Nikon Z7 II vs D850 review: FINALLY time to switch to mirrorless??

if this video makes you want to upgrade raise some cash by selling your old gear to keh use this link to get an online quote in minutes and use this code to get an extra five percent bonus when you're ready to buy gear whether it's a mirrorless camera or vintage lenses keh has great prices on used gear with a 180 day warranty use the link in this code to get an extra five percent off thanks for sponsoring this video keh jose you love your ga50 you say it's the best dslr ever made i love it's my favorite but nikon has finally made a mirrorless d850 the z7 mark ii so you can finally join the 21st century so what about it makes it a mirrorless d850 okay first of all we finally have two card slots just like you got yeah but i've had this first okay i'll give it to you you don't even remember how old that camera is dude when was that thing released i think 2017 yeah it's got two processors now they've doubled the processing power so the autofocus systems are all much much better it's got eye detect autofocus which the first z7 didn't have okay and it's the same price you get so much more for three thousand dollars well being the same price does not mean it's the same caliber of camera like these have professional controls things are lighted when you want them to she thick so she feels good in the hand no that's not being fat isn't good like this is so much easier if you're going to be walking around thick and look at my control panel like look at that beautiful little oled what do you got there miss 1970s casio watch 19th century you got the iron man watch on your camera over there this works perfectly well and it's lit from behind i mean yours isn't that much greater that looks like it's from the 90s look at these quality dials versus yours yours looks like it should be on a disposable camera on the d850 changing the shutter mode is a dedicated analog dial that you can adjust when the camera is off changing the mode and white balance have dedicated buttons that you can hold with your left hand while your right hand adjusts the settings on the z7 you're limited to two small custom function buttons awkwardly placed on the front of the camera where i can't easily reach them while shooting okay well i think that all of these talking points and specs are well and good but we need to take these out into the real world and shoot and see if this is actually ready to compete with the d850 because i do think this is the greatest dslr of all time okay let's load up it's the end of the first quarter and my d850 is ahead four to one this seems like an easy win for me but tony is eerily confident [Music] [Music] [Music] it's a big point for me for travel scenarios like this because my body is mirrorless it's so much smaller and another big point because my mount is bigger and that means that i can use like wide-angle lenses that are just more efficiently designed check out the crazy size difference for a stabilized 24 to 70 f28 setup well i truly have not had a problem with the size of wide angle lenses but i have had a problem with mirrorless cameras having less efficient batteries so i'm thinking i'm probably going to get a point for battery life oh another thing i can still use all those f-mount lenses i just have to throw on a hundred dollar adapter not so fast that adapter only autofocuses with afs lenses my d850 also autofocuses hundreds of vintage f-mount lenses without focusing motor soap that actually saves me money because i can buy used lenses from keh that work with my d850 and have a 180 day warranty save an additional five percent with this coupon and nikon finally has the holy trinity of f28 zooms available so they haven't replaced all their dslr lenses but they do have the most important ones for mirrorless and those z-mount lenses are better than the old f-mount lenses partly because they take advantage of the wider shallower lens mount check out this clip from our 2019 comparison of the z-mount 24-70 f-28 to the f-mount equivalent the z-lens is smaller lighter contrastier sharper and a third of a stop brighter in t-stops i don't like what you're saying point point point point let's see how those features actually work in practice so let's shoot around here like we're on a little vacation even though we're only like a town over and uh see which one performs better let's do it once we got off the couch and into the real world my mirrorless z72 easily gained on her it ain't over till it's over folks you know one of the advantages of this should be the sophisticated focusing system because it can focus anywhere in the frame yeah but when you have the all auto focus points mode on it just focuses on whatever is closest to you so i'm trying to take a picture of this like gorgeous building but there's a tree branch in the corner of the frame and that's what it chooses to focus on and i can't move the thumb stick to change points i either have to completely change the focusing mode or i have to use the back of the screen and then touch it and that works okay with a wide angle lens but you know i'd like to be able to use the viewfinder and it just it's difficult to switch between focusing modes i'm not having problems with the d850 i can program different back buttons to either all af points or a single af point oddly you can't do that with the z7 so changing focusing modes requires multiple button presses tony i'm not having the same problem as you it will focus where i want it to but actually the live view focusing i forgot about this is really horrible do you see how it takes a while to snap onto anything with the