CONSISTENT UNDEREXPOSURE WITH THE Z9

[Hooligans Imagery]

precisely because LRC adds noise that simply does not appear when processing the same files using NX studio or Capture One or DxO Pure Raw.

I was under the impression that this was solved if you set LRC to use the Camera Profiles and turn down sharpening. The Z9/LRC process is explained in this article and it's something to consider how the settings start off.

I plan on testing this soon. DXO still doesn't support HE* and they may never as they would have to pay royalties to TICO.

Everyone has to make choices.

 

[agrumpyoldsod]

I was under the impression that this was solved if you set LRC to use the Camera Profiles and turn down sharpening.

I plan on testing this soon. DXO still doesn't support HE* and they may never as they would have to pay royalties to TICO.

Everyone has to make choices.

Yes - use Camera profiles but nope it does not solve the problem I see - I do not sharpen or NR in LR. AND I only shoot Lossless RAW - I don't use either HE format.

 

[PAUL50]

Paul -- like most I suspect you are facing a settings issue. BUT there is a possibility of a technical problem
First big lesson -- as a rule the Z9's profiles and exposure do not need fine tuning -- everytime I do this in camera I make things worse. I would return your camera to its factory/default settings for all exposure and picture control settings. Second -- unlike a DSLR the camera's AF responds better when using a standard picture control profile, which bumps up contrast - it certainly helps the AF considerably if your subject is correctly exposed. The Z9 is NOT the same as a DSLR. The histogram you see in the camera in live view or in playback is based on the JPG embedded in the RAW file (or what this would be) - it benefits from the profile.
Try shooting in spot or centre weighted metering to see if this helps a difference. It is the exposure of your subject that counts not the whole frame. This is why the histogram can be misleading for wildlife shooters.

In my view 12,800 is an artificially low upper limit. Freezing motion is the most important challenge in wildlife (unless you desire to inclus motion blur creatively) -- we can easily remove much of the adverse impact of high iso noise with Topaz DeNoise AI or similar tools - but one cannot remove motion blur later. Personally I shoot Manual with Auto ISO and with the auto settings set to +1.
The Noise in a Z9's 14-bit Lossless RAW images is comparable to the performance of a D850 (another camera I also owned a pair of).
There is a very well known issue with Adobe Camera RAW/LRC and raw files from the Z9 (and other newer cameras) -- many (myself included) use another tool to process our RAW files before working on them in LRC or PS -- I use DxO Pure RAW 2 -- precisely because LRC adds noise that simply does not appear when processing the same files using NX studio or Capture One or DxO Pure Raw.

Thanks for your comments. I have reverted back to default exposure and picture control settings (and LR profiles) and just purchased the DxO software (numerous folks have been recommending it). Waiting on the gray card, and will test with that. I haven’t had a chance to test further, but will substantially raise the ISO ceiling, and also give full manual a try and see what I come up with, when I do. I appreciate you taking the time to respond so thoroughly. I’ll update re my results as soon as I can get back out shooting.

 

[PAUL50]

From time to time I find it useful to revisit a detailed explanation of Exposure - as in Steve's ebook(s). [ fyi see pp 115- for overview of Picture Controls in Steve's Z9 book. ]

I recollect a hypothesis by Thom Hogan, he penned earlier this year, about the relationship between exposure and AF and also picture controls. In his initial posts, Brad Hill mentioned tweaking the P-C to optimize the EVF, but my EVF set to wysiwyg.

Has anyone see a definitive test of this i.e. the influence of different Picture Controls on Z9 exposure? I don't recall any discussion of this previously with earlier Z system cameras

Thanks for your comments. I went back and reread those sections you suggested. The page numbers have changed a little with the update. Steve briefly addresses the issue of changing picture controls on Z9 exposure and says he hasn’t noticed any effect.

 

[PAUL50]

Post one of your underexposed photos with EXIF intact.

Once I reset everything and get back out to test some more, I will post with the exit data. Thanks

 

[PAUL50]

I had something similar on D-something once. It turned out to be the lens. When the camera said go-to f/4 (example) the lens was not getting quite there. Drove me crazy for a while.

In my case I’ve experienced the same results with different lenses.

 

[PAUL50]

I have read on an old Thom Hogan site that Nikon meters for around 12-13% as you say.

