Z9 is coming

dcisive7

Their is certainly wisdom (which I should know better) Capt. I will indeed apply much more patience. All it actually ends up being is delayed excitement. We all know when that box does finally show up it will be perhaps even MORE intense excitement. I figure by then I should have read the manual at least 4 or 5 times and have it down what to adjust and how to find the adjustments in the menu and such. That's not a bad thing. Thanks, and of course I'll keep ya'll posted as to it's arrival

WestEndFoto

dcisive7 said:

Their is certainly wisdom (which I should know better) Capt. I will indeed apply much more patience. All it actually ends up being is delayed excitement. We all know when that box does finally show up it will be perhaps even MORE intense excitement. I figure by then I should have read the manual at least 4 or 5 times and have it down what to adjust and how to find the adjustments in the menu and such. That's not a bad thing. Thanks, and of course I'll keep ya'll posted as to it's arrival

I find lots of people annoying. The thing is, I find almost everybody annoying occasionally. I will be very lonely if I don't forgive all but the perpetually annoying. I have spent alot of money with B&H over the years. I have found them better than most.

I would buy Thom's book when it comes out and go through it page by page. I have done that with the D850, Z7ii and Zfc. He spends alot of time on autofocus. I would highly recommend it.

Capt_Spaulding

dcisive7 said:

Their is certainly wisdom (which I should know better) Capt. I will indeed apply much more patience. All it actually ends up being is delayed excitement. We all know when that box does finally show up it will be perhaps even MORE intense excitement. I figure by then I should have read the manual at least 4 or 5 times and have it down what to adjust and how to find the adjustments in the menu and such. That's not a bad thing. Thanks, and of course I'll keep ya'll posted as to it's arrival

Great! Looking forward to your report(s). I have a pretty strong suspicion it will be worth the wait. As a friend used to swear - Abscess makes the fart go Honda. (no wait, that's the dentist joke) Whatever, I think you'll enjoy it.

DaveyJ

I use a Pay Pal Card for this kind of purchase and they will NOT accept the funds being on hold unlike my other cards, so I still do not have a Pre-order in. I tried to pre-order the Z 9 on the first day it was announced. My local store could not allow a pre-order on the Z 9 but allowed the 100-400 Z lens pre-order and got it to me quickly. I think part of this was related to me not being NPS. I am one of very few people doing farm photography. I have contacted Nikon about NPS but they have never returned anything to my emails.

At my age I need the Z9 as soon as I can get it. The Z 6 II I use with the new S Z 100-400 is pretty good but the Z 9 would be better by many accounts to handle my two Z S lens. I would personally rather have a D500 type Z camera with many of the Z 9 abilities but I don't know how many years I have left,

bcmmike

Wife's store got 1 in for an NPS customer. 5 more are on order for other NPS customers, no hard dates on delivery on those.

Pistnbroke

Interestingly not a word or announcement about Z9 on Rockwells site just the old acid comment page......This does not do a lot for his credibility .

Photobug

Pistnbroke said:

Interestingly not a word or announcement about Z9 on Rockwells site just the old acid comment page......This does not do a lot for his credibility .

Thank you......you are right on with your comment. I stopped visiting his web site many years ago. Always the same trash talk.

PB_PM

Pistnbroke said:

Interestingly not a word or announcement about Z9 on Rockwells site just the old acid comment page......This does not do a lot for his credibility .

You mean he had credibility to start with?

photobunny

A new note to add. I shoved my Z9 into DX lossless compressed and fired the shutter on a 128 GB Sony Tough CF Express card and it ran until the card was full.

DaveyJ

I saw the Z 9 usual type review on Rockwell's site about two days ago. Looked like it was captured from Nikon's pages, mostly. Of value, NO! Last thing I have really noticed on his site was his "photo proof" that the Apple iPhone 13 is better than any camera today.....Crammed in with the usual donate to his growing family. ProBably one of the most worthless sites on the entire Internet!

mhedges

He does lots of spec sheet / press release "reviews".

I'll admit I find his site useful for getting camera specs / release date / release price type info. But as far as reviews its pretty worthless because he doesn't really value performance. To him everything is good enough.

WestEndFoto

photobunny said:

A new note to add. I shoved my Z9 into DX lossless compressed and fired the shutter on a 128 GB Sony Tough CF Express card and it ran until the card was full.

If you shoot at 12fps in FX lossless compressed the Z9 will run until the card is full. This is the speed that matters to me and is dependent on the cards that I am using. I am not sure what that speed is on my D850 and Z7ii bodies, but it is more than 3fps as I have Continuous Low set to that (and 1fps on my Zfc).

WestEndFoto

mhedges said:

He does lots of spec sheet / press release "reviews".

