.

[BillW]

Thanks Eric.

When Paul was discussing Precapture, he referred to it as producing jpegs and then added something like “at least for now.” I thought he might be implying we could see Precapture with raw in a future firmware update. Hope so. I’d be happy even if Precapture used HE* raw and even if it was a bit slower than the 30 fps you get with jpegs.

Paul suggested that we should be shooting more jpegs from the Z9 and fewer raw shots, as the Z9 jpegs are so good and you can make sure exposure and colors are correct in the viewfinder. That may well make sense in sports photography and news photography, where fast output is needed. I’m not so convinced that it is true for wildlife and landscape photography. I often do a number of selective edits using layers in ACR (which has gotten even more useful in the most recent updates). I expect — but could be wrong — that it may work better to do this with a raw file in ACR/LR than with a jpeg. But I’m not an expert and would be curious to hear what others think. I will do what Paul suggested and shoot some raw + jpegs and see.

As to noise in raw files that Paul mentioned, I have seen some suggestion that people are seeing more noise in the shadows when using HE* raw. Haven’t heard it being an issue with lossless compressed raw. Nikon jpegs would include noise reduction, so you might see less noise in a jpeg than in a raw file, depending on the noise reduction settings you use in your raw converter. And I think that NX Studio applies the camera’s jpeg settings, so I can see why it might solve this issue by applying noise reduction.

I turn off noise reduction in ACR (other than color noise reduction) and use Topaz DeNoise AI in Photoshop after conversion. I also turn off sharpening in ACR, to avoid sharpening noise (prior to using Topaz, I tended to mask the sharpening in ACR for the same reason).

I find NX Studio a bit clunky to use. And as far as I know, it does not have the ability to do local adjustment layers with a raw file that ACR/LR have. (Can’t remember if it uses control points.) Personally, I have generally used NX Studio and its predecessors in limited cases, for example, when I had tricky colors that I was having trouble with in ACR.

I wish Nikon would work with one (or more) of the major software makers to allow them to get more out the raw files while still having more nimble software than Nikon seems to be able to produce on its own. Maybe Adobe, Capture One or DxO?

One final point. In response to a question, Paul said that as far as he knew, the A3 blocked shot settings worked the same in each AF area. I think this is not true, at least for 3D Tracking and Auto Area AF, where not all of the A3 settings are available. See the Z9 reference guide on page 600. Unless it changed in more recent firmware.

A good presentation and a number of thoughts to try when I head out in my kayak in a few minutes.

 

[agrumpyoldsod]

Here area few of my takeaways from the program by Paul van Allen last night on Nikonians.

Thanks for enabling those of us a long way away to also join and watch -- regrettably since it did not start until after midnight where I was I fell asleep not long after the start. I would also like to thank you for providing a summary -- what would have been great though were if Nikonians had recorded and posted the session.......

The AF settings are much more integrated than I thought. For example, the choice of steady vs. erratic involves the extent to which the camera is looking for the subject and subject movement across the frame. With dog agility and a subject coming toward you weaving through poles. he recommended Steady because the dog is consistently in a limited part of the frame. Erratic would be for a subject covering more of the frame and would slow AF performance.

Yes -- WHO KNEW -- certainly not me. I want to understand much more about how Dynamic Area AF and Area AF modes actually work in practice and the true implications of changing from Steady to Erratic and 1-5.

It takes practice, but Paul is using two or three Fn buttons to choose AF Area settings during a single burst of activity - a track shot, a football play or a pass of a flying bird. The Fn button settings are subject, genre, and situation specific. So his settings for American Football are different from Soccer and very different from Tennis. Each sport or type of wildlife may have it's own sets of settings. This goes beyond just one or two Fn buttons and may involve entirely different ways of setting up the camera that are subject specific. You would save those settings and only load the settings that are needed for the events you plan to photograph. I have a friend that is a Canon rep who set up cameras for Canon pros at big events. This would be the equivalent for Nikon pros who might be shooting vastly different subjects and need settings such as Lock on and Fn buttons to be customized for each event.

As a general rule my FN buttons perform the same roles in Every Shooting/Menu Bank -- it was just too confusing for me to remember what I had assigned to what.