Advice to the OP: you don't really need a gray card. Open Photoshop and fill the screen with 255, 255, 255 in an sRGB space and photograph the screen using the light meter reading and then look at the pixel value in LR or ACR. Using LR I get an sRGB value of 116 after applying the Adobe Baseline offset of -0.2. This is using LR 12.01 with the Version 5 calibration with a linear tone curve and using the camera standard profile. This translates to a saturation of 17.5%. If you are using LR, soft proof for sRGB to get a pixel value rather than a percentage. For details about baseline exposure see here. If you are using Rawdigger to read the EXIF data you can open the test file after converting to DNG and click on the EXIF button and search for baseline exposure.

Bill

That’s a good idea. I’ll give it a try as soon as I figure out all that you’ve said! But really, that makes good sense to me. I’m a little confused though because 255 is pure white. But I’ll figure it out. Thank you.

 

[joe43]

Paul, I just saw this post and have read it with interest. Like you I have a Z9 (and still have my D850 and D500 that I still use. I have not experienced any of the issues you have described regarding underexposing.

My Z9 settings so far are very similar to those on my D500 and D850. On all three bodies I use Aperture Priority, Auto ISO, Matrix Metering, Exposure comp when needed, and Picture Controls set to factory settings. For birds and most wildlife, in Auto ISO, I set the max ISO to the ISO in each camera body. Low is set to the lowest. For the Z9 that means 64-25,600. Shutter speed (in Auto ISO) is set to 1/1000 unless available light dictates a lower shutter speed.

I shoot in RAW (NEF lossless), WB set to Daylight (sometimes AUTO 1). I cull images in NX Studio and process RAW images in DXO PL5, now DXO PL6. RAW Images on my laptop and desktop look the same in NX Studio and DXO. I have Adobe but rarely ever use it. In DXO the preset I use is DXO Standard, and sometimes no preset. All my computers use win 10 Pro.

The only suggestion I have is to test some images taken with Manual and Auto ISO. Then take them in Aperture Priority and Auto ISO. If the former are underexposed vs the latter, then there may be an error in your Manual and Auto ISO settings or a related setting.

 

[MartyD]

A wild idea but.... I sometime worry that since Nikon has made some pretty significant changes to the FW since the camera was released that the firmware updates may in some cases confuse the stored settings. Saving your settings, restoring to factory settings, testing, then loading your saved settings back into the Z9 might identify something. You have 2 Z9s so I am assuming it is happening on both and both probably have the same settings.

In the future, I think I am going to reset my Z9 to factory settings, perform the software updates, then rebuild my settings banks manually just as a precaution. I wonder if some of the issues Z9 issues discussed on this site might be related to some conversion of FW2 settings not being properly converted to FW3.

You might also try to change to an unused shooting and settings bank, reset both of those banks, and do some exposure testing on a clean shooting and settings bank.

When I first received my Z9 on a Friday, did some initial setup, and shot a football game on Saturday afternoon. Shotting manual with auto ISO the images in the first half were properly exposed, but the second half images were very overexposed. It took me awhile to find setting b4:matrix metering face detection, players faces inside helmets with their back to the sun were being properly exposed but this created overexposure for the rest of the image.

 

[bjanes]

That’s a good idea. I’ll give it a try as soon as I figure out all that you’ve said! But really, that makes good sense to me. I’m a little confused though because 255 is pure white. But I’ll figure it out. Thank you.

All that is needed is a uniform neutral surface. White is the same as gray with decreased exposue to account for the higher luminnce. You could also fill with sRGB 118 (18%). The camera metering will give the same resuts.

Bill

 

[PAUL50]

All that is needed is a uniform neutral surface. White is the same as gray with decreased exposue to account for the higher luminnce. You could also fill with sRGB 118 (18%). The camera metering will give the same resuts.

Bill

Ok, that I understand. In fact now I realize how both are correct.

A wild idea but.... I sometime worry that since Nikon has made some pretty significant changes to the FW since the camera was released that the firmware updates may in some cases confuse the stored settings. Saving your settings, restoring to factory settings, testing, then loading your saved settings back into the Z9 might identify something. You have 2 Z9s so I am assuming it is happening on both and both probably have the same settings.

In the future, I think I am going to reset my Z9 to factory settings, perform the software updates, then rebuild my settings banks manually just as a precaution. I wonder if some of the issues Z9 issues discussed on this site might be related to some conversion of FW2 settings not being properly converted to FW3.

