Nikon Z 8 First Impressions in the Badlands and Black Hills
I spent the last week teaching my Badlands and Black Hills Photography Workshop, and I brought along my new Nikon Z 8. While I don’t typically shoot as much as I would when not on a workshop, I was able to test out the new camera. These are my first impressions.
One thing to think about when considering first impressions is that they are just that. I may change my mind in the future. I’ll also note that I got back shortly before writing this newsletter, so the images are receiving only a quick edit.
The Size and Body
The first thing that I noticed with the Nikon Z 8 was how much bigger it was than my 7II. I knew that it was going to be bigger based on the specs and early promo videos, but I didn’t realize it was so much bigger. While this may not be an issue for everyone, it was for me.
In the past, I could fit a Z 7II on my 100-400mm lens and a Z 7II and a 24-120mm plus a 14-30 or other lens in my F-stop Medium Shallow ICU. The Z 8 doesn’t fit in that arrangement. With the 100-400, the Z 8 doesn’t fit into the ICU and when it has the 24-120 or 14-30 on it, the Z 7II with the 100-400 doesn’t fit into the ICU with the Z 8. I do own a Large ICU, but it’s too big for my backpack, which is an Osprey Soelden 42. I’m going to need a new backpack if I want to be able to use my cameras in the way that I have in the past. The Z 8 with an L-bracket also doesn’t fit inside my Hyperlite Mountain Gear camera pod.
While that might not seem like a big deal, it made it harder to fit everything into my pack and made for a lot more lens changes than I would normally do in a dusty location. Usually with that many lens changes, I’d get a lot of dust on my sensor. The Z 8’s dust shield, which is a shutter that closes to protect the sensor from dust, kept most of the dust off. I only got a few dust spots over the five days of shooting.
One of the other issues that I don’t care for with the body is how Nikon angled the round 10-pin connection on the front and angled the side of the camera for the autofocus button. Because there isn’t an L-bracket from Kirk available for the Z 8, yet, that means that the generic L-bracket that I’m using covers the autofocus button making it unusable. That’ll be fixed by a custom L-bracket when available.
The 10-pin is the bigger disappointment. On the Nikon D850, the connection is flat on the front of the camera and a little further down that body. I use a wireless remote to trigger the camera. It plugs into the 10-pin. On the D850, it almost disappears and can be left on the camera when packing it away. Because of the angle and the height of the 10-pin connector on the Z 8, the remote is more exposed and higher. I have to take it off when packing the camera away otherwise its antena would hit my closed pack.
Shooting
My primary use of the Z 8 during my time in the Badlands and Black Hills was using it with the 100-400mm or the 24-120mm. The 14-30mm stayed glued to my Z 7II.
One of the weird things that I noticed is that when I use the 100-400mm on the Z 8 versus either of my Z 7 bodies is that it seems to give sharper results, especially when handholding. I’m not sure why that is, but you can see that in the above flower shot. I shot that at 560mm using the Z 8, the 100-400mm and a 1.4x telecoverter. I did this handheld at 1/1250th of a second. It’s darn sharp considering all of that.
The second things that I noticed is the automatic subject tracking mode was really good. It’s not perfect. For example, if a bison puts its head down to eat (they usually are in this pose), the camera would try and track the eye down and often misfocus on grass in front of the bison instead of focusing on the eye or going to the body. I missed a few shots because of this. I noticed it happening in the field and compensated. I’m not going to show an example of this because it is what you’d expect. The grass is in focus and the animal isn’t.
For the most part, the camera did track animal’s eyes. Sometimes the indicator in the viewfinder would jump around, but despite that behavior the focus seemed to be on the eyes. The below photo was an example of this happening. It was backlit and the eye was in the shadow. The focus point wouldn’t stay on the eye as the bighorn moved around, but all the pictures ended up with the eye in focus.
I wanted to use it to track cars to see if that mode would work. It did. This camper van was going at about 45 mph down the road. I wonder if the passenger was wondering why I was photographing them.
One morning, we ran into a bunch of hissing geese and their goslings. The subject mode struggled to get the eyes. This doesn’t seem like a hard thing to handle, but the Z 8 just struggled. They were literally on the ground walking towards me when it happened. When the camera managed to find a goose’s eye, it would stick (until it wouldn’t). I’m not a bird photographer, so I’m not sure this is normal with other brands. I could have done better myself. I know that 3D tracking, which this camera has and I could have switched to, would have done better.
I didn’t shoot many portraits, but when I did the camera instantly found the eyes and held them.
Low-light autofocus was really good. It was much better than the Z 7II or any other camera that I’ve used including the Nikon D850. It would instantly lock autofocus on dark areas that I’ve seen other cameras struggle in.
In the below photos, the rocks were silhouetted black. With the Nikon Z 7II, it would hunt a bit before locking focus, but the Nikon Z 8 just focused right away with limited to no hunting.
Overall, the shooting experience was really good. With any focus system, you need practice to master it. Having only a few days of practice shooting mountain biking before I left, I’d say that it did well. I also didn’t have time to program focus overrides into buttons before I left. Had I done that, it would have been easier on me. Basically, I used the camera with mostly default settings until the settings annoyed me enough to change them to match how my Z 7s function.