Paul is using more than just Fn buttons to control AF area modes. He is also using camera Orientation and AF-On to automatically change area modes when he changes the camera's orientation. The example he provided was photographing a football quarterback. Under center just before the start of a play he was using Horizontal with Single point to capture the quarterback with the linemen for context, but after the snap he would switch to vertical orientation and his AF Area mode would automatically switch to Dynamic Medium with the area selected in the place he last used it.

Yes the days of initiating AF-ON with BB are gone for me -- I initiate AF with both the Shutter button and Fn1 or more buttons - and use the AF-ON button to switch to 3D tracking AF-ON.

Another example was using pre-shot capture. Paul and other Nikon pros are using JPEG rather than RAW a lot more of the time than they would with a DSLR. The camera is able to produce a high quality, publication ready image. He described Nikon Ambassador Reid Hoffman deciding at a Kansas City Royals game that he was going to try to capture every time the bat hit the ball - not only every hit but every foul ball and foul tip. He was using the pre-shot capture feature. By the seventh inning, he had not missed a single contact of bat and ball - and the nearby Canon and Sony shooters were ready to throw him out of the pit.

I think it is important to understand that most Sports Stringers have to shoot in JPG and often are transmitting their images in almost real time - for the rest of us we get to bring our cameras back to out tents / offices and work on them later. While I doubt he made any commitment to RAW pre-capture -- SURE - it would be grand if Nikon offered S(24MP), M(35MP) and L(45MP) RAW sizes; with higher FPS for the smaller sizes AND also offered pre-capture for these as well -- but this Is a huge ask.

Subject recognition is getting a lot better. It's not ready for still cameras yet, but for broadcast video Nikon has implemented technology where the camera recognizes the player's number and jersey color, so the camera will stay on an individual player throughout the play. This is advanced technology and requires more processing power, so it is not economically viable for still cameras - yet. But it gives an idea of what is in the pipeline as processing power advances.

I assume that overtime (and subject to in camera memory constraints) the number of subjects that Tracking Recognises will be expanded. It is bad luck if you are shooting one of those which is not in the database in the camera you are using. But that is one reason to have Fn buttons assigned to over AF modes as well.

He did allude to a problem some photographers are having with noise in non-Nikon software. He did not get into details, but suggested the work around for now is to convert those individual images to be processed to a TIFF in Nikon NXStudio. His workflow is starting in LR to identify selects, then open those images in NXStudio for basic adjustments. Then he exports those images as TIFFs and brings them back into LR for any downstream work.

Sure he would - Nikon have not helped themselves though - I find NX studio singularly difficult (vs Phocus or Capture One) and as a result I am using DxO Pure Raw 2 to great effect. At some point Adobe needs to sort themselves out. My issues with each of the processing tools I use (which is 3 - LR/PS, Capture One for tethered, portraits and shoots with Phase One gear) and Phocus (for shoots with Hassi gear) - is that one has to configure and remember how to use each and each has vast strengths and different weaknesses. The Skin tone tool in Capture One is absolutely awesome. But......

I'm sure others picked up other tips and ideas. The big point is the cameras are quite sophisticated, and can be configured as needed. But it's far from a point and shoot, so suboptimal settings will mean suboptimal performance.

100% agree -- it is a shame they left "P" mode as an option.
I would LUV to read a transcript of the event and see some of the more important screenshots.

 

[John Navitsky]

When Paul was discussing Precapture, he referred to it as producing jpegs and then added something like “at least for now.” I thought he might be implying we could see Precapture with raw in a future firmware update. Hope so. I’d be happy even if Precapture used HE* raw and even if it was a bit slower than the 30 fps you get with jpegs.

It seemed a bit of an off-the cuff comment and I'm not sure I'd read too much into it. That said, I think Canon's 195fps burst RAW mode will push Nikon to put out some sort of RAW pre-capture (if it's technically possible). I think Canon feature list is much more persuasive than our requests

Paul suggested that we should be shooting more jpegs from the Z9 and fewer raw shots, as the Z9 jpegs are so good and you can make sure exposure and colors are correct in the viewfinder. That may well make sense in sports photography and news photography, where fast output is needed. I’m not so convinced that it is true for wildlife and landscape photography.

