Nikon Z30 Long Term Review: your first proper camera?

so in this week's video I'm going to review this the Nikon zed3 after 18 months of use is it any good stay tuned to find [Music] out shooting star in the sky cl to Hope in your eyes burn the old me together find you hello welcome to the channel uh if you're new here my name is Dave and I produce landscape photography videos every Sunday at 6:00 and in today's video I'm I'm in backton Woods which one of my favorite locations but I'm just scouting out um locations trees possible compositions uh and what I then do is I'll record that on my iPhone so I'll record a shot of it through remm myself and also onto what three words so I can find my way back because this is an enormous wood so a quick Channel update for you as you may know if you follow my channel uh at all you'll know that last week I reached a thousand subscribers unbelievable thank you so much if you're one of the people who have subscribed and you watch my videos um I'm really so grateful uh without you this is pointless so thank you so much for that it's it's means the world I'm trying to get my watch hours up now um which comes through watching the video so if I could keep producing decent videos hopefully you'll keep turning up and watching them um I was also yesterday on a video call to Kent and Faith who produce lots of different camera stuff um they emailed me and asked me if I wanted to try any of their products and do a review on them in in return where basically I don't they haven't told me to say nice things about their product they've asked me just to give them some honest feedback so I've got uh a geared tripod head coming which I'm quite excited about and in Woodland like this a geared tripod head I think it's gonna be fantastic Martin and I can't pronounce Martin's surname but I've watched one of Martin's videos I'll link it down below has used the k&f one and was very complimentary about it so I'm looking forward to getting that it should be with me with me next week and I will be there doing a review on on that I'm also in the pipeline got a review on tripods because I've had to buy a new tripod now that Billy has died uh which I've done so I'm going to do review on tripods for landscape photography and also I Still Still Haven't produced my video on panoramics which I've been planning for ages so that's going to hope hopefully be made um I've still got another three videos from Scotland um to come which I'm processing at the moment and I've got two half finished videos from Scotland where I need to go and shoot some more footage for the start because I lost some a couple of intros um which didn't work very well so I'm going to have to go and reshoot those but the good news is I'm going back up to Scotland in May with my wife so um I'm not going to do lots of vlogging there because that will annoy her but she had said that I can go and film some intros so lots and lots and lots of stuff to come in the CH on the channel right let's talk about this z30 then my Pros my cons and whether or not you should buy one so before I start let me this is going to sound ridiculous but let me just say I'm not sponsored by nickon for this video obviously this camera I bought it 18 months ago uh I've used it for pretty much every single week and I'm going to tell you the pros and a couple of cons things I don't like about it as we go along um I've been trying to find a quiet spot in this enormous wood to record this and I've set up twice now and have people going past on Mountain B screaming and shouting and literally right behind me hopefully we won't get Disturbed now let me tell you about some of the pros of this camera so the first thing to say about this let me just take the lens cap off so it's a nickon 30 I bought it um with the 16 to 50 kit m kit lens on it and the reason I bought it was because I was using before that an iPhone and I didn't really feel like the quality was good enough in low light at the time I was if you remember back then I was shooting on Fuji cameras so the lenses wasn't lens Choice was really just come with a kit lens I didn't really think about interchangeability however I had in my mind that at some point I might switch to the nickel system which I've now done and that gives me the advantage that I could use the Zed lenses I've got for my z72 on here if I wanted to although it's a crop sensor so I'll only find the middle bit of it so the focal lengths won't be quite the same but that's quite a useful thing so why did I buy this well first of all as I've already said I wanted to replace the iPhone I want a bigger sensor and it is a bigger sensor not by very much by slightly the bigger the sensor generally the better things are in low light although technology has improved a lot nowadays but um the bigger sensor was going to give me a better quality in low light it was also going to be used as a backup to my Fuji xt4 my gfx50r and that now my z7 it's it's capable of shooting 20 megapixel photos so it's a good backup camera I've never had to use that although I have used it occasionally for folks when I've got the other camera in the bag and it's kind of like a snapshot and it works very well most of what I'm going to tell you today though is from the point