more because I do a lot of walking around where I normally go in the mornings. Will be trying it soon and with converters soon! Thanks for the kudos!
I was going to get the A1 but decided to wait so I didn't have to start all over again. Luckily it paid off for me and I'm very happy with this camera. I'm sure I would have been equally as happy with the A1 after the learning curve!
I have those birds in the back yard every single day and have lots of photos of them. Unfortunately since I got the Z9 the weather has sucked!
sid_19911991
Well-known member
In short, the Z9 did great. I haven't made time to set up custom banks yet & also I left the AF sensitivity for stills at 1. Subject detection was on.
1) Full Area AF. Forget about it in dense foilage. It can pick up the bird, but also can get distracted especially when one uses shutter button AF. I kind of feel lazy to use AF button on now.
Pressing the ahutter button & watching the af box overlay follow the bird is quite pleasing!2) Large Area AF. Ideal if you wanna try bif shot of a tiny bird. I can tell you with confidence that one can shoot a tiny bird taking off from a perch thanks to AF & high FPS reasonably easily unlike ever before. When such a tiny bird takes off, the AF box won't always be on the eyes, but the body. As the birds are so tiny, the eyes will be sharp too.
3) Small area AF was my choice of AF for stagnant shots or birds walking about...
4) 3D tracking. Didn't try it. Don't think it is useful here as the tiny hyperactive birds keep going out of the frame.
5) Single point. Felt too lazy to use single point. So everytime the camera got confused, instead of complicating things with all sorts of customisable settings & options, I would quickly turn the manual focus ring to either focus on the subject, close to it, or to reset. Then I would tap the shutter button lightly, the Z9 would invariably get it.
The bullbul shot... I first focused near the bird. The eye was not in perfect focus. Gave the ring a slight nudge. Then small area AF locked onto its eye. Its eye was in the shadow area, but had catchlight. I recovered the shadows in post.
6) Identifying the eyes & overlay
Z9 had no issues picking up eyes of yellow, purple sunbirds, bullbul, prinia, mynas, cuckoo, Blyth's starling, tailor bird, shrike in the foilage. The light was good, but in less than ideal light I feel it can do the job. Most of the time the birds were between 15-25 feet. No issues picking up the eye. Tiny birds are not shot from further away anyway.
7) Accuracy of the AF.
A few times Z9 wouldn't be able to focus at anything in front of it. Even if it is a friggin shrub! As per Jan Wagner & other birders, they say it is common in R5/R6 & other mirrorless bodies. Z9 no different. Even single point won't work. One has to turn the focus ring to bring some sense into it.
8) Where Z9 can get better, IMO.
This one time, a bay back shrike was in between branches. It wasn't moving. The AF box was bang on target. The AF overlay (Small Area AF) in between the 2 branches on the bird was quite sticky. The light was harsh & yet it did it. I fired away, but when the saw the pics none of them were in focus. I tried single point too, but couldn't focus for a few seconds. Then the bird took off.
I think here is where the number of AF points makes a difference I guess.
The AF box was simply too fat!
Or rather the low no of focus points...
It fel like, the software got the eyes, but couldn't get through...
An analogy would be to be able to look at a coin under a drawer with a tiny slit/gap at the base & the fingers being unable to slide through the gap to retrieve it!
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MorganP
Well-known member
Very nice shots.
sid_19911991
Well-known member
Oh, didn't know that Sony 200-600 doesn't come with a/m button. I guess apart from custom button, you could set focus distance limiter.
I think going forward, the lenses will play a bigger role in deciding the camera system...
sid_19911991
Well-known member
Yeah I like it too. Super sharp & great AF performance. Great for mammal compositions.
simo
Well-known member
I wanted to have a "sure" BIF time, so I went to the Healsville sanctuary, close to Melbourne, to test myself and the camera, and I needed to test my F 70-200 vr2 for stills.
In flight, with the 500 PF, The z9 was incredible, even if I had problems with black/dark subjects.
A black cockatoo and with the Wedgetail eagle too.
