Z6,7 firmware update (Feb 2020) Come on persuade me.

Searcy

If you have 2 hours to invest in the quest there is this.

I don't know if this guy is persuasive or not but he is ditching his d850 and decided to get a Z6 instead of a D5 for wild life photography.

WestEndFoto

That is a fifteen minute argument, not a two hour argument.

Pistnbroke

any 24 MP FX is unsuitable for wildlife as you dont have enough POI to crop. Unless the critters fill the frame which mine never do

Ton14

Here in Holland there is not much "wildlife" and the places where there is (De Veluwe) you have cabins, sitting in there 300mm is enough with a 24mp camera, when you want prints of 160cm x 120cm. You can drive through the Veluwe in one hour. Most of the time I can crop the photo's of small birds to 3000 x 2000px. I can come close enough.

I put one on PAD which I made with the D300 (12mp) with the 70-200mm f/2.8 on it.

The birds of pray I could never reach, there you are right, you need at least a 500mm.

But the AF on the Z6 is better then I ever had now, my biggest camera was the 36mp D810, so I cannot compare others. I am used to EVF, what was my main problem in the beginning, all the camera things are solved and I have more, IBIS, the camera ring set to ISO, more AF modes and still learning.

Searcy

He covers the subject of sensor size noting that he has many large prints hanging in galleries that were taken on a 12MP camera. You can see in the cover shot that he is using some very big glass.

snakebunk

Morten Hilmer is great. He is the only photographer on Youtube that I kind of follow. He is a nature photographer and very different from the average Youtuber that goes to a nearby park in jeans and a shirt to try out a long lens.

tc88

Can someone distill it to a 1 minute argument?

Searcy

I'm not a wild life photographer so I can't make that argument.

If you're interested in the Morten Hilmer video but don't have two hours to kill he has a list of topics covered and their time stamps in the description. The video is really a Q&A video where he answers his viewers questions about all aspects his work.

tc88

Searcy said:

but he is ditching his d850 and decided to get a Z6 instead of a D5 for wild life photography.

tc88 said:

Can someone distill it to a 1 minute argument?

I spent 5 minutes watching to find answer. To save others those 5 minutes, here is the one line summary.

He switched to Z6 because he wanted to take video at the same moment of his photography.

PB_PM

Pistnbroke said:

any 24 MP FX is unsuitable for wildlife as you dont have enough POI to crop. Unless the critters fill the frame which mine never do

Again showing a lack of experience, and maybe a little luck. Shot wildlife for years with 12MP D700 and a AF-S 300m F4D before moving to 24&36MP. No matter how much reach or how many pixels you have, closer is always going to be better for detail, due to atmospheric distortion, and focus accuracy. Unless you are printing for a for a billboard on the side of a building you have plenty of room to crop.

Pistnbroke

Quote " Again showing a lack of experience,"I don't quite follow that particularly the "again" part . Where I shoot I cannot move the hides or the birds so 60 yards would be a good day. Getting Closer yes is the best but wild birds rather than semi-tame ones in some locations won't let you get anywhere near . A recent wildlife photo competition was won on the TV by a field mouse inside a decomposing apple. They later showed the photo being taken on a set with a licenced mouse handler bringing the mice. distance 4 ft .
Then of course there are pixels and pixels ,,,The pixels on the D850 are much better than the ones on the D7200 despite the density being higher but then there is processing in camera and advances in technology between the two . Nothing is simple in this life.

tc88

I'm sure people have taken excellent wildlife pictures with 12MP when that's state of the art equipment, but that's just like saying people have taken excellent action pictures with manual focus lens 40 years ago. Most people will think manual focus lens are not suitable for action shots anymore.

What may be suitable for a task at one point of time, can become obsolete and not suitable anymore when newer, better and easier way appears.

PB_PM

The point is that not I think 12MP is wonderful, I sold all my 12MP cameras years ago, but rather that making statements like "24MP is unusable for wildlife" is simply untrue. Nothing more, nothing less. Now if the comment was something like, "24MP is not suitable for wildlife photography, I my opinion" that would be something else. But rather than making an opinion based comment it was thrown out as an absolute.

Pistnbroke said:

Quote " Again showing a lack of experience,"I don't quite follow that particularly the "again" part .

It's rather obvious from most of your posts about wildlife shooting that you lack experience, thus the "again" comment. It was not an insult or anything of that nature, just an observation. My experience, shooting wildlife for over 11 years, is that a hide can be useful, but isn't always the best location. I understand that distance to the subject can be frustrating. Been there, but I've learned that getting fewer shots, on a lucky day where that bird is close, will always net better images than snapping off a bunch of shots at a long distance and cropping, no matter how many megapixels you have.

Anyway, this post is about the Z6/Z7, so I'll stop going on about this now.

tc88

I think 24MP is still good for wildlife if you can fill the frame. But he did put in a qualifier "Unless the critters fill the frame". I think if one has to crop significantly, then 24MP is not good enough at this stage of time anymore. Anyway, different people may have different standards, and the thresholds can certainly differ.

WestEndFoto

I would think of it this way. If competitors start using a 100mp Z8Mark 2 with a lens that can exploit that, then today’s Z7 will not be up to snuff.

It is based on what the customers want and expectations will continue to grow. And I am not talking about the social media crowd.

tc88

@WestEndFoto, exactly, the standards will constantly be evolving.

spraynpray

I think we ought to try to get back on track now, but this little diversion is worthy of its own thread for sure. You want to kick it off @Pistnbroke?