Right now it's my only camera and so I can't really send it away for a few weeks.
One of my purchases in the next few months will likely be a backup camera of some kind, at which time there is a good chance I will do that.
Struggling with Z8 focus tracking
- Thread starter SCoombs
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One of my purchases in the next few months will likely be a backup camera of some kind, at which time there is a good chance I will do that.
htom
New member
Looking at the example above. Have you tested the same by switching the Subject Motion setting from Steady to Erratic and vice verse?
That was my first thought and I did briefly but didn't notice a difference. I will try again another time.
rjpawl
Member
Dont know if you checked this fellows site…maybe some useful info
www.robertallen-photography.com
Robert G Allen Photography | A Nikon and Capture One blog
I decided to use all 3 of my current Nikon mirrorless cameras; The Z6, Z8 and Z9 and all with Nikkor F mount adaptive lenses using the FTZ II adaptor. I will break down the post into 4 sections, one for each camera and my overall assessment.
www.robertallen-photography.com
Thanks for the link. Interestingly, this person reports using the focus mode everyone is telling me not to use! He is also using the longer lenses, which makes sense to me given the lighting he had.Dont know if you checked this fellows site…maybe some useful info
Robert G Allen Photography | A Nikon and Capture One blog
I decided to use all 3 of my current Nikon mirrorless cameras; The Z6, Z8 and Z9 and all with Nikkor F mount adaptive lenses using the FTZ II adaptor. I will break down the post into 4 sections, one for each camera and my overall assessment.
I shoot a lot of sports, in fact way more sports than wildlife, and I have been very pleased with the performance of my Z9 and now my Z6iii. I can't imaging the Z8 performance to be any less than the Z9 or Z6iii. I did post earlier about the focus modes I use and I have had very good success. I use my 70-200 Z, 100-400 Z, and even my 180-600 Z with good results. I am a little puzzled by the inconsistencies you are experiencing.
I would guess you are on the latest firmware version for the Z8. Have you thought about saving your settings, resetting the camera to factory settings, reinstalling the latest firmware (I believe you can reinstall the same version), then restoring your settings. You might even think about not restoring your settings after reinstalling the latest firmware, but just redoing your setting in camera. This might take a little work but I am sometimes concerned that there might be a strange bit of data that carries over from firmware update to firmware update and could potentially cause a problem.
I am heading off to shoot a volleyball match and I am going to be there a little early, so I might try shooting some volleyball in dynamic mode to test it out.
I would guess you are on the latest firmware version for the Z8. Have you thought about saving your settings, resetting the camera to factory settings, reinstalling the latest firmware (I believe you can reinstall the same version), then restoring your settings. You might even think about not restoring your settings after reinstalling the latest firmware, but just redoing your setting in camera. This might take a little work but I am sometimes concerned that there might be a strange bit of data that carries over from firmware update to firmware update and could potentially cause a problem.
I am heading off to shoot a volleyball match and I am going to be there a little early, so I might try shooting some volleyball in dynamic mode to test it out.
I have actually reset my settings a few times. Most recently, this was when I was experiencing extremely poor performance in low light. Anything below EV 6-7 was basically not in focus even when the camera reported a good focus acquisition. We went through 4 threads on DPReview discussing it, with half the people insisting their Z8/9s were flawless down to basically total darkness and about half the people saying they'd had similar results to me. Eventually Thom Hogan started discussing and he essentially suggested that the Z8/9 have problems with focus when trying to use AF-C with TTL flash. When I switched to manual flash, it didn't totally eliminate the problem but it sure got a lot better.
In any case, the point is that I reset two or three times at that time. One of those times I reloaded the settings. Another time I reprogrammed them manually. Another time I first tried shooting using pure factory settings to see if it made a difference (it didn't).
Did you reinstall firmware?
Yes indeed.
raptor photo
Well-known member
So, the best AF modes are 3D AF and Wide Area?
ajrmd
Well-known member
What's "wide dynamic af"? My Z8 has dynamic or alternatively, wide areas but not a "wide dynamic". I'm sure it's some misunderstanding or typo? Also, he claims that the Z8 followed the subject in spite of the player moving behind a net. This doesn't happen reliably in my experience.
As an aside, when folks say send your camera in, it makes me chuckle. I have two Z8 bodies, both of which have difficulty maintaining subject lock and tracking (worse on birds in certain scenarios which I've described) and both of which exhibit the strange af on people as you've illustrated. What are the odds that all of these bodies are defective? There is an interesting thread on DP from a pro who shoots runway, where his Z9 was, inexplicably unable to maintain consistent eye autofocus during the model shoot. Some attributed it to the lighting, and while that is a possibility, I've experienced it natural lighting/flash as well. When shooting portraits, I frequently find that it grabs something other than the eye in spite of it indicating eye tracking, and occasionally, it focuses on the lash, brow, or elsewhere. I find myself shooting dozens of redundant frames knowing that some may be in critical eye focus, others won't. I have simply come to the conclusion that for certain applications, the Z autofocus just isn't as good as it should be. In my experience, it's fine for perched birds, most BIF, the best for aircraft, good for motor sports, equivalent for most wildlife, but hit or miss for people. Likewise, with sports, I've come to the conclusion that my R3 just focused better, easier, and with less angst.
This is how I feel too, but with the definite... caveat (if that's the right word here) that there are a LOT of people who say it does all these things flawlessly for them, just as there are a LOT of people who say it does not.
I can't really come up with a great explanation to justify it, but it really at times seems to me like there are two different "variants" of Z8/9 out there, some of which do all of these things well and others of which don't. For instance, I was commenting on the parallel DPReview thread that I have basically never had my Z8 get the subject detect on the eye of a bird in flight. It's something I've mentioned here in the past and gotten some people agreeing with me but also a lot of people saying it does it all the time.
The low light AF stuff that went through 4 threads on DPReview is the same. You have people saying they can basically go out in almost pitch black and get eye-AF on fast moving people without a hitch, but then you also have people who with the same camera and the same other equipment (lenses, speedlights, strobes, whatever) and the same settings who need to take three or four backup shots of a static headshot just to make sure in light 4 times better just to make sure they get one in focus. Critically, with some of this we're talking about a lot of pretty low skill stuff here - e.g., point the camera at the stationary subject, press the AF-On button, let the camera focus - and not only stuff where differences in photographer skill are likely to be a major factor.
I can't explain how the very same model of camera could behave so differently, but I also have a hard time imagining what differences there could be between two different units of a solid state device like this to cause these sorts of differences.
I don't know if this helps, but I took a few test images tonight using Dynamic Medium on my Z9. The focus did not seem to drift across the 34 images in the burst even though the center focus point drifted to the background. A3 was set to 2. Images were shot at 1/1250 at f2.8 at ISO 4000, 20 FPS.
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Thanks for that. I'm not sure if it's helpful exactly, but it's certainly interesting. You don't have that center point drift too often, but when it does the helpers are doing what they're supposed to. When I am shooting subjects of this size in the frame the camera goes to the background the first frame that the central point moves off of the subject - so there's definitely a drastic difference in behavior here.
Something else that I find interesting here: what are you doing metering-wise?