of view of a Creator who's used it mainly for video so the main thing I bought it for was for video uh it's got it records 4K in 30 frames per second it also does slow motion in 1080P I'll put the specs and stuff about that here for you to look at I have to admit I've used it in uh 4K 24 frames per second and 30 frames per second that's it that's all I tend to shoot on so that's all I all I can really comment on but the quality out of this camera most of the time has been brilliant there's a few little caveats to that um the other thing I wanted to do I wanted something that was easy to use and the menu system on the back of here I just turn it on this menu system is absolutely fantastic uh it now has the uh benefit of being exactly the same as the z72 so once you used to the fold the folder system and the menu system of a nickon camera that follows through to the other camera so that kind of works really really nicely it's also fair to say I'm not getting rid of this I am going to be using it a lot but I'm going to be using more often my pocket 3 that I've just bought and I'll tell you for why at the end of this and the reason I chose this over other cameras was because of that so this flippy screen is really useful um we can do that so it folds backwards so you can protect the screen like that where you can have the screen open let's turn it on so you get more of a view view of it okay so that's what it's that's what you can do with it but obviously if you're vlogging and you need to be looking at yourself which you can see myself now um and find out where you are now this screen has been absolutely brilliant in any kind of light even light like that reflected light I have not had a problem at all if you look at the histogram there you'll be able to see it pretty much throughout wherever I shine it even like in light like that look so the screen has been a marvelous thing at the time the only option I had was uh other option I had as far as nickon were concerned was the Z50 but the Z50 didn't have a varial angle screen um they had an ZF I think it was called same thing they now do a zfc which has got the VAR angle screen which is really really nice uh but it's a lot more well it's a bit more money than this so and it's bigger we'll talk about that again in a second so I've been really happy with that I wanted to use an external microphone the microphone on top is good that that they do to cats to go on here which are um little slots onto the microphone there's a stereo microphone built in but I've not really used it I've always sloted in my uh osmo microphone here and we have a microphone Jack on the side so that plugs in there there is no headphone socket but I've not found that problem um it's got other other sockets in here so we've got USBC to charge it up HDMI should you need all that stuff but I've never used it other brilliant things about it this I menu which you can customize you see it there and this I menu brilliant CU you press it and then you get a selection of different options which you can change so let's say I want to change the um the format or the resolution of the video I can literally do that and then use this bar to change it or you can just use the touchcreen which I really really like using so that's been brilliant so the IM menu perfect for me works really well everything in when I'm in a hurry if it's sunrising the sun's coming up and I've got the perfect conditions I can quickly change anything I need to on here everything else takes is taken care of by the camera as I set it before there are these custom um so you can see that U1 U2 and u3 so you can set it to have you how you normally have it and that's has been brilliant so generally on location set the camera up click it onto U1 and I'm not normally far out as far as my video is concerned so that's been really really good again that follows with my z72 that's got exactly the same thing so it makes it a much more efficient way to work other reasons for this now I as I've said earlier I use this a lot I've been using this pretty much every week for 18 months sometimes more than once and during the course of that I've dropped it I've uh dropped it on it's been on a tripod and blown over twice onto Sand both times once was on to actually two times onto Sand once onto grass I've also dropped it in some water as you can see from this bit of footage of flat fed the paddle behind me on the side I actually dropped it up to about there it was literally sitting in the water uh and I thought well that's it that's a g I'm going have to buy a new one didn't miss a beat it's been brilliant so so rugged this uh grip here has been fantastic so good to hold it it the stabilization on it is really good the vibration reduction so I can normally I use it on the tripod but there I have been occasions when I've been hand holding just to get some b-roll footage uh and it's been really good and it's nice to have a really good grip when it's doing that so that's been brilliant love that about it as far as uh photography is concerned I haven't used it very much but it's been really really easy to use there also has a time lapse feature which I love so you can set this going sunset or a sunrise and set it in the back of the camera again