Nikon Z8 Firmware 2.0 Released

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fcotterill said:
Here's a detailed explanation of Pixel Shift by dpr member Horshack

Deep dive into Nikon's Pixel Shift: Nikon Z Mirrorless Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

Expert news, reviews and videos of the latest digital cameras, lenses, accessories, and phones. Get answers to your questions in our photography forums.
www.dpreview.com www.dpreview.com
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Thanks for posting the link. Interesting read. Kudos on whoever came up with this concept and glad Nikon decided to implement it. But not sure it's all that useful to most people. Primarily because it only applies to shooting static subjects/scenes. Which are typically least problematic from the standpoint of noise. So unless there's an interest in the 4x resolution or someone is super-picky about color/dynamic range it seems more trouble than the hassle(both in the field and post) is worth.
 
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NorthernFocus said:
Thanks for posting the link. Interesting read. Kudos on whoever came up with this concept and glad Nikon decided to implement it. But not sure it's all that useful to most people. Primarily because it only applies to shooting static subjects/scenes. Which are typically least problematic from the standpoint of noise. So unless there's an interest in the 4x resolution or someone is super-picky about color/dynamic range it seems more trouble than the hassle(both in the field and post) is worth.
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Admittedly, landscapes are not my primary genre though I've used pixel shift on my Canon gear for years. As another user described it requires appropriate conditions and the areas I found it most useful were interiors, products, and certain landscapes (without motion). Did it duplicate the resolution and typical DR that MF provides? Not in my opinion though on occasion it could deliver impressive results. Overall, I didn't find that the added effort was worth it and I personally abandoned the technique. Others might find it useful and while it is a welcomed addition, there are many other FW improvements which are more valuable.

The FW 2.0 update is fantastic and in many ways, I feel like I have a new and improved camera. Thank you Nikon! Next up, convince them to add, real time zebras for stills, allow subject detection toggling on/off and button assignment, reconfigure the way settings are saved, ...
 
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Thom was buzzing Nikon about pixel shift. I thought it will substitute medium format 100mp sensors.
Apparently, that’s not the case.

But what if my shutter speed is fast enough to lock in the motion of landscape shots, why wouldn’t it align 16 images?

Is NX a must to combine them?
 
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Steve said:
FYI:
1. To be clear, I didn't have early access to the firmware this time (you win some, you lose some), so I have to sort through it a bit.

2. The book will see an update soon :) However, MOST of it is already in there. The sections on AutoCapture, Subject Detection (bird), and Exposure Delay for instance all apply to the Z8, it's just a matter of correcting the text to reflect that. Some of the other options that are relevant to wildlife photography will also be added as well.
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Hey Steve, my new Nikon Z8 is arriving tomorrow. Am I going overboard with the d850 and d500 that I have configured according to your videos? Since AF in the Z8 is completely new to me, I'm sure I want to mock your configuration book? Therefore, I have a question: should I buy its current version or wait for a while and wait for the version updated with firmware 2.0? When can we expect this newer version?
 
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Chay Nick said:
Hey Steve, my new Nikon Z8 is arriving tomorrow. Am I going overboard with the d850 and d500 that I have configured according to your videos? Since AF in the Z8 is completely new to me, I'm sure I want to mock your configuration book? Therefore, I have a question: should I buy its current version or wait for a while and wait for the version updated with firmware 2.0? When can we expect this newer version?
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The vast majority of the advice in that book is exactly the same. 99% of the firmware between the two cameras is the same. As for button configurations, they are always in flux as I try different things with new firmware :) Right now, I think the difference is that the video record button is set to cycle AF arms and Fn1 is now Auto AF. I think the rest is probably the same. Also, it's pretty easy to change - and what works for me may not prove a good fit for you. So, don't get too locked into my configuration, just use it as a starting point and adjust as you go :)

As for when, I don't know. I'm working on it but it's not something I can pin down to a date.
 
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Steve said:
Fn1 is now Auto AF.
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When you say Fn1 is now Auto AF, do you mean you have set Fn1 to simply switch to Auto AF mode? Also, with Z9 fw 4.1 you mentioned that Auto AF is now much more reliable with subject detect and you are finding it more useful than other modes, I would assume the Z8 has also carried that over, so are you using your Z8 just like your Z9 and finding the same results (with regard to AF speed, acquisition, etc.)?
 
