Z6II Issue with Continuous H (extended)

[somerandomdude24]

Hello everyone!


I am a Z6II Owner that enjoys shooting sports and wildlife and encountered a strange behavior on firmware v1.40 on my Z6II. While shooting with a 70-200 F2.8 Z lens on Continuous H (extended), I noticed that after a random period of time, the camera will be shooting at a much slower FPS (~3 FPS) until I manually turn off the camera, remove the SD card and reinsert.


Turning the camera on and off does not fix this issue. When I switch from Continuous H Extended to Continuous H and BACK to Continuous H Extended the issue still remains. I can shoot for 200+ shots in a row without this issue and I am not able to repeat it on command.

Basically I can take 10 photos, stop for ~ 3 minutes and then upon reshooting, the FPS is significantly slower (until I shut down, remove card and reinsert card) the card itself is a SanDisk Extreme PRO SD card and I am far from filling the buffer with it when it occurs. I only noticed this on the latest firmware however the camera is recent enough that I may not have experienced this before.
Upon contacting Nikon, they gave me the following information

"Without the camera sent in for service we can only assume it could be a slow shutter speed or the AF-C could be hunting for a target and will only release its shutter once in focus therefore slowing down the FPS.

You can also try a camera reset to see if this solves your issue, if your camera was working normally when newly purchased than there is a chance there is communication issue with the lens. This will happen if the mount of the camera and/or lens is bent, it may not be visible to they eye but you can send it in for service"

Has anyone had this issue occur or does anyone have any idea? I will try shooting to my CFExpress card to see if it happens on that media as well but I am unsure. I would also like to state that this occurs when shooting just JPG to the card on AF-C modes (small / large) but once the issue occurs, I can let the camera sit for 2 minutes and reshoot and the camera is still in a slower FPS. Shutter speeds in this case are always above 1/500 and AF-C is never in face / eye detection mode. I am also on AF-C Release priority.

Any help or comments would certainly be appreciated!

 

[aolander]

I think if you're using H Extended and shooting long bursts, you should use the CFExpress card. It may have something to do with the card.

 

[MartyD]

There was a firmware update for the 70-200 f2.8 Z lens. If you haven't updated lens firmware it might help.

I am not sure if you mentioned if you tried different SD cards but I would certainly be suspicious of the card. I sounds like maybe the camera is having difficulty writing to the card and slows FPS not because the buffer is full but because the processing cycles of the camera are being used by the write process.

The fact that you are shooting in JPEG you shouldn't have issues writing 200 images before the buffer fills but that does bring into play settings like Active D lighting and High ISO noise reduction, but I wouldn't think those would limit the FPS that much.

You might consider doing a reset just to see if you might have some corrupt settings in firmware.

 

[SoCalRick]

Definitely see if the problem persists when you use different cards, as others have suggested. And I would make sure to test it using a CFExpress card.

Also, have you tried using different lenses on the body? This might help troubleshoot something happening at the lens/mount interface point. Ensure that you have a good coupling, and clean all the contact points as well.

It seems like you have pretty neutral AF and release settings, but maybe also try cycling through different AF modes as well.

Good luck!

 

[somerandomdude24]

Thank you everyone for your input! I really appreciate it.

I will be trying out my next sporting event / wildlife shoot with the card set to write on CFExpress to see if it is card related. I will also give the lens an update. Both lens and body are new (~3 months old) but I have not spent a ton of time in Continuous H (extended).

For sure I will keep you all updated on this if I uncover anything further, I'll be taking a look at all of these suggestions and apply the feedback to find the potential source of the problem. The only thing that I had recently done was switch to firmware 1.40 but at the same time my normal shooting style was more on Continuous H which included a few on Continuous H (extended) but this past event I was always in Continuous H (extended) the entire time.

My theory for the card itself made myself skeptical as I imagined if it was a write issue that with a bit of time it would get back to the normal FPS but I am also not a Nikon engineer so my first step will be keeping everything similar but writing to the CFexpress card.

 

[somerandomdude24]

Quick update for anyone following this.

I managed to repeat the issue with the Z 70-200 lens attached, the only switch I had made was to write on CFexpress and the issue occurred again.

Once the issue does occur, I then tried to swap from writing to CFexpress back to SD card etc. I made a quick youtube video talking through this which can be found here. Once the issue happened I swapped it to my 24-70 F4 lens (z mount) -

After this issue occurred I reinstalled the 1.40 firmware and reset my settings.

I tried to reproduce my error with the default settings on with no issues. I later added back my default settings that I had saved before doing the reset and no issues either. I finally placed my 70-200 f2.8 Z back on and fired about 800 images without having the issue again.

For now it seems I am in the clear, I am updating in case this information is useful for anyone else, I reinstalled the firmware and reset my settings and that seems to be fixed. I will certainly update this post if this issue comes back.

Huge thank you for the advice to everyone here!