You might also try to change to an unused shooting and settings bank, reset both of those banks, and do some exposure testing on a clean shooting and settings bank.

When I first received my Z9 on a Friday, did some initial setup, and shot a football game on Saturday afternoon. Shotting manual with auto ISO the images in the first half were properly exposed, but the second half images were very overexposed. It took me awhile to find setting b4:matrix metering face detection, players faces inside helmets with their back to the sun were being properly exposed but this created overexposure for the rest of the image.

Thank you. I’ll give it a shot, if you’ll excuse the pun.

 

[PAUL50]

A wild idea but.... I sometime worry that since Nikon has made some pretty significant changes to the FW since the camera was released that the firmware updates may in some cases confuse the stored settings. Saving your settings, restoring to factory settings, testing, then loading your saved settings back into the Z9 might identify something. You have 2 Z9s so I am assuming it is happening on both and both probably have the same settings.

In the future, I think I am going to reset my Z9 to factory settings, perform the software updates, then rebuild my settings banks manually just as a precaution. I wonder if some of the issues Z9 issues discussed on this site might be related to some conversion of FW2 settings not being properly converted to FW3.

You might also try to change to an unused shooting and settings bank, reset both of those banks, and do some exposure testing on a clean shooting and settings bank.

When I first received my Z9 on a Friday, did some initial setup, and shot a football game on Saturday afternoon. Shotting manual with auto ISO the images in the first half were properly exposed, but the second half images were very overexposed. It took me awhile to find setting b4:matrix metering face detection, players faces inside helmets with their back to the sun were being properly exposed but this created overexposure for the rest of the image.

The more I’m reading the more I’m convinced I’ve probably hosed up a setting or two. It would not be a bad to try your suggestion but first I’m going to see what the meter is really doing by following the suggestions to shoot the equivalent of a gray card one way or another. Thanks.

 

[Mike Wilson]

Paul- I have also had this problem since shooing with the Z9, but I don't believe it is camera related. I have always, in the past, shot with my lenses stopped down about a stop from wide open, but have had such good results when shooting wide open since switching to mirrorless and the AF capability of the Z9. You mentioned that you are shooting wide open, try to stop down your lens, in my case it is the 500 PF, and compare the images to shots taken wide open to see if your exposures brighten up a bit.

 

[MRK]

I also have my exposure compensation set +.3 - +.7 on my Z9. It seemed to me it under exposed out of the box.
Mark

 

[Parfumeur]

Thanks for your comments. I’m still working on the issue. Typically, and under most outside normal daylight conditions, I have to crank in +0.7 or more of exposure comp to get the histogram to look right, otherwise there is a distinct shift to the left and underexposures. At first I thought I wasn’t paying enough attention and was exceeding the maximum ISO (which I keep at 12,800), but tests done subsequently using studio lights and sighting targets make it almost certain that I have to ignore the meter nearly all the time to get a proper shape to the histogram and a proper exposure. But I keep working. Thanks.

Thanks for your comments. I’m still working on the issue. Typically, and under most outside normal daylight conditions, I have to crank in +0.7 or more of exposure comp to get the histogram to look right, otherwise there is a distinct shift to the left and underexposures. At first I thought I wasn’t paying enough attention and was exceeding the maximum ISO (which I keep at 12,800), but tests done subsequently using studio lights and sighting targets make it almost certain that I have to ignore the meter nearly all the time to get a proper shape to the histogram and a proper exposure. But I keep working. Thanks.

Just curious, are you encountering underexposure with all your lenses? You do have in PHOTO SHOOTING MENU > ISO sensitivity setting > ISO sensitivity 64; Auto ISO sensitivity control: ON; Maximum sensitivity: 25600 (you can fix noise in post) ? Remember ISO is gain. Else you may have to go to b6 and adjust. Are you (Center-weighted area) SMAL, STNDRD or AVG?

 

[PAUL50]

I sincerely appreciate all the comments received concerning the under exposure issue I’ve been experiencing. I have looked seriously at many of the ideas suggested and I’ve tested the meter as Bill @bjanes suggested, (and it works just fine) did a reset on the camera, and then set the wildlife bank again to manual plus auto ISO, this time turning the ISO ceiling to 25,600, picked a moderately bright but gray morning and headed out to see what would happen, proving once again that a mechanic should never blame his tools, just as an artist shouldn’t blame his brushes.