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Steve said:
Umm... There's a NEW option called Cycle AF Area Mode that allows you to toggle between AF areas by pressing a button - and you can select which ones to put on the list! This might be second only to Bird AF for usefulness and the Z9 does not have it!

This was one of the things I've been requesting forever and they did a great job (I'm not sure if they got the idea form me or just grabbed it from Sony, but I'm glad it's there either way!)
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Are you going to make a video outlining the changes in FW 2? Or do you have a reco for a good (I have to use the term best) video descriping the changes. Just back from a week in Italy (shooting Carnival, which unlike Mardi Gras in New Orleans) is not a drunken brawl so no wildiife.
 
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ajrmd said:
My early results with FW 2.0 shooting passerines in trees and on the ground, foraging have been largely favorable. In AA mode, it recognizes the subject immediately and locks on quickly. Prior to the update, was unusable in this application and one had to use an alternative AF mode.
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This was also the case with the Z9 and fw 4.1, it appears the Z8 is getting the same treatment and something we've been hoping for since last November when 4.1 was released.
ajrmd said:
Interestingly, the AF algorithm seems to prioritize round shapes. For instance, when using it around the bird feeder with round holes, AA wants to jump to the hole.
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That is interesting, must be part of the new programming.
 
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SCoombs said:
I haven't had a chance to test this on wildlife yet and in fact I haven't been shooting much wildlife lately, largely due to the seasonality (I'm looking forward to at least slightly warmer weather) but something very... confusing that I've noticed with my shooting of people:

I got my Z8 early this past spring and thought it worked pretty well. In mid summer I got the 70-180 Z lens - my first native Z lens - and thought that with the Z8 the AF was amazingly accurate and the lens to be the sharpest I'd ever used. By November, I was feeling a bit less happy with the AF and was finding it very inconsistent (on both the 70-180 and another lens of mine), especially in lower light. I also noticed a weird AF behavior in that using the wide area AF modes with subject detection tended to give me low accuracy for AF on people's eyes - it would say they were in focus but they'd be extremely soft or often just plain out of focus - but if I used the full area AF the eyes would be in focus much more consistently. It was still far too low, but it was better. With wide area modes I'd get <50% in focus when the eye box was solid green. With the full area I'd get 70% or so in focus with the eye box solid green. Meanwhile, doing it with the single point AF and no subject detection was >90% in focus.

Then, as the winter wore on I started to find photos from my Z8 to be weirdly lacking in sharpness and also increasingly noisy/grainy in a way that even LR's denoise wouldn't clean up. This really confused me because I was taking photos at lower ISOs in better lighting with less noise (or grain; it was hard for me to classify which) than I'd seen in lots of past photos but the past photos would clean up to near perfection in LR's denoise while anything I was taking now come out of denoise looking hardly any better than they went in. I was seriously starting to consider switching brands, even as a bit of a Nikon loyalist, because it all started to make some of the stereotypical anti-Nikon complaints seem pretty real to me.

When the 2.0 firmware was released earlier this week, I first backed up my settings and then updated the firmware. I then restored my settings and verified that they did go back the way I had them - so nothing has changed in terms of how the camera is configured.

However, almost immediately I started to notice the AF being more accurate and the photos having that nice "high-fidelity" look I would have expected and had been used to when I first got this camera/lens combo. I didn't say anything at first because I wanted to test it more. I still wouldn't say I've tested enough to be certain anything's really changed, but in what playing around I have done it really does feel like a different camera, like suddenly the AF is nailing things the way it did when I first got it and like the photos have an appropriate amount of noise and that noise can be cleaned up in processing again. I can now go into whatever mode I want and photograph my kids, for instance, and their eyes are sharp and shiny almost every time. I can see the texture in their skin instead of a kind of very vaguely "oil painting" sort of lower texture.

This has me pretty confused because I am positive nothing has changed settings-wise and because I know that while this firmware is an improvement it isn't as if the previous firmware was so bad as that there should be this difference. I saw earlier today how Thom Hogan had pointed out that apparently the previous firmware wasn't always accounting for AF-fine tuning properly so I went and checked to see if maybe I'd had that turned on before and so now it was just being applied correctly, but no, it wasn't - and it certainly wasn't on when I first was getting great results last summer, either.

