Nikon Z7 II Review - Another great camera from Nikon!

[Music] welcome back dprv tv viewers chris nichols here we're in beautiful canmore one of our favorite haunts we're gonna play with the nikon z72 now just like the z6 version 2 the z7 version 2 adds dual processor so we're going to see what that really changes about the camera system the advantages that's going to bring and then help you guys decide if this camera should be the right system for you now for handling aspect this body hasn't changed at all from the z7 the z6 the z62 you can watch any of those reviews and get a good overview of the handling but that's all a positive because really this is one of the best handling cameras in our opinion in the mirrorless full-frame market we love the grip we love the fact that we've got tons of customizable buttons top lcd display and everything is very rugged and proven to be very weather sealed now just like the nikon z62 we have one major feature change here in the body and that's now that we have dual card slots this is a welcome addition but you have to understand how it works differently than the z62 these cameras have always had an xqdcf express card slot and on this camera with its huge file sizes that was very important to maintain shootability now having the sd card slot it is going to slow the camera down to the speed of the sd card if you're shooting to both cards at the same time for example now the z62 that's not such a big deal because with 24 megapixels and a big buffer you can get away with it here on this camera i do like that it now gives you that extra safety that redundancy but keep in mind that that sd card slot here is going to slow down these much larger files and that might be an issue so sports in action i'd still probably just shoot to the cf express card but in the studio or shooting a wedding or something you might like that extra redundancy so i've just entered this field of mounds of snow and it's very reminiscent of one of the ending scenes in the movie stalker by andre tarkovsky where i could be ripped apart at any moment and if you have no idea what i'm talking about for shame go change your life and watch that movie today now we still have the same back panel display from the z7 it's a just over 2 million dot touch screen panel and it does vertically tilt there you go a lot of photographers are going to like that and again very sharp and very easy to use and even fairly viewable in sunlight like this now unfortunately we do have the same evf from the original z7 z6 camera as well and i say unfortunately but you know let me give you guys some context now on the z6 a 3.69 million dot evf is still very good for a camera of that class and price point the real issue here is when you look at this evf compared to the competition that this camera at a higher price point is going up against i mean we're talking about cameras like the panasonic s1 r the canon r5 the the sony a7r iv and in those situations i mean 3.69 million dots is going to be definitely the lowest resolution out of the bunch it's also still stuck at 60 frames per second as its refresh rate whereas other cameras evfs are going to push into the 120 frame per second range so that's where this is lagging behind now this price point is a little bit lower than those same cameras but i do feel like they could have justified a better evf upgrade here even if it did cost us a little bit more all right let's talk about autofocus on the z72 it is improved over the original series it's the exact same system that the z62 has now in the nikon one thing that does work excellent is the eye detect autofocus and it needed improving because the original series focused a lot on eyelashes or behind the eye and now with this camera i'm getting nice shots of the iris in focus with a high hit rate i shot my daughter here over the christmas season lots of low light situations and it did very well so in that regard i was very pleased and that could be very useful if you wanted to do wedding shots or some low light journalism this does now have a wide area auto focusing system where you can set a bounding box around an area unfortunately you still can't change the size of that box but if you're trying to do eye detect and you want to limit it to a certain area you can keep that box in the area and it'll only track on that subject now where this camera is going to kind of let you down is the tracking autofocus that's the main issue here unfortunately just isn't as tenacious as some of the other systems on the market and sometimes it will lose the subject or drift onto something else i just don't know if i would want to rely on this camera for sports and action and you know hardcore journalism but a lot of people probably aren't going to go to this camera for those kind of applications you'll have to see if that's going to impact you or not so i kind of complained about this on the z62 as well but you know with a new camera system as much as i know a lot of you are fine with a vertically tilting screen like this i do wish that we had another axis you know like the s1r does or the old fuji cameras just so that i would have the option to shoot low verticals and not have to you know see a very dark screen because i can't get the angle right now dual processors in the z72 give us some nice improvements and of course we've talked about the eye detect autofocus but we also get a faster continuous burst rate mode in general now nikon is saying you get 10 frames per second and you can get that with continuous autofocus as long as you're in single point mode we tested that and whether we were manual focus single autofocus or continuous autofocus with that single point we were getting the same burst rate so that is nice i do want to mention that when you go to tracking autofocus now we do lose quite a bit of speed i mean it depends on how fast your subject's moving but it was about half approximately of that 10 frame per second burst that we were getting without tracking autofocus i think you can still do a lot of