I tend to use two lenses with wildlife, either the incredible 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 S lens with and without a 1.4 TC and, alternatively, my 600 f/4E also with and without a 1.4 TC and, where necessary, with both, I won’t hesitate to flip between fx and dx, and so when working with both lenses I have an effective range of 100mm to 1260 mm, and generally shoot wide open. What I’ve learned, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise, is my concentration has been primarily and heavily on my struggle working with and learning the new AF-modes, struggling particularly with W-C1 and W-C2 etc., and simply not paying enough attention to the histogram. When I stopped struggling with the new AF-area modes and switched my attention to the meter and histogram, giving due regard to exposure compensation as necessary, the exposure issues went away, as I concentrated on keeping my shutter speeds down and keeping my eye on the histogram, and so I now humbly back away in my humiliation from blaming the camera! LOL! Thank you all for your advice and comments.

 

[bleirer]

I sincerely appreciate all the comments received concerning the under exposure issue I’ve been experiencing. I have looked seriously at many of the ideas suggested and I’ve tested the meter as Bill @bjanes suggested, (and it works just fine) did a reset on the camera, and then set the wildlife bank again to manual plus auto ISO, this time turning the ISO ceiling to 25,600, picked a moderately bright but gray morning and headed out to see what would happen, proving once again that a mechanic should never blame his tools, just as an artist shouldn’t blame his brushes.

I tend to use two lenses with wildlife, either the incredible 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 S lens with and without a 1.4 TC and, alternatively, my 600 f/4E also with and without a 1.4 TC and, where necessary, with both, I won’t hesitate to flip between fx and dx, and so when working with both lenses I have an effective range of 100mm to 1260 mm, and generally shoot wide open. What I’ve learned, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise, is my concentration has been primarily and heavily on my struggle working with and learning the new AF-modes, struggling particularly with W-C1 and W-C2 etc., and simply not paying enough attention to the histogram. When I stopped struggling with the new AF-area modes and switched my attention to the meter and histogram, giving due regard to exposure compensation as necessary, the exposure issues went away, as I concentrated on keeping my shutter speeds down and keeping my eye on the histogram, and so I now humbly back away in my humiliation from blaming the camera! LOL! Thank you all for your advice and comments.

Glad you got it figured out.

 

[John Navitsky]

i will say the ability to have a live histogram in the evf is super helpful

 

[bjanes]

i will say the ability to have a live histogram in the evf is super helpful

The live histogram is indeed most useful, but it is a luminance histogram that predomintely refects the green channel and may not reflect the status of the blue and red channels. When photographing saturated red subjects such as red flowers, the RBG histogram may show clipping of the red channel when the red channel is in fact intact. This can take place because the red channel is multiplied by nearly a factor of 2 to achieve white balance. The RGB histogram can be shown on image review and can more accurately show the red channel if you use uniwb (see Jim Kasson).

I use Uniwb as a white balance preset where the white balance coefficients are all 1.0. This results in green preview image but allows the histogram to more closely approach a raw histogram. There are various ways to get uniwb but the easiest way is to let someone else do the work. Images with uniwb are often available on the internet. For the Z9 Thom Hogan includes such an image for the Z9 with his Z9 guide. You merely copy the WB setting from the image.

With the Z9 you can show the RBB histogram on image review but I don't know of a way to show it in live view. Any ideas?

Bill

 

[John Navitsky]

With the Z9 you can show the RBB histogram on image review but I don't know of a way to show it in live view. Any ideas?

i don't think you can. maybe in a future fw update.

 

[ButlerKid]

I sincerely appreciate all the comments received concerning the under exposure issue I’ve been experiencing. I have looked seriously at many of the ideas suggested and I’ve tested the meter as Bill @bjanes suggested, (and it works just fine) did a reset on the camera, and then set the wildlife bank again to manual plus auto ISO, this time turning the ISO ceiling to 25,600, picked a moderately bright but gray morning and headed out to see what would happen, proving once again that a mechanic should never blame his tools, just as an artist shouldn’t blame his brushes.