I'll admit I find his site useful for getting camera specs / release date / release price type info. But as far as reviews its pretty worthless because he doesn't really value performance. To him everything is good enough.

Well, you have to consider his audience. He is not speaking to Prosumers or Pros like us. He is speaking to newbies and amateurs. And for many of them, his advice will not lead them to far astray. Even when he recommends Jpegs over Raw. That tells you right there who is audience is. If someone is shooting a crop sensor camera, chances are they are not being led to far astray by his "advice". Note, I said "chances". There will be lots of exceptions. But exceptions aside, almost any lens is sharp enough for his audience. The question is whether it is "fast enough".

Where he falls seriously astray is when he bad mouths something for no good reason. The best value in crop sensor cameras right now for his audience are Nikon DSLRs - as long as the consumer is aware that they won't be able to buy new lenses in a few years. And the best camera money can buy in a crop sensor now is still likely a D500 - sorry Fuji. There are lots of amateurs and newbies that may not know much about cameras, but they may be pretty sophisticated about things in life that are truly important to them. In my field, a job applicant that bad mouths a previous boss, even if everyone knows the boss' bad qualities, is a no go. When they see Rockwell doing the same thing against camera brands, Nikon particularly, they are smart enough to know something is off.

mhedges

WestEndFoto said:

Well, you have to consider his audience. He is not speaking to Prosumers or Pros like us. He is speaking to newbies and amateurs. And for many of them, his advice will not lead them to far astray. Even when he recommends Jpegs over Raw. That tells you right there who is audience is. If someone is shooting a crop sensor camera, chances are they are not being led to far astray by his "advice". Note, I said "chances". There will be lots of exceptions. But exceptions aside, almost any lens is sharp enough for his audience. The question is whether it is "fast enough".

Where he falls seriously astray is when he bad mouths something for no good reason. The best value in crop sensor cameras right now for his audience are Nikon DSLRs - as long as the consumer is aware that they won't be able to buy new lenses in a few years. And the best camera money can buy in a crop sensor now is still likely a D500 - sorry Fuji. There are lots of amateurs and newbies that may not know much about cameras, but they may be pretty sophisticated about things in life that are truly important to them. In my field, a job applicant that bad mouths a previous boss, even if everyone knows the boss' bad qualities, is a no go. When they see Rockwell doing the same thing against camera brands, Nikon particularly, they are smart enough to know something is off.

Good points. In a lot of ways he is like Consumer Reports, which is squarely aimed at folks looking to avoid buying junk but definitely not for an enthusiast of any type. And I agree he's right about starting with JPG, but I think he is too dismissive of RAW (he basically says nobody should ever use it) and he makes it sound way more difficult to shoot in than it actually is. Fro's approach with that is much more sensible IMO.

WestEndFoto

mhedges said:

WestEndFoto said:

Well, you have to consider his audience. He is not speaking to Prosumers or Pros like us. He is speaking to newbies and amateurs. And for many of them, his advice will not lead them to far astray. Even when he recommends Jpegs over Raw. That tells you right there who is audience is. If someone is shooting a crop sensor camera, chances are they are not being led to far astray by his "advice". Note, I said "chances". There will be lots of exceptions. But exceptions aside, almost any lens is sharp enough for his audience. The question is whether it is "fast enough".

Where he falls seriously astray is when he bad mouths something for no good reason. The best value in crop sensor cameras right now for his audience are Nikon DSLRs - as long as the consumer is aware that they won't be able to buy new lenses in a few years. And the best camera money can buy in a crop sensor now is still likely a D500 - sorry Fuji. There are lots of amateurs and newbies that may not know much about cameras, but they may be pretty sophisticated about things in life that are truly important to them. In my field, a job applicant that bad mouths a previous boss, even if everyone knows the boss' bad qualities, is a no go. When they see Rockwell doing the same thing against camera brands, Nikon particularly, they are smart enough to know something is off.

Good points. In a lot of ways he is like Consumer Reports, which is squarely aimed at folks looking to avoid buying junk but definitely not for an enthusiast of any type. And I agree he's right about starting with JPG, but I think he is too dismissive of RAW (he basically says nobody should ever use it) and he makes it sound way more difficult to shoot in than it actually is. Fro's approach with that is much more sensible IMO.

Well, that is another of his errors that a smart person will be able to pick up on. A smart person will read his comment and then wonder, "why then does raw exist" and they will know that something is off. Even if they cannot put their finger on what it is.

If he said something like, "unless you are a serious prosumer or pro, then raw is probably not for you", then he can make the same point without coming across as an idiot.

photobunny

WestEndFoto said:

photobunny said:

A new note to add. I shoved my Z9 into DX lossless compressed and fired the shutter on a 128 GB Sony Tough CF Express card and it ran until the card was full.