family stuff and some light action no problem now the other thing that's improved dramatically is the buffer in this camera and that's good when we're dealing with such big files so we did a test you're shooting maximum burst rate 12-bit raw file only and what we were getting is about 60 shots before the camera had to slow down now that is a substantial amount of time especially when you consider how big that these files are but keep in mind you absolutely want to be doing this to the cf express card because it can clear that buffer the sd card is going to choke up pretty quick now when it comes to image quality the z72 has a lot going for it i mean this sensor can only be found in the original z7 the d850 and it's always been an excellent sensor you get 64 iso as your lowest base native iso and what this really does mean is high dynamic range so i've actually shot quite a few samples here today for you guys at 64 iso with very hard contrast deep shadows and bright highlights i've underexposed a lot of those shots to protect those highlights and you guys can go on to dpreview.com go to the sample gallery download those raws and then boost up the shadows for yourself and see how much detail you get back out of them it really is one of the major strengths here the nikon z72 has excellent high iso performance and low light situations and i mean sure the sony a7r iv is going to push 60 megapixels and you know the canon r5 sensors come a long way they've improved dynamic range a lot and they're a very fast reading sensor but when it comes to things like studio work or especially landscape where you really want that dr push capability this camera is going to be boss all right sorry everybody we got to interrupt the video because i have a new subscriber challenge i want to put forward to you now here's the goal we want to get to 300 000 subscribers before valentine's day 2021. now if we achieve that goal jordan has to shoot four episodes on a camera of our choosing now we've got some some might say cruel but i say interesting choices like a canon rebel t2i old school or you know nikon d7000 would be fun or the holy grail a canon xc10 if anybody has one of those and wants to send it please do that but you can also give them suggestions that you'd like for jordan to shoot those four episodes with we got to get to that 300 000. now let's get back to jordan he's going to talk about video features on the nikon z72 jordan here to talk about the video features of the z72 and they definitely added some things that we requested for starters we now get 4k 60 with a pretty minor crop actually because it's not reading out the full sensor so you don't need to dramatically reframe your shots the other thing is they gave you the ability to flip the manual focus direction all of us who have been using video lenses for years will really appreciate that now video quality isn't going to be quite as sharp or as good in low light as what we're seeing on the z62 because this isn't super sampling at sensor and reading the whole area but it's still good for most common uses and it makes it very usable in a pinch because you've got quite good auto focus and image stabilization if you just want to run and gun so yeah the z72 isn't the most compelling standalone video camera but i do think i might have found my new favorite time lapse camera you have that gorgeous image quality at iso 64. but this will build the video file for you and also save the jpegs and raws if you want to do a little bit more work afterwards in your editing software that is where this is going to be a very useful tool for me but enough about my face you want to jump back to chris who has found himself in an abandoned gas [Music] station [Music] so who's the z724 well i mean if you're looking for a hybrid camera this isn't the one i mean the z62 makes a lot more sense better video features for that camera and you know it's a good camera image quality wise it just doesn't set itself apart image quality wise from any of the other many cameras that use that same sensor but here we do have something quite unique i mean the z72 i think is excellent for people who are first off doing studio work portraiture work you know fashion model stuff the eye detect has been improved and you're gonna love that and 45 megapixels is plenty to get good quality shots i also like the color out of the nikon sensor it's excellent but really i think this is firmly aimed at the landscape photographer having that excellent dynamic range with that 64 iso is very unique to this platform and it does give you big advantages when you want to deal with high contrast situations and difficult lighting and as jordan has mentioned excellent time-lapse capabilities too i think it's also worth mentioning that nikon zed system was lacking for quite a while in the lens department but that has fully changed you have awesome both affordable and very professional lenses available and if you are moving up from a nikon slr you can move all of those over with the ft-z adapter very nicely one last note for who this camera would really be good for if you're still rocking something like a d750 or a d600 or something like that and you've been saving up and you're ready to now move up to a high-res nikon body i think this camera would absolutely make you happy now if you want more information about this camera compared to the competition you're in luck because next week we have our high resolution mirrorless full-frame camera shootout coming out we're going to compare this camera alongside the canons the sony's the panasonic's it's going to be a good video to watch please subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss that video coming up next week go to dpreview.com to find the sample galleries for this and many more cameras otherwise thanks so much for joining us we will see you soon

Channel: DPReview TV

Views: 128,581

Rating: 4.9292588 out of 5

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Id: pSZaCV74EsU

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021