Nikon Z9 Precapture reality

[Anthony]

It means that you put far fewer images on the card and that you are more likely to capture the right moment. Imagine shooting frames of a bird on a branch in the hope of catching it on take-off. Five minutes at 20 fps would put 6,000 images on the card. In reality, one would instead try to judge when the bird would take off and hope to catch it. One might or might not succeed. With precapture one would only record two or three seconds of frames, say up to sixty frames, and would probably capture the moment. Seems like a good deal.

 

[StarDust]

So...is that why? To save card space? Just want to understand.

It looks like we derailed from the OP

Let us say that you took position and aimed at the bird at 15:00:00 o'clock. The bird still perching for another 5 minutes. During this 5 minutes you still aiming and half press the shutter. Your burst rate is 20 f/s and precaputure period set to 1 sec.

Now all what you have saved is 20 frames in the buffer, even you have been half pressing for 5 minutes. And those frames belong to the last 1 second

let us say the bird jumped at 15::05:01 and you immediately fully pressed the shutter.


In this case you will have 20 frames while the bird is perching, and the remaining frames after the bird jumped and start flying away.

 

[Jbear]

I think I may actually understand it now

 

[arbitrage]

I think I may actually understand it now

Yes, it is to save card space and not hit a buffer limit. That is the only difference between precapture and just holding down the shutter.
I've had precapture active for minutes at a time waiting for a kestrel to dive for prey. If I was doing that without precapture I'd already be at full buffer and shooting at much slower FPS (heck if I was shooting Canon I wouldn't be firing at all anymore). 1min of shooting at 30FPS is 1800 shots. At 120FPS on an A9III that is 7200 shots. Good luck dealing with that all day long for card space.

 

[Lee R]

Yes, it is to save card space and not hit a buffer limit. That is the only difference between precapture and just holding down the shutter.
I've had precapture active for minutes at a time waiting for a kestrel to dive for prey. If I was doing that without precapture I'd already be at full buffer and shooting at much slower FPS (heck if I was shooting Canon I wouldn't be firing at all anymore). 1min of shooting at 30FPS is 1800 shots. At 120FPS on an A9III that is 7200 shots. Good luck dealing with that all day long for card space.

Since Nikon doesn't have RAW precapture yet this is exactly what I do, set HE RAW and fire away for minutes until the thing happens. Then flag protected the files I want after quick review (which are not far back) and delete the rest. End of day I just have the ones I wanted. More work for sure though, but at least I can get the shots that that 20 FPS RAW works for. I'm pretty quick at review/flag/delete now. Thankfully Nikon has an easy delete all but protected option. Eventually they'll add RAW precapture in either firmware or most likely the Z9ii.

The A9iii seems to be the best on market for pre-capture at the moment.

Nikon at least put an unlimited buffer in the Z8.

The JPEG precapture is useful for some shots, especially in good light, but it would be way better as HEIF, and obviously RAW.

 

[avo]

I've had good success using precapture with birds. Pictures below from Botswana last April show a Lilac Breasted Roller taking off. Shot with Z9 and the Z 180-600mm lens set at 560mm. f8 1/2500 ISO 900. I used Auto Area AF along with subject detection for birds. When I checked all of the images in NX studio, the focus point was right over the eye in all shots. These images are only slightly cropped from full frame.

Yes, but that is an easy scenario for the af - clear background, good light and contrast and most important movement of the bird parallel to the focus plane but not flying toward you. And again, these are only two frames, maybe all of them were like this, but I also get 2-3 frames in this path of flight in focus, then the focus is gradually lost.... Z9 again...

 

[Ivan Rothman]

Yes, but that is an easy scenario for the af - clear background, good light and contrast and most important movement of the bird parallel to the focus plane but not flying toward you. And again, these are only two frames, maybe all of them were like this, but I also get 2-3 frames in this path of flight in focus, then the focus is gradually lost.... Z9 again...

