Review: Nikon ZfNikon’s latest mirrorless camera may look like it’s from the 1980s, but it delivers the same image quality as today’s best cameras.The Nikon ZF is Nikon’s latest full-frame Z-series camera, although you might think of it as a film camera. The design takes cues from previous Nikons, but features a decidedly modern 24-megapixel sensor.
In many ways, the Zf is the best of both worlds: a high-quality digital sensor combined with chunky dial and button housing.The result is a camera that’s a lot of fun to shoot. I never have to hunt through menus and using it is almost as easy as using my old Nikon FE2. It doesn’t have the speed you want for wildlife or sports, but for everything else, this camera is hard to beat.Classic StyleClassic StyleI’ve seen a lot of people compare the Zf’s design to the FM2 from the 1970s, but I don’t think you need to go back that far. The Nikon Df has similar lines, as does the Zfc, the APS-C brother of this new Zf.
The Zf’s weight is, for the most part, a good thing. This thing is very sturdy. The body is all metal and fully weather sealed. Both large dials are made of brass, and turning them feels like turning the dials on an old film camera. The Zf is the best built digital camera body I’ve ever tested. In a sense, it is a tank. The cost of great construction is weight—22.29 ounces without the lens and 40 ounces with the Nikkor 24 -70 f/ 4 lens. It’s not outrageous, but it can feel that way at times because there’s almost no grip. The small lip provided reminds me of my old Nikon F3, which was also awkward to hold after a while.
It’s not a big deal. There are many third-party handles you can add.Weight aside, the Zf handles really well. The dials are easy to turn and you can set shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation, shooting mode, metering mode and shutter speed without even holding the camera to your eye. Note that the shutter speed is displayed on the screen. With most lenses, this can be changed via a dial, as quite a few Z lenses don’t have an aperture ring.The back of the Nikon ZF camera One thing I don’t like is the lack of a joystick on the back. There’s a D-pad to control things like focus, but the joystick is faster and smoother to operate. On the plus side, Another aspect that reminds me of a film camera is the large, bright viewfinder.
Like the viewfinders on the Nikon F series, this 3.68 million-dot OLED viewfinder is a joy to use.I should note that almost all of the reasons I like the Zf are because it reminds me of my old Nikon. As someone who learned photography with a 1980s Nikon film camera, this is very much like a 1980s Nikon film camera, at least from the outside.modern interior decorationInternally, the NikonZf camera battery has a very good 24-MP CMOS sensor that looks very similar to the sensor in the Nikon Z6 II. Even though it’s a few years old, it’s still very capable. The sensor is paired with a new processor (the Expeed 7 processor), which gives the Zf some tricks that other Nikons lack. The best of them all is the autofocus system. Expeed 7 introduces processor subject recognition (borrowed from the very high-end Z9) into 3D tracking, and it’s surprisingly accurate. I didn’t shoot any sporting events, and I didn’t have any wildlife footage, but I had no problem tracking my kids as they ran around. That’s not to say it doesn’t lose focus at times, but it does so far less than most cameras I’ve tested.Speaking of speed, the Zf can shoot up to 11 frames per second when shooting RAW images and up to 15 frames per second in JPEG mode.
The NikonZf camera battery also offers a JPEG-only shooting mode that uses video to capture images at 30 fps, similar to what’s found in the Z9. 11 fps is fine for 96% of people, but maybe not for wildlife, sports, and some other edge cases. One really nice feature of the Zf is the black and white mode. Two things make it better than the black and white mode in most cameras. First, you can activate it using the switch under the dial on the right side, eliminating the need to look for it in a menu. You just flip the switch and flip it back when you’ re done. This allows me to use black and white mode as a quick way to view scenes without color, which I find helps with composition. Sometimes elements seem fine at first glance until they appear distracting later when you view the scene in black and white . This is my favorite thing about the Nikon Zf.The black and white image itself is also better than most. You don’t get Fujifilm-level image customization, but there are some options. You can shoot in three modes: Pure Monochrome, Flat Monochrome, and Darktone Monochrome. There is not much difference between these three modes,We can’t customize the profiles like we can with Fuji cameras, but it’s a start. I’d like to see Nikon expand this feature into future cameras.
While I didn’t expect it to be such an obvious homage to Nikon’s past films , the Zf is indeed an amazingly capable camera. Capture images up to 4K/60 with an APS-C size sensor. If you want to use the entire sensor, you can get 4K/30. This won’t wow video pros, but for most photographers who just want to shoot 4K footage, it’ll be more than enough.Overall, I love shooting with the Zf and if I were in the market for a new camera this would be the camera I would buy. That said, there’s almost nothing I really don’t like about the Zf. The first is the card slot There are two of them. One is a standard SD card slot that supports UHS II cards.
The second is the microSD card slot, which only supports UHS I. I can live with the slow speed, but inserting and removing a microSD card is very difficult, so I ended up leaving it in and treating it as an emergency overflow. There should be two matching full-size SD card slots.Another thing I really don’t like is that it doesn’t come with a NikonZf camera battery charger. A $2,000 camera shouldn’t require you to buy a separate Nikon camera battery charger (which retails for $80, no less). You can charge via the USB-C port. Nikon camera battery life is very good, you can take about 350 photos on a single charge, more if you turn on power saving mode (mine was 407), but serious photographers will always need a separate charger and at least a second Bell Nikon camera battery.
As mentioned above, the Zf wouldn’t be my first choice for sports or wildlife. That’s partially because of the autofocus and shooting speed, but also because the 24-MP sensor, while sharp and capable of Nikon-specific colors, may not be what wildlife and sports pros are after. The Z7, and especially the Z9, with its higher megapixel sensor and faster autofocus, is the camera you need for these use cases.
Find the best Nikon Camera Battery price! Search Batteriesfast.co.uk for Nikon Camera Battery. Get fast shipping and top-rated customer service
＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞＞7.0V 1900MAH Replacement Camera Battery for Nikon EN-EL15B