The eagle, half of the shots were in focus, but the black Cockatoo , the eye detect of the camera let me down, even I was on Wide large, that I find the best.
In flight , could be my bad, but I had the same issue, black cockatoo, on the perch completely still, full frame, and the eye detector didn't get it, so went on old loved sigle point AF . In general, with black birds, I don't think I'll trust the eye detection, I'll go old fashion.
Is anyone detecting the same?
Another thing , I'm still not in love with the noise/details , at the same noise level I have the impression that the z7ii was keeping better the details.
But is obviously lot to go through yet
All made with the Z9 and 500 pf
In flight, with the 500 PF, The z9 was incredible, even if I had problems with black/dark subjects.
A black cockatoo and with the Wedgetail eagle too.
The eagle, half of the shots were in focus, but the black Cockatoo , the eye detect of the camera let me down, even I was on Wide large, that I find the best.
In flight , could be my bad, but I had the same issue, black cockatoo, on the perch completely still, full frame, and the eye detector didn't get it, so went on old loved sigle point AF . In general, with black birds, I don't think I'll trust the eye detection, I'll go old fashion.
Is anyone detecting the same?
Another thing , I'm still not in love with the noise/details , at the same noise level I have the impression that the z7ii was keeping better the details.
But is obviously lot to go through yet
All made with the Z9 and 500 pf
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Fantastic shots, Simone!
ElenaH
Well-known member
simo
Well-known member
I'd like to share a full sequence of the barking Owl, with the crowd on the background, but cannot load more than 5. In that sequence there are 20 shots all eye sharp focused.@Lance B , ref.your photos: did Z9 find an eye on #2 and #3 ? It looks for me like a very colourful distracting background and the bird is colourful itself. THe pictures are outstanding!
In another sequence, same owl, same setting, and even I abilitated only the animal, when the owl took off, the AF jumped on a human face, and when the camera tried to recover didn't give me almost any of them on focus on the eye. Almost, but never sharp. Probably the 500 PF isn't fast enough.
As I said above, I'm having troubles only with dark birds, but for all the others, as the one you mentioned, even the background busy, with the wide large area, the camera is amazing.
With the auto area, I have very different results.
What I saw so far, with the auto area, if there is a background (in the sky is all ok) and a dark subject, most of the time the camera don't lock.
But my experience with BIF isn't that huge.
Here a shot of a bat. I had only few moment of light , but I still can't understand why most of the time (black wings/fur?) i could't lock on the subjects as quick like when in the same place, same light and backgrounds, few ducks flew in front of me. All the shots of the ducks were sharp eye focus.
I'm still working on how the camera react (and so do I)
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So, scrolling the thread I see amazing, great, acceptable and so-so images. Same as threads of all other Nikon cameras.
I did not read all the comments, but I will
Elsewhere, the foolish thing most are boasting about is how many frames a second this Z9 can expose.
I did not read all the comments, but I will
Elsewhere, the foolish thing most are boasting about is how many frames a second this Z9 can expose.
ElenaH
Well-known member
@simo , Simone, the bat is amazing! Just the fact that you could capture it! I expect they are sleeping when light is ok for taking pictures. You managed to take that pic even with water-splash! Absolutely incredible. Perhaps, you experience for BIF is not huge but for Bats-In-Flight (actually BIF as well )
The bird-series are also excellent but I would expect it so because you have a good distance to background and it looks less distracting like for example, on pictures of @Lance B. I thought id background has the similar colours like the bird eye and is close to the subject then the AF will spring to the background.
To be honest, I don't expect or rely on Z9 to have bird eyes AF working excellent (especially for BIF). I achieve excellent results with my D850 as well.
Very interesting observation of black subjects. As far as I know mirrorless cameras have contrast-AF (not phase-AF). So, they are looking for contrast... and if contrast is poor then AF is poor as well.