I agree that subject, clear background and flight path make it easier. In my series of close to 30 photos, every single photo was sharp with focus point remaining on the eye of the bird.

 

[daran]

So...is that why? To save card space? Just want to understand.

The fastest cameras can not maintain maximum speed & quality for more than a few seconds. Hence without pre-capture you'd need to reduce resolution, shooting speed and/or shoot JPEG instead of RAW.

 

[billklipp]

Are you using "Back Button Focus or the traditional half shutter release focusing? If not back button focus you should consider learning it, it's a game changer.

 

[macwalter]

This is always a fun challenge for me. I don’t use pre-capture and won’t until it is in raw. Doubtful that will happen with the current Nikons. I shooter 20fps and usually auto area with eye detection on. I can’t speak for Sony but I sure don’t want to cull through 120fps for a few great shots. I find with patience and a bit of pre planned shooting I can often get some nice takeoff and landing photos. For small birds I try to find a perch where they are going to and also what they are going for. Flycatchers can be fun when they return to the same perch then launch themselves into the air going for dinner. I miss often but I do get some keepers as well. I’m not doing video so I don’t care if most of the shots miss focus so long as a few hit. It is easier for the camera to shoot birds going parallel to your position rather than coming towards you. I think the really fast big glass will do better here but as noted above if you can do it with the 186 I think most lenses can do it.

 

[Lee R]

The fastest cameras can not maintain maximum speed & quality for more than a few seconds. Hence without pre-capture you'd need to reduce resolution, shooting speed and/or shoot JPEG instead of RAW.

The Z8 at least can shoot basically forever in HE/HE*. It’s got probably the best buffer right now, but it’s capped at 20 for RAW.

This is always a fun challenge for me. I don’t use pre-capture and won’t until it is in raw. Doubtful that will happen with the current Nikons. I shooter 20fps and usually auto area with eye detection on. I can’t speak for Sony but I sure don’t want to cull through 120fps for a few great shots. I find with patience and a bit of pre planned shooting I can often get some nice takeoff and landing photos. For small birds I try to find a perch where they are going to and also what they are going for. Flycatchers can be fun when they return to the same perch then launch themselves into the air going for dinner. I miss often but I do get some keepers as well. I’m not doing video so I don’t care if most of the shots miss focus so long as a few hit. It is easier for the camera to shoot birds going parallel to your position rather than coming towards you. I think the really fast big glass will do better here but as noted above if you can do it with the 186 I think most lenses can do it.

You can use divinci to pull TIFF 38mp stills from 8K60 as well, 12 bit and with the limitations of TIFF editing but it will do it no problem. The video file sizes are huge.

 

[apakett]

I'd really like to hear your thoughts about the precapture function of Nikon. My experience is not so small, I've tried many different camera af settings and scenarios, with 600 pf, 800 pf and 300 2.8 VRii . All my conclusions are with perched birds jumping into flight. The results with the three lenses I have are absolutely equal.

1. In at least 3/4 of the cases with small fast birds /for example great tits, blue tits, etc / the camera cannot track adequately the bird after it flies away. The still perched frames are ok, the first and the second after the jump as well and then more and more out of focus. Sometimes the focus square stays in the air where the bird was, sometimes the af square follows the bird but still the object is not focused, The cases with focused frames is generally due to the coincidence of the path of flight and the focus plane. What frustrated me most and made me write this post is yesterday for the same reason I missed a couple of frames of a woodpecker flying towards me in good light and with distant background, and the woodpecker is a big and not so fast a bird. It took most part of the frame, wouldn't need any cropping lets say. I expected the subject recognition to catch the eye but not just follow the bird, it didn't do any.

2. Generally speaking I find the precision of af with precapture enabled worse than without, therefore the overall image quality with precapture is worse than without, not only because it is JPEG only but not RAW. I can post many many examples for both issues.
What is your experience?

My recommendation is that you switch from back-button focusing. Pre-capture requires shutter button half press. As you are using it you must half press the shutter while holding down the assigned BB focus button and continue holding BB through the entire full release sequence.