Just something to think about. It really makes me wonder what the heck changed, what the update fixed and how it fixed it, and how to make sure it doesn't happen again!
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I am a portrait shooter as well. I have noticed some weird behavior (in the files) at times and thought maybe it was due to Lightroom updates and how it is handling the Z8 files. I also wonder if using Adobe Default vs. Camera when importing NEF's into Lightroom might have a difference in how the images behave? As for AF acquisition I never had the issues you mention with the Z8 and peoples eyes, but that may just be how we're using AF modes and SD. I mostly use Wide Area L (in landscape) and Wide Area S (in portrait) with People SD and I use BB3D to let 3D take over on an eye while I re-compose, using this method has been very accurate for nice sharp eyes in portraits. Now that Auto Area has vastly improved (at least for birds but I hope it also improved for all subject types) I may try to use this mode and see if I don't even need to handoff to BB3D...
 
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Mecky said:
I took 16 pictures in Pixel Shift mode yesterday. After I merged the images in NX, it resulted in a huge file of 950MB. I then enlarged one of the images using super resolution in Lightroom. The image was even larger than the Pixel Shift image and was only 160 MB and the quality was at least as good as the Pixel Shift image. The Pixel Shift function doesn't really make sense to me after that.
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Given the limitations with pixel shift (as it exists right now) I am not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. This is Nikon's first iteration so hopefully something for them to improve upon, especially if they can get the final image to process in camera. OM System has really refined this feature and they even have a hand held mode where you don't need the tripod so hopefully that comes to Nikon as well down the road. But for now I think it is a feature that will be in the back of my mind but not something I can actually use (yet).
 
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RichF said:
Are you going to make a video outlining the changes in FW 2? Or do you have a reco for a good (I have to use the term best) video descriping the changes. Just back from a week in Italy (shooting Carnival, which unlike Mardi Gras in New Orleans) is not a drunken brawl so no wildiife.
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I'm not planning one, there have been a few already from people who had it before release, Ricci had a good one.
 
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Chay Nick said:
Hey Steve, my new Nikon Z8 is arriving tomorrow. Am I going overboard with the d850 and d500 that I have configured according to your videos? Since AF in the Z8 is completely new to me, I'm sure I want to mock your configuration book? Therefore, I have a question: should I buy its current version or wait for a while and wait for the version updated with firmware 2.0? When can we expect this newer version?
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I’d get the current version now. It’s great help. Most of the options will be the same. It’s possible that some numbering in the menus will change a bit, given new features.

Also, in the past, Steve’s updates of his books for new firmware have been free. Perhaps that might change, but even if it does, I’d get the current version now to help you get up and running. A very reasonable price for a wealth of information and experience.
 
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Photographer_Bill said:
When you say Fn1 is now Auto AF, do you mean you have set Fn1 to simply switch to Auto AF mode? Also, with Z9 fw 4.1 you mentioned that Auto AF is now much more reliable with subject detect and you are finding it more useful than other modes, I would assume the Z8 has also carried that over, so are you using your Z8 just like your Z9 and finding the same results (with regard to AF speed, acquisition, etc.)?
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I have Fn1 set to Auto AF when I press it (I don't engage AF with the button, I just use the override).

As far as I can tell, the Z8 is the same, but I really haven't had time to do any photography with it. From my "out the window" tests it seems like the Z9.
 
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BillW said:
I’d get the current version now. It’s great help. Most of the options will be the same. It’s possible that some numbering in the menus will change a bit, given new features.

Also, in the past, Steve’s updates of his books for new firmware have been free. Perhaps that might change, but even if it does, I’d get the current version now to help you get up and running. A very reasonable price for a wealth of information and experience.
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This one will be a free update :)
 
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Photographer_Bill said:
Given the limitations with pixel shift (as it exists right now) I am not sure if the juice is worth the squeeze. This is Nikon's first iteration so hopefully something for them to improve upon, especially if they can get the final image to process in camera. OM System has really refined this feature and they even have a hand held mode where you don't need the tripod so hopefully that comes to Nikon as well down the road. But for now I think it is a feature that will be in the back of my mind but not something I can actually use (yet).
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Steve said:
I'm not planning one, there have been a few already from people who had it before release, Ricci had a good one.
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Better to spend your time updating the book. We need detailed information on using these new features.
 
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