I think you'll note a number of people pushed back on that in the comments, myself in included.

I don't have issue with the fact the JPGs are very good and have gotten increasingly better and for a variety of use cases JPG is usable and timely and compact. However there is *dramatically* more image information information in RAW files so JPGs will never be the choice for people who wish to get the most out of their image quality.

Of course there will always be a lot of people for based on their use case, the JPG is all they need and they never want to deal with the RAW files.

That said, if I captured a historic event, I'd want the RAW, even if my primary use case uses JPG so I don't think it's fair to say that sports and news *only* needs JPG.

As to noise in raw files that Paul mentioned, I have seen some suggestion that people are seeing more noise in the shadows when using HE* raw. Haven’t heard it being an issue with lossless compressed raw. Nikon jpegs would include noise reduction, so you might see less noise in a jpeg than in a raw file, depending on the noise reduction settings you use in your raw converter. And I think that NX Studio applies the camera’s jpeg settings, so I can see why it might solve this issue by applying noise reduction.

Yah, I think there are some nuanced things about NX Studio that are being somewhat misconstrued.

I suspect that NX Studio is effectively like the Adobe Camera profile(s) on steroids, so basically it's going to use similar algorithms and strategies that the camera used to produce the JPG, including noise reduction, and it probably has noise reduction algorithms that are tuned for the image formats and sensor. So yes, it's going to produce similarly pleasing results as the JPG "out of the box", or "at a touch of a button", but no matter what program you use to process the image, the RAW file is a set of bits that represent the colors of the pixels and **noise is either there or not**, each pixel will have the color values **that it has** and what we're talking about is simply how each program works with what's in the file.

I think it's a mistake to suggest that this is "better" (or "worse") than other programs that have the ability to process the RAW file because each program has benefits and shortcomings. For example, if you really want a "push one button" approach, it very well may be that NX Studio is a better way to go. However, if you're going to mask, do selective adjustments and other processing, I suspect programs like LR/PS are likely going to have an advantage, especially when levering their smart objects.

To beat the dead horse a bit more, yes, it may be that NX Studio does gross level NR in a generally more pleasing way, but you get it "its way"* (which also might loose image detail you want). For those of us who may perform selective NR, either with local adjustments or via packages like DeNoise (possibly with masking), packages like LR/PS/Topaz/etc. give you the ability to do it "your way", and if you want to control the result, you're more likely to get it your way if the program lets you control it.

I turn off noise reduction in ACR (other than color noise reduction) and use Topaz DeNoise AI in Photoshop after conversion.

Same here.

I also turn off sharpening in ACR, to avoid sharpening noise (prior to using Topaz, I tended to mask the sharpening in ACR for the same reason).

Ditto.

* Random thing, it seems like a number of the new Canon cameras are starting to perform NR against the *RAW* file. It seems like this results in some people concluding some of these results are "better" because they seem to be less noisy, but in reality the comparison isn't equal and the "noise" it threw away is image data you'll never have an opportunity to see and make a decision about, just like the NR performed on JPG files. Is this something to be upset about? Probably not. But we should remember things get more fuzzy the closer you look [sic].

 

[Anjin San]

One good thing I picked up…well, a couple actually…we’re the smooth vs erratic motion and the fact that Dynmic is color pattern based focus tracking instead of the closest in the area selection that other modes use. Going to have to try Dynamic when I’m next out.

 

[HotGates]

I think from what I see is that firmware 2.1 has gotten better as now it seems to pick up barn swallows better than before, Also I have been using auto area AF and seems to work great. But one thing I really hate with Nikon is whenever they give us features it is jpeg only and I hate that while Canon gives everyone full raw on everything. I want my NEF final multiple exposure final blended image back like it was with their dslr's.

 

[EricBowles]

I think from what I see is that firmware 2.1 has gotten better as now it seems to pick up barn swallows better than before, Also I have been using auto area AF and seems to work great. But one thing I really hate with Nikon is whenever they give us features it is jpeg only and I hate that while Canon gives everyone full raw on everything. I want my NEF final multiple exposure final blended image back like it was with their dslr's.