Did you try to overexposure a bit? (+1EV) There was a thread and somebody (sorry, I don't remember the name!) found out that Z9 focuses much better with a bit of overexposure. I think, more light hit the sensor and camera can distinguish the contrast better. ETTR is better in any case and a bit of overexposure can be easily corrected in post. Try it! I am very curious about the results!
)The bird-series are also excellent but I would expect it so because you have a good distance to background and it looks less distracting like for example, on pictures of @Lance B. I thought id background has the similar colours like the bird eye and is close to the subject then the AF will spring to the background.
To be honest, I don't expect or rely on Z9 to have bird eyes AF working excellent (especially for BIF). I achieve excellent results with my D850 as well.
Very interesting observation of black subjects. As far as I know mirrorless cameras have contrast-AF (not phase-AF). So, they are looking for contrast... and if contrast is poor then AF is poor as well.
Did you try to overexposure a bit? (+1EV) There was a thread and somebody (sorry, I don't remember the name!) found out that Z9 focuses much better with a bit of overexposure. I think, more light hit the sensor and camera can distinguish the contrast better. ETTR is better in any case and a bit of overexposure can be easily corrected in post. Try it! I am very curious about the results!
simo
Well-known member
@simo , Simone, the bat is amazing! Just the fact that you could capture it! I expect they are sleeping when light is ok for taking pictures. You managed to take that pic even with water-splash! Absolutely incredible. Perhaps, you experience for BIF is not huge but for Bats-In-Flight (actually BIF as well
The bird-series are also excellent but I would expect it so because you have a good distance to background and it looks less distracting like for example, on pictures of @Lance B. I thought id background has the similar colours like the bird eye and is close to the subject then the AF will spring to the background.
To be honest, I don't expect or rely on Z9 to have bird eyes AF working excellent (especially for BIF). I achieve excellent results with my D850 as well.
Very interesting observation of black subjects. As far as I know mirrorless cameras have contrast-AF (not phase-AF). So, they are looking for contrast... and if contrast is poor then AF is poor as well.
Did you try to overexposure a bit? (+1EV) There was a thread and somebody (sorry, I don't remember the name!) found out that Z9 focuses much better with a bit of overexposure. I think, more light hit the sensor and camera can distinguish the contrast better. ETTR is better in any case and a bit of overexposure can be easily corrected in post. Try it! I am very curious about the results!
Thanks for the compliments and for the tip about the over exposure, I'll give it a go, even if I'm not very keen to risk to burn lights, especially because I work the most with the auto iso , too many variables, and sometimes could be higher than the needs, but worth a try.
Another thing I'm not sure why happen, and I don't like at all, the raw (I don't use any jpg on camera) is systematically underexposed. Using the Photoshop exposure slider, is always 0.20/0.30 underexposed.
I don't like it because I find the noise look of these sensors annoying more than interesting, if makes sense.
Just saying that the noise on the d700, d5, and d850 that I owned, was interesting. This, to me, gives me "eye trouble".
So, this systematic underexposure put myself always to be corrected in post, increasing noise in the dark areas.
Another thing I'm not very happy is the strength of the file. As rule I try to get the best I can out of camera, but sometimes I love a photo that need extra editing.
I remember I mistreated files from d850 and they were still holding it.
These files look like, so far, not last a lot if you want to mistreat them.
I had Sony 7r4 and Canon r5 and I found the same, so I sold them waiting for Nikon and I'm seeing the same.
I come from the 850 (now I have the 7ii) and even this will make me unpopular, that sensor, my opinion, is much better than my z9.
I'm not a fan of datas, so someone will maybe tell me that this sensor will be more efficient under any aspect. I won't fight that.
I think I'll buy again the d850, because if I'll love to create something in studio again, and sure great in any field too, that will be my choice, not the z9.
Sounds like I don't like it, and is not true.
I see it as an important improvement in how the camera will help me to achieve what I love, but I don't see the quality step up, or even, from the past sensors.
It looks actually a different thing.
