I Was Wrong About the Nikon Z8

all right Hello everybody welcome to another video a video where I discuss the Nikon Z8 versus the Nikon z72 this video is sponsored by Squarespace and about six weeks ago maybe a bit longer I said that I would probably just stick with the z72 over the Z8 however since that time I've spent 11 days on a ship in svalbard with this camera and I've changed my mind so a couple of things firstly if you haven't seen last week's video where I go on an 11 day photography Expeditions as falbot please go and watch it if this video gets more views than that I'm just gonna quit YouTube because that last week's video is the direction I want to go in longer form content you know multi-day photography trips into one good video with the storytelling images and a real passion um I mean I'm not in a position where I can do that but wouldn't it be nice to just drop one big video every six weeks or so that that would be nice one they will get there but not if people aren't watching them so please go and watch it another thing the Z8 I was very disappointed when Nikon loaned me this Z8 uh when it initially got launched because they said that you have to have a chaperone which hate was Rishi great man top man you know nothing against Rishi but when they say that somebody's got to chaperone you with the camera and you can only only have it for one shoot one morning no planning no time uh nothing you know the opinion that I formed on that day was not favorable towards the Z8 and that's because I'd woke up at four in the morning Rishi had brought me the camera I'd never seen it used it I didn't really know much about it I got it up onto the Yorkshire Dales up onto the Moors it was cold there was no light it was an unin inspirational uh Dave photography it was it was pretty drab and that was my only opportunity to use it so I was quite literally a man with a camera taking an image and that might sound Daft but pretty much all cameras on the surface level of the same like you can take a photograph of this camera this camera in the camera I'm recording on a Sony a Canada Leica whatever all the same you're not gonna notice a difference right when you look at the actual image so that was my thing I got this camera it was a camera and I took a photograph and my opinion was yeah well it's the same same sensor get the z72 cheaper lighter how ever they loaned at me again which I think is how they should have loaned at me the first time actually saying that makes me sound incredibly arrogant um of course I understand they're restricted with pre-production models and whatnot but I just wish that when I first got my hands on this I had the opportunity to do a proper trip and then my opinion would have been different so it has changed and I now have to eat my words so if you're a z72 owner you might be watching this thinking oh no my camera's no good absolutely not the z72 is phenomenal beautiful landscape camera and image quality image for image these are matched almost identically this is a brilliant camera and actually has many advantages over the Z8 such as its size its weight and its price points especially now a ton of these are going to be on the used Market as people like me go for a Z8 you know and perhaps sell the z7 twos so this has got to be one of the sort of highest or best value cameras that you can get on the market today there's a absolutely nothing wrong with the z72 I can't stress that enough it's a phenomenal camera however the Z8 for what I do which is obviously I make these YouTube videos I do a lot of landscape photography but I'm really enjoying Wildlife photography at the minutes as well in Iceland I was in Iceland a couple of months ago and show arctic foxes I've just returned from svalbard with walrus polar bears and lots of bird photography and all that kind of stuff and the Z8 absolutely shined and I'm going to explain why because there's not one thing on this camera that makes me want to buy it over the z72 it's all the little things that add up first and foremost I was on a boat it was windy it was raining there was sea spray there was a lot going on where I had to shoot Landscapes and then Wildlife so changing lenses all the time having this sensor cover just makes all of the difference and meant that not once did I have to clean my sensor I was never worried about my sensor it's a small thing but it made quite a big difference the next small thing that makes a big difference is the autofocus now the autofocus on the z72 is great and it works most of the time but it does Miss in low light it can be a bit slow and it's not 100 trustworthy the autofocus on the Z8 is phenomenal I used 3D animal tracking for my Wildlife photography and it very rarely missed it would lock onto the subject and stay with the subject the Landscapes I was on a moving boat using long lenses often shooting through rain and the autofocus was fast and it was accurate and in low light as well I expect that this Z8 sensor or the processor or something anyway I'm not entirely sure what you know the technicals behind it but the Z8 autofocus is way more reliable and that's great for things like focus stacking when you tap the screen to focus it's going to be very accurate with that and it's also great if you're fast moving or perhaps you haven't got the best eyesight so you rely on autofocus um it's just you know so it's more reliable than the z72 which isn't bad but for me it has missed even with Landscapes and with wildlife in the past Z8 I literally don't think it missed once it was fantastic one of the things on the Z8 that I was really impressed with and I would say most impressed with was the functionality of a functionality customization of it so I would have this camera set up so I turn it on it defaults to what I call landscape mode ISO 64 f11 and then shut speed of I think 250th of a second that would pretty much be what this comes on at with a two second timer as well that's landscape mode but what if I'm shooting Landscapes and then something happens like uh the polar bear comes into shot or as you know a seal pops up on an iceberg or whatever your kids run past and look really cute and you want to photograph your fast-moving kids whatever well I programmed in a completely different shooting mode into this one button on the front here function two so at the Press of a button it goes from ISO 64 to auto ISO it goes from shutter speed 250 to the lower shutter speed then it won't drop below one thousandth of a second and it also goes to the widest aperture of that lens and it goes to I believe five frames that's what I programmed in it five frames per second