Full RAW is a relative term with a lot of qualifiers. As Nikon has demonstrated with various RAW formats, RAW can be different sizes and resolution. The bottom line is the cameras have limits on the cache and data pipe. If any method generates more than 1400 MB/s, it needs to be stored someplace and will fill a buffer very quickly. The same is true for AF performance - it's all about processing speed. The more you can concentrate the processor speed just where you need it, the faster everything else can work.

 

[ButlerKid]

Full RAW is a relative term with a lot of qualifiers. As Nikon has demonstrated with various RAW formats, RAW can be different sizes and resolution. The bottom line is the cameras have limits on the cache and data pipe. If any method generates more than 1400 MB/s, it needs to be stored someplace and will fill a buffer very quickly. The same is true for AF performance - it's all about processing speed. The more you can concentrate the processor speed just where you need it, the faster everything else can work.

Nice job last night, Eric! Appreciate it!

 

[John Navitsky]

Full RAW is a relative term with a lot of qualifiers.

Yah, like the Canon 195fps RAW capture doesn't do AF, which which is a huge restriction, and then the camera locks up for several seconds while it writes out the buffer, which is another huge restriction.

I do agree I want these features to support RAW files... **IF** it is possible to deliver them in a useful way.

 

[fcotterill]

Thanks for your kind invite and facilitating this talk. I watched it without slumbering - 0100!

Here area few of my takeaways from the program by Paul van Allen last night on Nikonians.

The AF settings are much more integrated than I thought. For example, the choice of steady vs. erratic involves the extent to which the camera is looking for the subject and subject movement across the frame. With dog agility and a subject coming toward you weaving through poles. he recommended Steady because the dog is consistently in a limited part of the frame. Erratic would be for a subject covering more of the frame and would slow AF performance.

The message I took from this, is going forward, the strategy for the a3 setting is use Erratic for jumping/flying/running 'throughout' the frame, and Steady for a subject held in one part of the frame. However, I need to now test if Steady works better if one is panning a subject (eg flying goose) held within centre frame (?) Overall, it still is not clear whether/how Closest Subject Priority differs between Z9 AF Modes. If I recall correctly, he mentioned Auto uses CSP but IME since FW 2.1 this doesn't apply with subject-recognition turned off. Same applies to Wide Area modes , but again with subject-recognition turned off.

It takes practice, but Paul is using two or three Fn buttons to choose AF Area settings during a single burst of activity - a track shot, a football play or a pass of a flying bird. The Fn button settings are subject, genre, and situation specific. So his settings for American Football are different from Soccer and very different from Tennis. Each sport or type of wildlife may have it's own sets of settings. This goes beyond just one or two Fn buttons and may involve entirely different ways of setting up the camera that are subject specific.

Music to my ears. Since the D500, it's how I've customized Pro DSLRs with 3 AF modes. Usually on most subjects with a Pro DSLR it's nice to have 2 controls - rarely 3 but these are primarily to react to challenges: thus 2 buttons+maybe 1 wheel. Almost always, one bank of custom settings doesn't require tweaking, as it allows one to React to sudden switches in the subject behaviour, and this setup is reliably robust for different subjects.

Now as you summarize, we heard from Paul the Z9 injects a fundamental difference. Firstly, it's 2 or more buttons on just one subject because it is moving within shifting scenes. Two, the Z9 gives optimal results if it has Predictive settings for a sequence of behaviours - eg categories against different backgrounds. Ultimately, Subject Detection and what we encounter in the vagaries of CSP probably underlie why. Thus, it is really not surprising these scenes demand 3-4 buttons on a single subject.

You would save those settings and only load the settings that are needed for the events you plan to photograph. I have a friend that is a Canon rep who set up cameras for Canon pros at big events. This would be the equivalent for Nikon pros who might be shooting vastly different subjects and need settings such as Lock on and Fn buttons to be customized for each event.

I'm already extending the limits of muscle memory trying to photograph wildlife subjects with 1-2 Custom banks but perhaps it's different with individual sports events in the more controlled situations provided in stadiums. Examples include grabbing the sudden action at goals versus players running across the field; or field events vs hurdles etc; and equally the different aquatic sports eg waterpolo vs capturing the critical moment in the poise of a high diver vs the optimal portraits of a swimmer splashing along etc.

