ccirelli
Well-known member
I'm actually completely fine with 20fps RAW. And from what I'm hearing, the AF will keep up in any mode (that includes 120 fps...). Amazing how fast things are advancing, whew.
Official Nikon Z9 Launch, Info, and Discussion Thread
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Duff Photographer
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Patrick Hartnett
New member
What a launch. How exciting! The images from the 100-400mm look fantastic and the price point is a relatively good value compared to the 180-400mm. I just hope the 400mm 2.8 with the built-in 1.4x teleconverter is available and in my hands before I go to Botswana. 20 fps, 30 fps high res jpegs, 120 jpgs fps for the Z9 and folks complaining that it is "only 20 fps in RAW,"—Really? I have enough trouble editing / deleting files created at 8 fps or 11 fps. At 20 RAW fps my hard drive is going to be choking enough with almost twice the number of frames produced when I shoot with my D5. It remains to be seen how good the Z9 will perform with bird-in-flight auto-focus but for someone who was thinking about changing systems, these announcements are like the proverbial "Prodigal Son" returning home. I told my camera dealer, "Kill the fatted calf" aka, my wallet. 
Thanks.
Thanks
Duff Photographer
New member
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John Navitsky
Well-known member
To underscore that, note the minimum write speeds on Prograde's Gold vs Cobalt cards. So depending on the card you pick you could get 100MB/s or 1300MB/s sustained write.
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Source: https://progradedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ProGrade_DS_CFexpress_Final_E.pdf
Mommacat
Active member
Wow! Thank you for finding this and sharing!
Thanks
Jfab1
Member
I did the same. I didn't anticipate that we'd have this much hands on feedback on the camera this soon, albeit from preproduction models. AF looks really good, love the Nikon ergonomics, integrated grip, 3 front mounted function buttons, backlit buttons, etc. Looks like a great package overall.
Duff Photographer
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At that price and all the buzz coupled with the global shipping crisis it feels like the Z9 is going to be back ordered for a longgggggg time and it's not even available yet. This will be the 500pf on steroids.
ccirelli
Well-known member
Thanks for clearing this up, it was a bit of a "talking point" in YouTube comments during Nikon's presentation this morning. One guy was basically saying it only has a "2-3 second buffer".
padrepaul
Well-known member
Hopefully its better on the Z9; chasing a flying owl with the 800 5.6 Id want all the speed I could get. If they do have an 800 down the road would be curious how it would differ as the sharpness on the current one is great.
No idea. that wasn't my impression, but the Z9 might fix it. Won't know till we can test it.
John Navitsky
Well-known member
Tidbits from Matt Granger's video, "Worth the wait - The Nikon Z9 is EPIC!":
At 12:00 he does an FTZ(ii) vs native test with his 200 f2 on his D6 vs the Z9 & FTZII. It's not high speed action, but it is super shallow DOF. So AF isn't moving large distances, but it appears the adapted Z9 control this lens better the D6 can natively. A good sign in a number of departments.
At 15:14 he does a write test. It appears he's using a Prograde Cobalt 650GB (he only says the "best performing" Prograde, but that's the Cobalt 650GB afaik) vs a Sony Tough 256GB. The specs say the Cobalt has a min write of 1300MB/s, the min write speed of the Sony is not disclosed by Sony. The lower end Prograde Gold 256GB has a min rated at 300MB/s.
His test got 1860 images on the Prograde, 550 images on the Tough card which is 3.38x faster. That clocks the Tough card at about 385MB/s assuming the Cobalt is near what it's rated at I think.
Unfortunately he did those tests in the lossy raw instead of lossless raw, but it's pretty clear that media matters and that the cards vary in performance... a lot.
I suppose we could work our way backwards if we had some estimates on file sizes.
But 1300MB/s is 21.67 60MB chunks per second
And 385MB/s is 6.42 60MB chunks per second
Also, something we already knew, but keep in mind performance can vary by card size, not just "model". The lower size Progrades have lower specs than the larger ones.
Other random thoughts:
cfe-a has a max theoretical xfer of 1000MB/s
cfe-b has a max theoretical xfer of 2000MB/s
I checked a few cards, and it appears it's pretty common for no minimum write speed to be published on cfe-b cards.
Spot checking, it looks like the Sony XQD cards have a MAXIMUM write speed of 400MB/s. No numbers on minimum.
At 12:00 he does an FTZ(ii) vs native test with his 200 f2 on his D6 vs the Z9 & FTZII. It's not high speed action, but it is super shallow DOF. So AF isn't moving large distances, but it appears the adapted Z9 control this lens better the D6 can natively. A good sign in a number of departments.
At 15:14 he does a write test. It appears he's using a Prograde Cobalt 650GB (he only says the "best performing" Prograde, but that's the Cobalt 650GB afaik) vs a Sony Tough 256GB. The specs say the Cobalt has a min write of 1300MB/s, the min write speed of the Sony is not disclosed by Sony. The lower end Prograde Gold 256GB has a min rated at 300MB/s.
His test got 1860 images on the Prograde, 550 images on the Tough card which is 3.38x faster. That clocks the Tough card at about 385MB/s assuming the Cobalt is near what it's rated at I think.
Unfortunately he did those tests in the lossy raw instead of lossless raw, but it's pretty clear that media matters and that the cards vary in performance... a lot.
I suppose we could work our way backwards if we had some estimates on file sizes.
But 1300MB/s is 21.67 60MB chunks per second
And 385MB/s is 6.42 60MB chunks per second
Also, something we already knew, but keep in mind performance can vary by card size, not just "model". The lower size Progrades have lower specs than the larger ones.
Other random thoughts:
cfe-a has a max theoretical xfer of 1000MB/s
cfe-b has a max theoretical xfer of 2000MB/s
I checked a few cards, and it appears it's pretty common for no minimum write speed to be published on cfe-b cards.
Spot checking, it looks like the Sony XQD cards have a MAXIMUM write speed of 400MB/s. No numbers on minimum.
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I use my D850 with the 500 PF and the shots look great.
Sigh. The cards I use with the Z6 II are Sony Tough cards :( Thanks for the info
sid_19911991
Well-known member
Hmmm interesting...
sid_19911991
Well-known member
Let's hope you are right.
Read carefully. The specs on the "up to 1000 shot in RAW" stated on the Nikon site doesn't specify which RAW format. Oversight or deceptively vague?
John Navitsky
Well-known member
It appears we all have this problem. I've not scrutinized my purchases up until this point, so I have a number of expensive cards that are probably in the same ballpark.
One thing for sure is that if the Z9 performs as well as it appears in the various videos etc that are available to date it's a good thing for ALL photographers. It will definitely put downward pressure on camera prices. The A1 has been out about a year now. I can easily see a sale for the Christmas season with significant discounted prices and or deeply discounted combos. I say that because Sony has won over a lot of Nikon shooters many of whom likely still have a closet full of Nikon lenses. Not a difficult return journey. And of course Canon will have to follow suit just cuz.
I actually did research when I moved from XQD to CFE, and the Sony Tough CFE were listed as best on this page. Or I thought I researched, it seems like the only looked at the max speeds, not actual throughput tests. And the other page I checked (if I remember correctly) was not really complete. Sigh, lesson learned…
John Navitsky
Well-known member
Only the _very last_ card I bought doesn't have this problem. And it's pure luck I noticed the performance and changed my mind for that order.