 

[Roy]

I'd really like to hear your thoughts about the precapture function of Nikon. My experience is not so small, I've tried many different camera af settings and scenarios, with 600 pf, 800 pf and 300 2.8 VRii . All my conclusions are with perched birds jumping into flight. The results with the three lenses I have are absolutely equal.

1. In at least 3/4 of the cases with small fast birds /for example great tits, blue tits, etc / the camera cannot track adequately the bird after it flies away. The still perched frames are ok, the first and the second after the jump as well and then more and more out of focus. Sometimes the focus square stays in the air where the bird was, sometimes the af square follows the bird but still the object is not focused, The cases with focused frames is generally due to the coincidence of the path of flight and the focus plane. What frustrated me most and made me write this post is yesterday for the same reason I missed a couple of frames of a woodpecker flying towards me in good light and with distant background, and the woodpecker is a big and not so fast a bird. It took most part of the frame, wouldn't need any cropping lets say. I expected the subject recognition to catch the eye but not just follow the bird, it didn't do any.

2. Generally speaking I find the precision of af with precapture enabled worse than without, therefore the overall image quality with precapture is worse than without, not only because it is JPEG only but not RAW. I can post many many examples for both issues.
What is your experience?

Are we talking Pre-capture or Aerocapture ??? ...

 

[TurtleCat]

It’s funny, this thread inspired me to try my Z8 pre capture for the first time yesterday. I was using it to try to catch the right moment when egrets were eating their catch. In the end, I guess it didn’t impress me or I was just expecting something more amazing.I also tried some birds in flight. I didn’t feel like it gave me any dimensions beyond what I usually get. Maybe my reflexes are good enough? In any case, I did not notice any AF discrepancies that wouldn’t have happened in normal use. I was a bit envious thinking about raw precapture, now it’s just not all that and a bag of chips for me.

 

[Lee R]

It’s funny, this thread inspired me to try my Z8 pre capture for the first time yesterday. I was using it to try to catch the right moment when egrets were eating their catch. In the end, I guess it didn’t impress me or I was just expecting something more amazing.I also tried some birds in flight. I didn’t feel like it gave me any dimensions beyond what I usually get. Maybe my reflexes are good enough? In any case, I did not notice any AF discrepancies that wouldn’t have happened in normal use. I was a bit envious thinking about raw precapture, now it’s just not all that and a bag of chips for me.

Same for me. But I can see its value in the A9iii in particular for 120 FPS. That's the best representation of what Pre-Capture can provide at the moment.

For my Z8, it can shoot unlimited at 20 FPS in RAW, it's just not as concise to capture, but I won't miss anything that I would have had with pre-capture at 20. I just hold the shutter down and flag protect them then delete the rest. Works for me and I won't be spending 6k on a Z9ii for 30 FPS Raw Precapture which is most likely what It would offer.

If I had money for an A9iii I would add that and a 400-800 for certain subjects as I do think that camera really adds much more value over the Z9/8 or A1/A1ii for the fastest motion to capture. But I'd want my Z8 for capturing anything but those subjects. If I were a dedicated wildlife professional or the most demanding of hobby shooter I'd buy that in addition to Z9/8 or A1/1ii or R5ii.

If the Z8 (and 9) didn't have such an amazing buffer it would bother me a lot more, but it's basically best of any of them for buffer performance.

 

[Parfumeur]

These are exactly my thoughts and that's what I'm trying to undersand, is only Nikon's precapture in these scenarios not that effective or with all systems it is like this. Because if it is only Nikon I'd buy a OM system as a second/third camera just for precapture, I use this a lot.

When I ask people around forums if they have the same problems as mine, most of them say that their cameras are focusing without any problem the great tit taking off but noone has showed a sequence of more than 2-3 frames i a row with good af after all

I would see if you can find locally a user of an OM-1, and be surprised, and if you are lucky the OM "Gandalf the White".