R.Philip
Well-known member
Lance, I see these images and cannot believe how sharp they are after resizing for posting here. I looked at your Bird album on Flickr. Many of your bird images are perched. Even so, I cannot believe the sharpness you captured in the eyes. Even many of your BIF images have equally sharp eyes. What camera, glass, and processing did you use to accomplish this fantastic yield of images. I compliment you sir.Already posted photo.
Z9 + 500 f5.6 PF
Z9 + 400 f2.8E FL VR + 1.4x TCIII
Z9 + 400 f2.8E FL VR + 1.4x TCIII
Z9 + 500 f5.6 PF
Z9 + 500 f5.6 PF
Z9 + 500 f5.6 PF
Z9 + Z 100-400 f4.5-5.6 VR S
Lance, Gorgeous series!Already posted photo.
Z9 + 500 f5.6 PF
Z9 + 400 f2.8E FL VR + 1.4x TCIII
Z9 + 400 f2.8E FL VR + 1.4x TCIII
Z9 + 500 f5.6 PF
Z9 + 500 f5.6 PF
Z9 + 500 f5.6 PF
Z9 + Z 100-400 f4.5-5.6 VR S
Well done. Incredible sharpness!
Boy, from all these post it looks as if the Z9 combined with the 500 PF is killing it. Nice job
Thank you very much, Elana!@Lance B , ref.your photos: did Z9 find an eye on #2 and #3 ? It looks for me like a very colourful distracting background and the bird is colourful itself. THe pictures are outstanding!
Yes, it found the eye on those images. I was having trouble with many of the previous images and some afterwards becasue the bird went behind leaves and wouldn't poke the head out. The camera did lose focus due to the fact that the green body was obscured by green leaves, the orange flowers obscured the orange of the bird and thus the camera would sometimes focus on the leaves or flower. Much of the time, it's head was either facing the other way, or behind leaves etc. It was a bit of a torture test for the camera but I was in 3D and animal detect and probably should have chosen a different AF mode plus animal detect, but I was still learning.
Thank you very much, Bob!
I have used a number of cameras over the years and a number of lenses. I started with a Pentax APS C DSLR in 2004 (I came from Pentax film cameras with the ME Super in 1981), migrated through their various body upgrades until 2010 when I sold it all off and went to Nikon buying a D700 as I wanted a FF camera. In 2012 I went to a D800, then D800E, then D810, then D850 + D500 and added a Z7 then a Z7II and now the Z9. As for long lenses for birding, I have had a 300 f2.8G VRII and a 500 f4G VRII, sold both for the incredible 400 f2.8E FL VR and use TC's. I also have the 500 f5.6 PF and of course the various iterations of the 70-200 f2.8 and now have the Z 70-200 f2.8 VR S and just got the Z 100-400 f4.5-5.6 VRS. I do have the 80-400 f4.5-5.6G VR but that is up for sale.
I have always used Capture One Pro which I find is the best RAW converter. I do most adjustments in COP, then save for 16bit TIFF and open up in Photoshop where I may use Noiseware noise reduction and a few minor tweaks that are eaiser/better in Photoshop. I then resize for web view and selective sharpen using Power Retouche plug in.
I am very particular in my focusing, always trying to get the eye and will rattle off many images in a burst to make sure I get it right.
Thank you very much, Ralph!Lance, Gorgeous series!
That is just a stunning image, Simone!
simo
Well-known member
Thanks Lance, look like the PF is a very good match, can't wait to test decently with the 600
ElenaH
Well-known member
exactly!! that is what I am thinking often about! (on my Z7)
totally agree. My partner changed back to Nikon (from Sony) because of that reason. Sony files needed extra caring what cosumed much more time than Nikon files which were excellent comming directly from the camera.
Nikon z9 has a different sensor, Nikon developed it and it is also different type of sensor. I was afraid that something will not fit... Good that you are talking about it. Famous photographers and youtube channels will not tell it becasue of eventually damaging of Nikon business. That means I will wait until the camera is available for rent and test it by myself. At the momnt I am totally happy with Nikon D850
Thank you for your review, Simone! @simo