If you shoot at 12fps in FX lossless compressed the Z9 will run until the card is full. This is the speed that matters to me and is dependent on the cards that I am using. I am not sure what that speed is on my D850 and Z7ii bodies, but it is more than 3fps as I have Continuous Low set to that (and 1fps on my Zfc).

The D850 is 9 fps at its best with a grip and D5 battery. The Z7ii is 5.5 fps at its best or 10 in slideshow mode. The Z9 will fill up a card in DX or get about 90 shots on my 325 GB ProGrade card. However I haven't yet had a single subject that'll let me get 5s of continuous shots on it and I continue to shoot in short burst like I have done on all previous bodies. The note on DX is purely for anyone curious if it ever buffered.

WestEndFoto

photobunny said:

WestEndFoto said:

photobunny said:

A new note to add. I shoved my Z9 into DX lossless compressed and fired the shutter on a 128 GB Sony Tough CF Express card and it ran until the card was full.

If you shoot at 12fps in FX lossless compressed the Z9 will run until the card is full. This is the speed that matters to me and is dependent on the cards that I am using. I am not sure what that speed is on my D850 and Z7ii bodies, but it is more than 3fps as I have Continuous Low set to that (and 1fps on my Zfc).

The D850 is 9 fps at its best with a grip and D5 battery. The Z7ii is 5.5 fps at its best or 10 in slideshow mode. The Z9 will fill up a card in DX or get about 90 shots on my 325 GB ProGrade card. However I haven't yet had a single subject that'll let me get 5s of continuous shots on it and I continue to shoot in short burst like I have done on all previous bodies. The note on DX is purely for anyone curious if it ever buffered.

But note that what I am measuring is how high I can turn fps before the buffer never fills. You can certainly shoot a Z7ii at 9fps but the buffer quickly fills. I am saying that at 3 fps, the buffer practically never fills for the cards that I am using.

photobunny

Another wee note: The Z9 cannot focus on vertical lines. This is common in mirrorless cameras as they don't have cross type points. Perhaps the Z9ii will bring some sort of cross type AF.

WestEndFoto

photobunny said:

Another wee note: The Z9 cannot focus on vertical lines. This is common in mirrorless cameras as they don't have cross type points. Perhaps the Z9ii will bring some sort of cross type AF.

So what is the fix Photobunny. Rotate the camera 45 degrees, focus, then rotate back to recompose.

And is this an edge case that is not that likely to be encountered, or common?

photobunny

WestEndFoto said:

photobunny said:

Another wee note: The Z9 cannot focus on vertical lines. This is common in mirrorless cameras as they don't have cross type points. Perhaps the Z9ii will bring some sort of cross type AF.

So what is the fix Photobunny. Rotate the camera 45 degrees, focus, then rotate back to recompose.

And is this an edge case that is not that likely to be encountered, or common?

You can rotate the camera or you can move the focus point to something that has something intersecting the lines (Or you can use a DLSR as they have cross type points, cross type points were made to solve this issue and improve focus accuracy). Now where you can encounter it varies on what you photograph:

- For wildlife it'll never cause an issue as animals have various features the camera can lock onto.
- For product photography you'll run into issues focusing on the lid of a bottle or jar if it has groves in it to provide grip.
- Humans it'll maybe cause an issue if you are photographing specific types of dresses, you'll likely be in portrait anyway or you'll want the subject face. It is only a problem if the garment is the subject.
- Landscape you can run into a problem where it might not want to focus on something like a picket fence.

Mostly I run into the issue on product photography as one of my big client sells a lot of male grooming products and they often have vertical lines for gripping onto or for ascetics. For me I manual focus, focus on another area, or rotate the camera.

This is not a Nikon specific issue. You can search on YouTube and see that the Sony A9ii has this issue... just about every mirrorless camera (Olympus being the exception as they seem to have cross type points and a Samsung phone camera introduced quad pixel AF) has this issue.

Nikon didn't advertise cross type AF points so I wasn't expecting it to work but thought maybe they had sneaked it in. I suspect Nikon will bring it with the Z9 mark 2 about the time Canon release a R1 with quad pixel AF.

WestEndFoto

Sounds like a pretty manageable issue then.

photobunny

Manageable but annoying. FYI if anyone wants to know how to duplicate this on a mirrorless camera just try to focus on the focus ring off a lens.

Searcy

Rockwell lost all credibility with me back when he got confused about how to load a memory card in a Z6 and was sure it would be a real problem.

Photobug

Searcy said:

Rockwell lost all credibility with me back when he got confused about how to load a memory card in a Z6 and was sure it would be a real problem.

What? Oh my....He continues with his "nit picker" comments. He lost me five years ago.

Pistnbroke

Rockwell seems to have removed the acid from his Z9 review but he has not announced it as such or bought one ..must be missing out on purchase commission without his usual fanfare.