Paul is using more than just Fn buttons to control AF area modes. He is also using camera Orientation and AF-On to automatically change area modes when he changes the camera's orientation. The example he provided was photographing a football quarterback. Under center just before the start of a play he was using Horizontal with Single point to capture the quarterback with the linemen for context, but after the snap he would switch to vertical orientation and his AF Area mode would automatically switch to Dynamic Medium with the area selected in the place he last used it.

Actually, since the D5 generation, this feature has been a powerful under-the-hood enabler, and since finessed in the Z9.

Another example was using pre-shot capture. Paul and other Nikon pros are using JPEG rather than RAW a lot more of the time than they would with a DSLR. The camera is able to produce a high quality, publication ready image.

The primary demand for Precapture in the imaging industry is high end video, in which RED have featured Prerecord as standard for several years - links etc in this Thread. If they are to deliver on spelled out objectives, if not the Z9 perhaps, then the video in Nikon's Pro MILC(s) has to have RAW Precapture.

He described Nikon Ambassador Reid Hoffman deciding at a Kansas City Royals game that he was going to try to capture every time the bat hit the ball - not only every hit but every foul ball and foul tip. He was using the pre-shot capture feature. By the seventh inning, he had not missed a single contact of bat and ball - and the nearby Canon and Sony shooters were ready to throw him out of the pit.

Comments like these are probably the kind red carded by the Nikon legal eagles in Nikon Tokyo and why this talk is not an online video in the Nikon USA website. Comparisons of performance and specs etc in official documents are careful to infer competitor's product(s) without names!

Nonetheless, it's a great pity there does not appear to be a published video of his exhaustive tour of the Z9 menus.

Subject recognition is getting a lot better. It's not ready for still cameras yet, but for broadcast video Nikon has implemented technology where the camera recognizes the player's number and jersey color, so the camera will stay on an individual player throughout the play. This is advanced technology and requires more processing power, so it is not economically viable for still cameras - yet.

This presumably refers to advanced Sports Broadcast software eg Box stats that use realtime deep learning algorithms trained in pattern recognition to categorize events for matches etc. This field is advancing fast for many sports, with wide applications with commercial advantages. and Nikon are presumably developing their own integrated solutions with software in their robotic imaging systems. eg Mark Roberts Polymotion software that automatically tracks key actors/players/broadcasters

MRMC | Motion Control & Robotics

Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) is a Nikon Group Company focused on cutting-edge camera robotics and automation for cinematography, broadcast, television, sports, live events and photography.

www.nikon.ee

But it gives an idea of what is in the pipeline as processing power advances.

Of interest is each 10kg Imaging Pod is based on a D5 with a selection of F-Nikkor zooms
https://www.mrmoco.com/broadcast-solutions/polymotion-player/

He did allude to a problem some photographers are having with noise in non-Nikon software. He did not get into details, but suggested the work around for now is to convert those individual images to be processed to a TIFF in Nikon NXStudio. His workflow is starting in LR to identify selects, then open those images in NXStudio for basic adjustments. Then he exports those images as TIFFs and brings them back into LR for any downstream work.

Well, I stand firmly with the more critical members of his audience. RAW rules, especially for wildlife: just consider how often one has to crop etc. The guy enjoys being provocative and RAW has been and will continue to remain a major fulcrum for Nikon's investment of R&D. NXStudio is one small piece of the tangible evidence, and unique software because only Nikon holds the engineering spec and source code of their RAW format. It's clunkier compared to Adobe etc but it works, but I prefer LR. One message of this part of the presentation is to check out NXStudio for Z9 images taken at high ISOs.

I'm sure others picked up other tips and ideas. The big point is the cameras are quite sophisticated, and can be configured as needed. But it's far from a point and shoot, so suboptimal settings will mean suboptimal performance.

Thanks for posting this overview while the talk is relatively fresh in our minds. This presentation illustrates how the features of flagship ILCs have always been in a different league. The 45mp sensor and AI of the Z9 seems to expand this versatility even more across not only many genres, but there's now even more features to be optimized for any number of challenging subjects. The different sports exemplify the potentials and also the challenges, but in some ways wildlife subjects present even higher diversity - not only for Subject Recognition features but also behaviours eg for AF and PreCapture.