I tend to use two lenses with wildlife, either the incredible 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 S lens with and without a 1.4 TC and, alternatively, my 600 f/4E also with and without a 1.4 TC and, where necessary, with both, I won’t hesitate to flip between fx and dx, and so when working with both lenses I have an effective range of 100mm to 1260 mm, and generally shoot wide open. What I’ve learned, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise, is my concentration has been primarily and heavily on my struggle working with and learning the new AF-modes, struggling particularly with W-C1 and W-C2 etc., and simply not paying enough attention to the histogram. When I stopped struggling with the new AF-area modes and switched my attention to the meter and histogram, giving due regard to exposure compensation as necessary, the exposure issues went away, as I concentrated on keeping my shutter speeds down and keeping my eye on the histogram, and so I now humbly back away in my humiliation from blaming the camera! LOL! Thank you all for your advice and comments.

Personally, I so admire your openness to the discussions and willingness to not get defensive. Quite rare these days......KUDOS!

 

[PAUL50]

Personally, I so admire your openness to the discussions and willingness to not get defensive. Quite rare these days......KUDOS!

Thank you for the kind words.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

My Z9 constantly underexposes based on many thousands of shots. I shoot RAW format and in manual with auto ISO. Initially I set the in camera Picture Control to Standard and in LR used the Adobe default profiles. To double check, I set the in camera Picture Control to “Camera Flat” to get a more accurate read with the in camera histogram and set the LR profile also to camera flat, all with the same result. I then created a Z9 Linear Profile for LR. The point was to create a situation where the histogram in camera and in LR would read as accurately as possible without being influenced by either Nikons built in settings or Adobe’s built in settings. Bottom line, routinely the in camera histogram reads to the left approximately 0.7+ stops when the meter is centered, and the photos routinely appear underexposed in LR by roughly a similar amount based on appearance and according to the histogram. The problem, of course, for me is the level of noise appears greater when opening up the shadows and increasing exposure. My question, is anyone else in the group experiencing the same thing? And, what did you do to fix it.

Until now I’ve dealt with the issue using exposure compensation but I’m now thinking to use the “Fine Tune Optimal Exposure Setting” (b6 in the Custom Settings” menu.). I should add, I experience this when in Matrix Metering Mode and have not experimented with the issue in other exposure modes, but will be doing that today.

Paul - lots of good advice from community members.

I shoot sports mainly with backgrounds constantly changing e.g. electronic advertising boards around the field at night. In day time the players would be in full sun with the stands often in shadows as a backdrop. I have calibrated my Z9 sensor to my Sekonic L758DR light meter to allow for sensor vagaries - a small simple light meter could also be used. I meter the light and set my camera to it (everything manual - SS, f, ISO) - the Z9 often shows -1 stop underexposure, but they're spot on in LR.

I realise when shooting wildlife it might not be as simple, however the recall shooting buttons cater for the scenario of subjects moving from sunlight to shadows - set the camera to the light where the subject is most of the time and adjust the recall shooting settings for the opposite. If guys have time to look at histograms then they also have time to take a light meter out the pocket and take a reading - I don't like editing

I'm not sure if LR has fixed the issue of shooting RAW when Active D-Lighting was ON in camera. Adobe didn't have a way to interpret the files whereas Nikon software could.

 

[Ken Miracle]

I was under the impression that this was solved if you set LRC to use the Camera Profiles and turn down sharpening. The Z9/LRC process is explained in this article and it's something to consider how the settings start off.

I plan on testing this soon. DXO still doesn't support HE* and they may never as they would have to pay royalties to TICO.

Everyone has to make choices.

Yup works great as we have discussed and now have dowloaded and using Topaz photo AI and had in immediate update. I did try the plug in in LRC with an image I did not do a great job on and was quite impressed. And no Topaz still does not work directly with HE* but using the standard method I use with the plug in it processes a Tiff file and sends a Tiff back.

 

[Ken Miracle]

Yes - use Camera profiles but nope it does not solve the problem I see - I do not sharpen or NR in LR. AND I only shoot Lossless RAW - I don't use either HE format.

What @BarkingBeansCoffee is mentioning is a change to LRC in Preferences (on a Mac) with a change in Raw Defaults Global to Camera Settings instead of Global defaults. With the Z9 it uses most of the settings you put in the Z9 that show up in the LRC meta data for changes to your picture control. High ISO NR settings etc etc.. I have found that if I get my setting correct in camera it works great.

Wood Duck below was processed that way in LRC and only thing done was to crop it no other edits at all.

You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.