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I personally find the Cycle AF mode to be really useless, atleast for fast action, wildlife and BIF. When you can just map 3 different AF modes to your back buttons AF ON, DISP and the sub selector, that is infinitely faster and easier that multiple presses on a button and if you pass the mode you want to you have to cycle back around again. That would cause missed opportunities for sureIt also does not have Cycle AF. It may be that a firmware update will provide this someday or it may be an artificial limitation to create differentiation. Although I have to say I have never used RSF on my Z8 so I wouldn’t miss it.
From a technical ‘it has an Expeed7 in it’ standpoint…they could easily give us all of those and then it gets pretty close to what it’s big brothers can do in addition to being a great low light and travel body. While I agree that they could withhold those features for model differentiation…they didn’t hold them back from the Z8 and at least for birds the Z8 had it first. Given they keep upgrading firmware almost across the board to add new features…and given that they already wrote the code to do all of those…the code will run on the Z6III with not much change needed…so why wouldn’t they upgrade the Z6III outside of some business decision? I guess we will all find out later…but TBH…it would be a travel and lightweight but decent wildlife body for me…dedicated photo ops would see the Z8s used instead.
True…but for me I have AF On set to be whatever mode I want and DISP and Fn2 are set tp 2 different I need them now modes. But…Cycle AF let’s one eliminate things like Dynamic which I never use from ever being selected and with 4-5 turned on in Cycle a couple taps gets AF On to what works best for the new situation but might not be on one of the dedicated mode buttons…its just faster. For me…the I need it now button ps are for OmG, BIF I need 1/3200, wide open instantly…as opposed to looking at a heron across the way that Wide Large is having trouble with and I want Wide Small or my rarely used single for the next few minutes. The dedicated mode buttons are for quick reaction, cycle lets me hide the areas I will never use. I’ve tried it both ways…and cycle works better for me most of the time.…but whatever works for a particular person ain’t wrong.
Horses for courses as they say. Since I’m not able to shoot as often as I’d like I wouldn’t really be in the habit of using three fingers for handoff and trying to remember everything. Easier for me to select the 4 modes for cycle AF and pause for a second.
Actually the Z8 had plane subject detection first. The Z9 got the Bird SD almost 5 months after the Z9.
I use 3 AF modes on the back of my camera.
There ar a zillion ways to set it up…and I keep tweaking mine. I will have to try using Auto Area more…I am usually in Wide small or large by default but since it works for you it’s worth a try.
Yes there are many many way and ideas. Though with Bird SD the superior AF mode is Auto Area. So much so i find no need at all ever for the wide area AF modes unless I'm in Animal SD. So set your blocked shot setting to level 5 (menu item A3) and subject motion to steady. The reason for blocked level 5 is 3D can only use level 3 and will automatically default level 3 whether you use it but Auto Area can use 3, 4 and 5. So setting it to level 5 is the most sticky for Auto Area and you'll not have to change it to use 3D just set it and forget it
Cool suggestion…I will give it a whirl and see how I like it. I’m a firm Bieber in borrowing techniques…no need to reinvent the wheel.