The overarching message I took away is how the demands of Pro photographers striving to capture still images of Sports continues to exert overwhelming influence on Nikon Imaging. More than ever, the industry focus is to achieve even better reliability capturing action - the proverbial moment - and ever faster rates of broadcasting high quality media. Sports pros are still the primary customer base for which the engineers design and position high end cameras in the ILC market. Ever since Tokyo 1964, the biggest international events have been focal dates for Nikon to release a new flagship camera and telephoto lens(es).

Over the coming decade, this emphasis is likely to expand rapidly into cinematography. However notwithstanding Pro sports, it's going to be interesting to see how how Nikon will respond to the continuing growth in demand for high end ILC gear for wildlife photography.

 

[John Navitsky]

The overarching message I took away is how the demands of Pro photographers striving to capture still images of Sports continues to exert overwhelming influence on Nikon Imaging. More than ever, the industry focus is to achieve even better reliability capturing action - the proverbial moment - and ever faster rates of broadcasting high quality media. Sports pros are still the primary customer base for which the engineers design and position high end cameras in the ILC market. Ever since Tokyo 1964, the biggest international events have been focal dates for Nikon to release a new flagship camera and telephoto lens(es).

While I understand it isn't perfect, it's probably not a bad use-case to focus on as a lot of the capabilities useful there are applicable in many other contexts, even wildlife (and dog sports).

That said, I do think we should take the opportunity to try to get our use cases considered. I mentioned it could use improvements for dogs sports. While I'm sure it wasn't the optimal audience, I do hope if I act like a broken record, eventually someone will hear me

 

[Ken Miracle]

Thanks Eric.

When Paul was discussing Precapture, he referred to it as producing jpegs and then added something like “at least for now.” I thought he might be implying we could see Precapture with raw in a future firmware update. Hope so. I’d be happy even if Precapture used HE* raw and even if it was a bit slower than the 30 fps you get with jpegs.

Paul suggested that we should be shooting more jpegs from the Z9 and fewer raw shots, as the Z9 jpegs are so good and you can make sure exposure and colors are correct in the viewfinder. That may well make sense in sports photography and news photography, where fast output is needed. I’m not so convinced that it is true for wildlife and landscape photography. I often do a number of selective edits using layers in ACR (which has gotten even more useful in the most recent updates). I expect — but could be wrong — that it may work better to do this with a raw file in ACR/LR than with a jpeg. But I’m not an expert and would be curious to hear what others think. I will do what Paul suggested and shoot some raw + jpegs and see.

As to noise in raw files that Paul mentioned, I have seen some suggestion that people are seeing more noise in the shadows when using HE* raw. Haven’t heard it being an issue with lossless compressed raw. Nikon jpegs would include noise reduction, so you might see less noise in a jpeg than in a raw file, depending on the noise reduction settings you use in your raw converter. And I think that NX Studio applies the camera’s jpeg settings, so I can see why it might solve this issue by applying noise reduction.

I turn off noise reduction in ACR (other than color noise reduction) and use Topaz DeNoise AI in Photoshop after conversion. I also turn off sharpening in ACR, to avoid sharpening noise (prior to using Topaz, I tended to mask the sharpening in ACR for the same reason).

I find NX Studio a bit clunky to use. And as far as I know, it does not have the ability to do local adjustment layers with a raw file that ACR/LR have. (Can’t remember if it uses control points.) Personally, I have generally used NX Studio and its predecessors in limited cases, for example, when I had tricky colors that I was having trouble with in ACR.

I wish Nikon would work with one (or more) of the major software makers to allow them to get more out the raw files while still having more nimble software than Nikon seems to be able to produce on its own. Maybe Adobe, Capture One or DxO?

One final point. In response to a question, Paul said that as far as he knew, the A3 blocked shot settings worked the same in each AF area. I think this is not true, at least for 3D Tracking and Auto Area AF, where not all of the A3 settings are available. See the Z9 reference guide on page 600. Unless it changed in more recent firmware.

A good presentation and a number of thoughts to try when I head out in my kayak in a few minutes.