access through the IM menu uh and then I can set that off and that is really good for smoothing out the footage you set it onto P for program or Auto and it will just adjust the called exposure smoothing so as the light deteriorates or increases it will adjust the exposure to make sure your time lapse looks really good um absolutely love this so main thing I would say that you may be thinking about is this big elephant in the room there is no viewfinder everything has to be done on the back um as far as that's concerned same thing applies on all neck on cameras I've used so far in as much as You' got a histogram here but to get the the spirit level up we have to press the display button once and then we have to scroll all the way back through to check the histogram now I use the histogram for exposure a lot I use the uh the spirit level a lot to make sure things are straight especially in video it's harder to correct so that's a that's kind of um one of the things about the screen I don't like but the lack of viewfinder how have I found that well I actually got really used to using it I love it I used to with my gfx I used to use the screen hardly ever used the viewfinder because the gfx viewfinder wasn't very nice either so I've really quickly adapted to just using the screen and in fact on my on my z7 two I pretty much use the screen all the time now so I don't have a problem with that good thing about that is it makes it nice and small so it fits into your pocket which I've just been carrying this around with me it's which means it's a great travel camera if you're thinking of going traveling you want something better than a phone but not nothing so bulky this could be the perfect camera for you especially with that Zoom they do another small Zoom or another zoom lens that comes as part of this package which you can buy which gives you a b more reach um but again I like the way that that folds right down and then click that and that's how can you see that that's how big the camera is so that fits in your pocket really really easily um so I haven't got a problem with there being no viewfinder if you're a photographer who likes to have that then maybe this is not for you but I would urge you to borrow one and try one because I think you find if you get used to the screen and you can focus with the screen you can fire the shut from touching the screen or you can turn all that features off if you want to then this could well be the ideal travel camera for you it's also if you're upgrading from a phone this is a perfect camera to start with it's not hugely expensive I'm not saying it's cheap but it's not hugely expensive and it's got so many features on this that you wouldn't expect for for your money I mean I've looked through the menus here and there's so many things I didn't know it had it's got almost as many features as my z72 is has um which is fantastic for something with that that price point so I think it's really really really good value for money to be honest other thing I really like if I start recording see that red flashing light that tally light it's really so good to have a tally light on the camera because if I'm recording at distance I can see that that's recording so so useful to have that um from the front from that end your end of the camera as a vlogger is really really good um I didn't use this I don't use this very much just turn that off I don't use this very much handheld but you kind of could and they do do a tripod which you can hold and use it that kind of way and I suppose you could do that um not really tried it I don't really feel like it it's quite heavy for that it's not a particularly heavy camera but it's certainly not as light as the osmo pocket free is so maybe maybe that would work for you not necessarily for me though let's talk though about a couple of things I don't like so my way of thinking there are two things with this I don't really like and they're both quite important for me you may not be a landscape photographer content creator so I work a lot in Sunrise and sunset conditions so when everything's dark uh there's not an awful lot of light around and that has given me um a problem with focusing with this so having said that has also let me down quite a few times in light as in bright daylight as well it has this tendency sometimes just occasionally even with face tracking on to hunt in and out and if I'm creating content and I have noticed that I'm was talking away to a camera in the middle of a piece like this and all of a sudden the focus is in and out that bit of footage is ruined for me I have to drop in beer roll over the top or cut it out or redo it um which is a pain I want something that focuses and stays focused in whatever light conditions I find myself in and that's one of the reasons I bought the pocket 3 cuz I'm hoping that that is going to be fixed in my face and not lose me time will tell um and the other thing is kind of related to that because I always look back at my footage at the start of a shoot to make sure the sound's working to make sure I'm getting what I think however the battery life is not brilliant um the nickon batteries I would say I get I don't know an hour maybe of battery life maybe that's good I don't know but I'm