JP Onstwedder
Well-known member
I took a brand new Z 8 with the 24-70/2.8 and 100-400/4.5-6.3 to Le Mans in France for the 24 hour race. About 8,000 pictures, mostly in bursts of 5-15 shots, with frequent image review. 2.5 batteries and two Delkin Power 128 GB cards. Zero problems...well, zero camera problems. Operator problems were a bit more frequent 
. Coming from a Z 7, the AF system is sufficiently different that it took me a while to start getting comfortable. Subject recognition (auto, planes for the fly-by's, people for crowd shots) works well but shooting through fences in particular tended to confuse the system enough that I often had to turn off subject recognition. Which then prompted me to change the way I set up the camera. I tried the 'hybrid' method with wide area large + subject recognition on one button, and 3-D tracking on another, but that didn't work for me at all. Without subject recognition it was a little bit more useful but I found it frustratingly difficult to get the handoff to work. Wide area large on its own was usually ok but often wide area small did better. Racing cars are generally predictable (I didn't see any crashes) and without media accreditation and in the midst of 300,000 others, I was often too far away to use any of the clever tools. Simpler worked better from larger distances (single point, wide area small, no subject recognition) whereas wide area large + subject recognition was great once I got close enough to have a car fill about 20% of the frame or more.
Low light performance was amazing, though, with AF locking on in near-total darkness and no longer getting confused by the brightly lit number signs on the doors. That was an issue with a D750 years ago, as well as the Z 7. Also, bright advertising signs didn't confuse the AF at all; it stayed on the car every single shot.
Pre-release was very useful for shots with a fast moving car blurred in the frame: I set it for 0.5 seconds before and 1 second after release and at 20fps got a good result every burst. Fun and takes the frustration out of that kind of shot.
Panning is more about operator skill than camera but I found the Z 8 great - except when using subject recognition. The focus box tricks you into thinking that you're moving smoothly with the subject when that is not the case. Without subject recognition, though, the camera was great and the operator reaching adequate. Practice, practice!
Final point: the 100-400 is near-perfect for auto racing as long as you can get close enough. Shooting through fences works ok if you can keep the fence out of focus and the slow aperture isn't great for that, but once I was within a metre of the fence and 10-20m or more from the subject the results were ok. But the guy next to me shooting a 400/2.8 found it a lot easier. Then again, he had to use a monopod all the time whereas I mostly shot handheld except for the panning work.
Given the emphasis on birding I will probably not post pictures here but hopefully the summary of my experience is still useful.
. Coming from a Z 7, the AF system is sufficiently different that it took me a while to start getting comfortable. Subject recognition (auto, planes for the fly-by's, people for crowd shots) works well but shooting through fences in particular tended to confuse the system enough that I often had to turn off subject recognition. Which then prompted me to change the way I set up the camera. I tried the 'hybrid' method with wide area large + subject recognition on one button, and 3-D tracking on another, but that didn't work for me at all. Without subject recognition it was a little bit more useful but I found it frustratingly difficult to get the handoff to work. Wide area large on its own was usually ok but often wide area small did better. Racing cars are generally predictable (I didn't see any crashes) and without media accreditation and in the midst of 300,000 others, I was often too far away to use any of the clever tools. Simpler worked better from larger distances (single point, wide area small, no subject recognition) whereas wide area large + subject recognition was great once I got close enough to have a car fill about 20% of the frame or more. Low light performance was amazing, though, with AF locking on in near-total darkness and no longer getting confused by the brightly lit number signs on the doors. That was an issue with a D750 years ago, as well as the Z 7. Also, bright advertising signs didn't confuse the AF at all; it stayed on the car every single shot.
Pre-release was very useful for shots with a fast moving car blurred in the frame: I set it for 0.5 seconds before and 1 second after release and at 20fps got a good result every burst. Fun and takes the frustration out of that kind of shot.
Panning is more about operator skill than camera but I found the Z 8 great - except when using subject recognition. The focus box tricks you into thinking that you're moving smoothly with the subject when that is not the case. Without subject recognition, though, the camera was great and the operator reaching adequate. Practice, practice!
Final point: the 100-400 is near-perfect for auto racing as long as you can get close enough. Shooting through fences works ok if you can keep the fence out of focus and the slow aperture isn't great for that, but once I was within a metre of the fence and 10-20m or more from the subject the results were ok. But the guy next to me shooting a 400/2.8 found it a lot easier. Then again, he had to use a monopod all the time whereas I mostly shot handheld except for the panning work.
Given the emphasis on birding I will probably not post pictures here but hopefully the summary of my experience is still useful.