fast Burst so one press of a button you go from super slow landscape mode Bosch Wildlife oh and autofocus with 3D animal tracking done and I expect a lot of people who are watching this will probably do more than just landscape photography you'll do weddings portraits events you'll photograph your kids you might do Wildlife there's loads of stuff other than landscape photography and that was always my problem with the z72 it wasn't the best all-rounder the Z8 is like a phenomenal all-rounder it truly is it does everything and another you know another little thing about this is of course we already know it has this tilty screen it's a little thing but it adds up and makes the difference now the downsides with the Z8 are the weights 200 nod grams heavier than the z70 which is a bit of a pain if you go hiking or do any kind of strenuous photography activity but 200 grams is a compromise that I am willing to make for all of the features in this camera another downside is all of these features if used properly or if used extensively like I did last week in svalbard it is a drain on the battery the battery is not great when you're shooting Wildlife frames per second animal tracking switching from landscape mode to Wildlife mode so on and so forth so I would struggle to get a full day out of the battery but I'm used to shooting land's case like three images in an evening you know I would confidently go on a landscape trip with one battery and think that would last me five days no problem but uh if using all of the features in this camera and using it to its full potential you're going to go through batteries pretty quickly um but you just take spare batteries no big deal but that's definitely one thing to bear in mind another downside of course is going to cost more than the z72 so that's where you just have to weigh up is it worth it and for what I do and some of the trips I have planned going into the future yes it's worth it for me to spend more money on the Z8 than the z7 II and finally I'd like to touch on the video features now I don't like to mix video and photography which sounds stupid as I run a landscape photography YouTube channel but I always think of them very very much separate I have my video gear which is filming me now and then I have my photography gear and the twain shall never meet but uh on trips like in svalbard you know having the video feature on this was great you know I could if I was photographing polar bears I could then flip the video mode and shoot the polar bears and get footage now I don't think I had the video features set up correctly all I did was switch the video mode make sure it was 4K and make sure that it was 24 frames per second but I didn't adjust the picture profile and my video footage was contrasty and over saturated not good what I should have done is shot in a flat profile and that would have given me much more flexibility when editing the video in Premiere Pro um but you know that's that's a quick fix the video features on this are Sensational apparently I don't know too much about it I'm not putting any specs or talking about any specs I'm sure you already know this but it's nice to be able to take supplementary video footage with the stuff that I do so it's a nice bonus um but it certainly wouldn't swing sway me in terms of searching it but it might swear you now on my trip to svalbod which by the way I did make a 40 minute long epic video that I really encourage you to go and watch out it was last week's video I'm going to put it in the description below the link please go and watch it um but yes uh in that I've forgotten what I was gonna say now I was going to say in that video on that's right on that trip I still don't feel like I fully utilized all that this camera can do and I'm sure there is so much more that it can do and not to mention no doubt a bit of speculation here but no doubt all of the firmware updates that will come in the future I'm sure um so yes this is a camera and I'm so glad I got to use it properly and it's because of that that I am purchasing the Z8 over the z72 even though just last month I said that I would stick with the z72 uh yeah that was because I had a bad day and I never really got to use this properly but if you're a z72 owner and you're not switching don't matter like it's fine like uh don't worry about it it's still a fantastic camera and all of these sort of drawbacks of the z72 that I mentioned they're not proper drawbacks they're like like minuscule it's not night and day is what I'm saying like I'm saying that the autofocus on this isn't 100 it's not it's like 99.2 it's still very high uh so yeah don't uh don't stress too much is basically what I'm saying don't worry about it you're not you're not missing out on too much but having to use this and being in a position where I do need to buy something I think I'll probably opt for this right Thank you to the sponsor of this video Squarespace um who helped so much with with this Channel and allow me to go and do projects and shoot videos in the field so thank you if you don't know who Squarespace are they're an all-in-one website building platform so if you need your own website but you don't have the skills or the know-how to code your own well you that's where Squarespace comes in your log on Squarespace you create an account and you can use their drag and drops system to create a beautiful professional looking website really easily with no previous experience or any Web building knowledge if you want to give that a go go squarespace.com forward slash Heaton and you get a free trial and then if you like free trial which I'm pretty sure you will use the offer code heater and then you get 10 off your first purchase so as always I would definitely recommend Squarespace but for now I'm gonna go it's nice doing this video just having a bit of time off I'm pretty exhausted after svalbot and then doing that big long edit and that's why there's no infield video from me this week just a nice chill one almost like a podcast maybe I should do a podcast yeah maybe anyway cheers guys and if you've got any comments or suggestions about the Z8 z72 off then yeah let me know I appreciate it cheers guys bye bye

Channel: Thomas Heaton

Views: 86,619

Keywords: landscape photography, outdoor photography, landscape photography tutorial, landscape photography in the field, photography tips, best photo locations, how to landscape photography, hiking, outdoors, vanlife, fujifilm, Nikon z8, z8, nikonz8, Nikon z8 review, Nikon z 24-70 f2.8 vs f4, Nikon z 24-70 vs 24-120 lens

Id: g-SC1VxwpEw

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023