I shot Z9 indoors in wild variable light at an ordination at church this weekend no other lighting could be used. Had to shoot from a lot of locations relative to the subjects and the subjects in a lot of variable locations with lighting changing. This included wide color WB ranges because of a large multi colored stained glass window behind the altar ... pastors all in white robes with red stoles. A lot of bright highlights and deep shaddows and everything in between. Z9 and Z70-200 f/2.8 handled it all well ISO up to 8000 most in the 800 to 2000 range. I shot in high efficiency * raw. I did convert the images I kept in NX Studio as Tiff and as Jpg. I use custom presets I made in LRC for noise reduction and sharpening and had to do nothing unusual or drastic to the Raw developed as normal in Light Room Classic. No need at al for Topaz. I could not see any improvement in noise levels in the Tif or Jpg files created/exported in NX Studion (they employ the noise reduction in camera for jpgs) in this limited one time experience.

 

[Mark Garfinkel]

I would like a repeat performance. Fantastic webinar, one of the best and my thanks to all who put this together.

 

[thelordofthelight]

I was photographing Indian skimmers yesterday and the light was too bad with overcast conditions. Nevertheless i thought it was a good opportunity to test the new fw. Im again impressed at how amazing Auto AF area works now even for action. The subject didn't have much contrast either and yet the camera could easily pick and track very well without any problems most of the time. As with skimmers, they fly very close to the water surface and then skim though the surface and the Z9 with Auto area AF had no problems with subject tracking. I also find there's significant improvement when the subject transitions from clean bg like sky to busy BG. I see myself using wide area AF modes a lot lesser unlike before fw 2.1 wherein I'd almost always use wide mode for initial focus acquisition. There were few instances where the camera had challenges tracking with the Auto area AF due to harsh reflections on the water surface where wide area C1 with a 19x3 horizontal box did very well.

Also, with Auto area AF i see that the AF box is very quick and decisive in general. When the bird flies erratic, i could see those smaller dancing dots tracking the birds ( something similar to Sony cameras). This is not something I had noticed earlier with the Z9, at least not this frequently.

 

[HotGates]

I was photographing Indian skimmers yesterday

And how did the Z9 do? I was photographing Barn Swallows yesterday and when they got closer in the viewfinder the Z9 actually did pretty good I was surprised.

 

[thelordofthelight]

And how did the Z9 do? I was photographing Barn Swallows yesterday and when they got closer in the viewfinder the Z9 actually did pretty good I was surprised.

Im sorry I accidentally hit the post button while i was still typing .

 

[HotGates]

Im sorry I accidentally hit the post button while i was still typing .

 

[thelordofthelight]

So here is one of the images I managed to process from this weekend. I just posted it on the presentation forum to avoid cluttering this thread.

Indian Skimmers in flight

Shot this last week end in really challenging light. It was a dull and overcast day but these are endangered species and a lifer for me so i tried my best to get some images. Shot this with the Z9 and 500mm F4E lens with 1.4TC at 700mm, Shutter speed 1/3200, f5.6, ISO 4500. I had to pull the...

bcgforums.com

 

[WonderfulNaturePhotography]

I was headed out this morning when I saw the news, so downloaded and installed. I used the 600 EFL and 500pf for BIF. I really gave it a workout, in most of the conditions I have previously noticed issues. First, an osprey against a blank sky...winner, it locked focus most all the time, even when the bird was small in the VF. It did seem to rack focus in and out before it locked, did that enough so I noticed. I'd still give the edge to the D6 here, it just grabs a bird against a blank sky every time. Against a busy BG the new firmware did noticably better. Not perfect but a large improvement. It grabbed a tern against a busy BG more often than not and stayed focused remarkably well, I'd say it was only as good as I was keeping a darting tern in the VF.
All around, I'm very happy with the improvements. I'll be interested to see if folks (Steve) who have used a A1 think this now puts the Z9 on par.

Hi @Warren D , can you give some info on the AF Area Mode that you use for terns on a busy BG? I tried already Wide-L and several sizes on C1-2 (to be able to use the subject detection) but it's difficult to get a lock. Auto area works fine on a clear sky , but not with a busy BG. Thx

 

[pomkiwi]

Version 2.11 has been released today - it seems to be just a bug fix without any new features