always finding myself going turn it off just turn it off make sure you don't waste the battery which means I don't play back my footage in the field very often and the first time I generally notice that I've got out of focus footage is in when I'm editing which is not good I would like to be able to look at this all the time and make sure that I before I leave location everything is brilliant but I don't trust the battery life and what happens is see the battery indicator there it will go from from full which is three of these segments 3/3 and then it will go down to 2/3 and then the next time you look it'll be on red and I'm like oh the battery's going um and then you turn it off you turn it back on again it's back up to 2/3 so that indicator is not brilliant I would generally just keep going till it stops and then what I do is then put my other spare battery in it which I've got so I've got two spare batteries you could also um charge it up with a USBC Port you can carry a power bank with you and do that if you wanted to and I'm not saying there's no way to get around that it definitely would work but I just when I'm busy I just don't want to keep stopping changing batteries and I I feel myself constantly thinking about the battery life on this so the battery life is is kind of for me a bit of a pain but the main problem is the focusing face tracking it loses me it hunts and that that is a real pain I want to try and increase my quality of my videos and having my face in and out of focus is not the way to do that the other thing I don't like about it is it hasn't got um dlog so the pocket 3 has a dlog profile which is almost like a raw profile if you know anything about photos so Skies sometimes burn out on this I can't get my exposure right and the sky right with doog I'm hoping to get a little bit more dynamic range which means I'm going to have a little bit better quality videos so that's another reason there is a flat profile on here which I use there is a standard profile here which is similar which I also use but it's not quite the same because the dynamic range I don't find is the same amount as I would be probably getting on the pocket three or that's at least what I'm hoping to so those are the cons now whether that's a deal breaker for you would really depend on your situation and what you're using it for um certainly for travel I don't think that's a problem and if you ended up buying a load of batteries then you could use this pretty much all day and charge it in your pocket but for me the way I work not quite so much and a couple of other small little niggles one of which is the fact that there's only one card in here um if I've gone somewhere and traveled for instance in the videos I've just been up to the highlands of Scotland if IID have got up to one of there up to there up at dawn photograph something recorded a load of video and the card corrupted that would have annoyed me a lot um so another backup card would be good I know the pocket 3 hasn't got one either so that's all fine um I it's something I'm just going to have to live with speaking of quality as we were um the footage in low light again I think is quite noisy time will tell whether the whether the pocket 3 is even is any better but from what I've seen and I've seen some footage um and I've used a pocket 3 the quality as Sunrise from a pocket 3 is better than this so to sum up what do I think should you buy one of these things well this is actually been fantastic it's a really really lovely little camera um when I go away traveling and I'm just not vlogging I'm just going to take some pictures this is definitely going to come with me it's going to stay in my camera bag I'm gonna use it but with a pocket three which is better handheld I think the need for me to carry two tripods is something that I've been working on and I think with a pocket free I won't need to have two tripods with me with this I tend to find it needs to be on a tripod so but it's still going to come with me it's a it's going to be great backup camera it's going to be a great uh camera for time lapses it's going to be a great camera for different sorts of footage when I'm doing other stuff so still highly recommend this if this is going to be your first camera having stepped out of a mobile phone you're going to be really happy with it this is your first uh foothold into the nickon ecosystem you're going to be really happy with it and your skills that you learn are going to cross fertiliz into bigger cameras if you want something just to take with you and stick in your pocket you're going to be really happy with this okay if you can put up with the focusing or the lack of sometimes or the suspect focusing sometimes um this could very well be the camera for you so I hope you found that useful um highly recommend the z30 as I said uh any comments any questions you want to ask me please put them in the comments down below and I'll get free to answer them all at some point so thanks every so much for tuning in um until next time Sunday at 6:00 thanks for watching see you soon tada

Channel: Dave Peck Photography

Views: 1,986

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Id: XmmrsPxrzE8

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2024