 

[Parfumeur]

In this case you will have 20 frames while the bird is perching, and the remaining frames after the bird jumped and start flying away.

I'm confused. In most instances, by the time you react - pressing the shutter fully - the bird will already have moved off it's perch or stationary position, which is why you have precapture engage, to catch the moment the birdie was still a BOB (aka BOAB). Check out a real functional precapture / procapture body AND in RAW. https://learnandsupport.getolympus....raphy-tips/settings/om-1-settings-pro-capture

 

[StarDust]

I'm confused. In most instances, by the time you react - pressing the shutter fully - the bird will already have moved off it's perch or stationary position, which is why you have precapture engage, to catch the moment the birdie was still a BOB. Check out a real functional precapture body. https://learnandsupport.getolympus....raphy-tips/settings/om-1-settings-pro-capture

true

I just want to make it as simple as possible by assuming 0 lag between the pressing of the shutter and the take off. Depending how soon you react which maybe half a second. I do not want the perching images anyway, I also can compensate by the fact that you know in most cases when the bird will take off maybe a second or part of second prior to take off. Maybe you end up with 2 frames perching and the remaining after take off but as I said just to simplify things.

 

[ZecaM]

I'd really like to hear your thoughts about the precapture function of Nikon. My experience is not so small, I've tried many different camera af settings and scenarios, with 600 pf, 800 pf and 300 2.8 VRii . All my conclusions are with perched birds jumping into flight. The results with the three lenses I have are absolutely equal.

1. In at least 3/4 of the cases with small fast birds /for example great tits, blue tits, etc / the camera cannot track adequately the bird after it flies away. The still perched frames are ok, the first and the second after the jump as well and then more and more out of focus. Sometimes the focus square stays in the air where the bird was, sometimes the af square follows the bird but still the object is not focused, The cases with focused frames is generally due to the coincidence of the path of flight and the focus plane. What frustrated me most and made me write this post is yesterday for the same reason I missed a couple of frames of a woodpecker flying towards me in good light and with distant background, and the woodpecker is a big and not so fast a bird. It took most part of the frame, wouldn't need any cropping lets say. I expected the subject recognition to catch the eye but not just follow the bird, it didn't do any.

2. Generally speaking I find the precision of af with precapture enabled worse than without, therefore the overall image quality with precapture is worse than without, not only because it is JPEG only but not RAW. I can post many many examples for both issues.
What is your experience?

I have been trying to make pre-capture work to no avail. I have read the whole Nikon manual on it, watched countless videos on how to apply for birds flying in or out the frame to no avail. I believe it works but it is finicky and very hard to understand how. I have spent hours and days on it. Sometimes it works sometimes it does not. I don't think this is the way to go. the set up system is confusing and hard to set up due to so many steps we need to go through. I think this is an unfinished project by Nikon. If it's hard to understand and set up few are going to want to consider as a sale point. As for me, I gave up. Maybe one day they will laugh a descent intuitive user interface that a kid can do it. Then I will consider using it.

 

[Lee R]

So who has tried auto capture hand held to get RAW's in motion detection with the appropriate speed setting instead of pre-capture?

 

[ABaumgardner]

My recommendation is that you switch from back-button focusing. Pre-capture requires shutter button half press. As you are using it you must half press the shutter while holding down the assigned BB focus button and continue holding BB through the entire full release sequence.

Pre-capture does not work that way on my Z8 that is set up for BB focus. If my fps is set to 30 fps, once I hit my AF-ON button Pre-Capture initiates, as indicated by the icon that appears in the viewfinder, without me having to touch the shutter button. When I want to record my 1 second's worth of images I fully push the shutter button. No half press of the shutter button is required at any step.

 

[Tom Reynolds]

Just screwing around from a long way away

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

 

[Alistair]

So who has tried auto capture hand held to get RAW's in motion detection with the appropriate speed setting instead of pre-capture?

I posted earlier today on another thread regarding Auto Capture. It works great. Pre-capture; not so much IMO.

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