A couple of last things about shooting:
The blackout-free viewfinder is wild. You never lose view of your subject even at 20 frames per second. It’s like shooting a video.
Because the camera doesn’t have a mechanical shutter, the shutter sound is fake. I found that I can’t stand the shutter sound. It annoys me. I wish I could load my own sound, such as “Nice Shot” or the sound of a chicken barking: Bok, bok, bok, bok… While I would like those, it would be nice if the camera varied the shutter sound slightly with every release. That would feel more mechanical.
I like that the rear LCD screen can tilt vertically.
The extra space between the lens and the grip is really nice. That’ll be excellent for winter gloves.
Battery Life
There was concern about the life of the battery on the internet. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that when shooting mainly wildlife or action, I was getting about 550-600 shots per battery.
When I switched to mainly landscape photography, I got about 250 shots per battery.
It seems like the EN-EL 15c gets slightly better battery life than the EN-EL 15b. This seems true even when both read “new” on the Battery Age menu.
In other words, not great when compared to the Z 7II.
The Files
Overall, I’m happy with the files. I haven’t spent a ton of time with them, but here are a couple of quick takeaways:
Adobe’s profiles are significantly better for the Z 8 than either Z 7s. The profiles for the Z 7s almost always have a weird white balance that needs to be corrected and the colors don’t seem right. I called attention to this back with the first version on the Z 7, and I worked with Adobe to fix the issue. It was better than their original profile, but it never fixed it 100%. That doesn’t seem to be an issue with the Z 8. The colors seem to be right using the Camera Neutral profile built into Lightroom.
There’s slightly less dynamic range at ISO 64 on the Z 8 versus the Z 7 or Z 7II. I didn’t think this would be that big of a deal, but I can notice it. In the above Sylvan Lake photo, I had to slide the shadows slider to +100 to get detail to show in the rocks. While I didn’t shoot the exact same photo with the Z 7II, I did shoot a similar one when there last year. To get a similar brightness in the shadows, I only had to slide the slider to +50. While it isn’t as bad as I expected from reading Z 9 reviews (the Z 8 is a mini-Z 9), I can tell that there is a difference.
I think that due to #2, the files don’t feel as “plastic” and “stretchable” as the Z 7’s files.
Something to keep in mind is different cameras often edit slightly differently. It may take me a bit of time to learn how to edit the Z 8 files to make them look like I want them to look. I may find in time that they are better than my initial impressions. Right now, it isn’t as easy as with the Z 7 series cameras.
Overall
It’s hard to come up with an overall perspective on the camera with such limited use, but I’ll try. I know many of you are considering plopping down the $4,000 for it.
It’s a great overall camera. Nikon’s autofocus is finally where it needed to be a couple of years or so ago. This is the autofocus system that should have shipped with the Z 7II. If it had, it would be a no-brainer choice between the Z 8 and the Z 7II. You’d buy the Z 7II unless you needed a no blackout viewfinder (birders and fast sports and wildlife. You don’t need it for typical national park animals).
From a strictly landscape perspective, the Nikon Z 7II is a better buy, especially at the recent pricing and discounts. The little bit of extra dynamic range, the smaller size, and how the files feel when editing them pushes the Nikon Z 7II ahead of the Z 8 for landscape work.
If I really liked the Z 8, I was planning on switching to two Z 8s and selling my Z 7s, but for landscape in challenging conditions and when I want a lighter camera I’m keeping a Z 7II. If Nikon comes out with a Z 7III that has the Z 8’s focus system and the extra dynamic range of the current Z 7II, I’ll dump the Z 8 and go back to two Z 7s. While I hate the shutter release connector on the Z 7, I much prefer the size and the dynamic range.
The downsides of having a Z 7II and a Z 8 is that I now have two different button layouts, and the cameras function a little differently. It’s hard to have two different muscle memories for two cameras that are otherwise so similar.
Overall, the Nikon Z 8 is a better all-around camera due to the focus system than anything else that Nikon has right now, but that’s because the focus systems in the Z 7s were never where they needed to be in the first place. It’s great that Nikon did this, but my first impressions here are if you are purely a landscape shooter, stick to the Z 7II. If you need an all-around camera, the Z 8 is a good option. It's an upgrade from the D850. When compared to the competition from other brands, specifically the Sony A1, the Z 8 is priced much better.
Sidenote: I know a lot of Nikon DSLR users were waiting for something like the Z 8. It is an upgrade from the D850. One thing to consider if you aren’t wedded to Nikon (or if you are coming from Nikon DSLRs) is that you may want to find a system that offers a 16-35 f/2.8 lens or similar that also accepts filters. Nikon’s Z system doesn’t offer that lens and it isn't on the road map, although there are patents for a Z lens. For most outdoor photographers having that lens would cover your wide-angle landscape needs AND your nightscape needs with ONE lens. Nikon Z users need to cover this with multiple lenses. I got the Sony 16-35 f/2.8 and use an adapter to use it on my Z system, but that isn’t an ideal solution.