dslr it's like two different cameras you have this great camera when you're using the viewfinder and then you have a terrible camera when you're in live view because they haven't updated it and with me i have a single system whether i'm using the viewfinder or the rear screen and both work flawlessly it works fine when i'm looking through the viewfinder but live view is not great i have to admit tony's right about that tony's red tony's red tony's red tony's red i was just changing my aperture and i wondered why it wasn't looking any different through the view finder and it's because i i don't have evf that's right with mirrorless cameras what you see is what you get point for me if i shoot at fa i see the depth of field i don't have to chimp i don't have because every time i take a shot i already know exactly what the results are going to be oh yeah shoot and review shoot and review just like a dslr user enjoy 1992. we're tied up now but neither of us will be happy unless this is a solid win oh live view is terrible oh so he is a short person you need to be able to use that live view right you know what go like this oh this is what it's like when your photographer uses a dslr you have to crouch like this [Laughter] that's so rude here's another point for me the d850s tilt screen flips down 90 degrees to make overhead shooting easier the z7 flips 45 degrees i guess that's okay okay wait i'm going to put my adapter on and you can put your portrait lens on this mirrorless body and see what life is like in the future chels i don't want to remember with nikon it's lefty tidy righty lucy easy to remember and you can focus in the corners of the frame if you want to you're not limited by the limited autofocus selection that's true here's a viewfinder recording i made a different day look how eye detect works corner to corner on the d850 the focusing points don't go as far out so you'd have to crop and post or use imprecise and slow focus recompose techniques it seems to be working well and actually i'm composing the photo better because you're not limited by the limited number of focusing points yeah how does it compare to the original z7 it's i detect autofocus it's working way better than the original z7 so what do you think if you're a portrait photographer would you be able to upgrade from the d850 and be happy with this yes i would but i think that the true test is going to be sports and wildlife see if they can keep up we don't have to do that test he's not seeming very confident so i'm eager to do that test tony has come from behind with just nine minutes on the should i say you've come from behind what's another term tony is gaining on me with just nine minutes left on the clock but i have a trick up my sleeve so i wanted some photos of these cute ducks uh but when they heard my shutter a lot of them turned away from me is that a problem for you tony my shoulder is a lot quieter but i also have a totally silent shutter that doesn't make any sound that's what silent means but silent shooting is only good for still or slow moving subjects when i tried to use it while panning to track a flying bird the rolling shutter effect was absolutely awful yeah so if you want to be discreet street photography press photography events weddings mirrorless is definitely the way to go though that one just looked up at me because i was making noise so that might be cute that's not an advantage chelsea while we're here maybe i'll just grab a little video clip of the ducks because they're cute you know i'll just put this in video mode and uh start recording and wow the autofocus tracking on this just works absolutely perfectly how's how's the autofocus tracking working on your camera chelsea um let me try oh you can't see it through the viewfinder can you no because your your camera has an optical viewfinder so you cannot record video with the viewfinder at all and the screen gets all washed out in the sun so with mirrorless cameras i can use the viewfinder and block out the sun and really see clearly what i'm framing up yeah actually even when i have the focusing point directly on the bird it's losing focus and then hunting and finding it again not only that but i have 4k at 60 frames per second with just a little bit of a crop i can output raw video if i use an external recorder all stuff you can't do and with the original z7 i found the video autofocus to be like not good enough i wouldn't recommend it but this i'm just gonna say it's good enough it does not have a flip screen though like for some reason they still just gave me a tilting screen so if you want to film yourself or you might ever be trying to film from the side or filming overhead shots like it can't flip straight down either it's still a little limiting and you might be looking at a non-nikon camera for that stuff still way better than a d850 okay maybe we should get to the sports and wildlife i want to do stabilization first really eager to get to that sports and wildlife i got this peter mckinnon nd filter gonna let me get some long shots pull the cap off bam beautiful this nd filter is so dense that i meant a one second exposure but i can still see the screen which i couldn't on a dslr because it just brightens everything up in a dslr the viewfinder would just be black okay let's see how slow i can go buy a z72 and you can just leave your tripod at home i got sharp one second handheld exposures with an unstabilized lens that stabilization also works with any lens even old f-mount adapted lenses manual lenses whatever because it's sensor stabilization also makes the video way stable if you're hand-held too and none of the nikon dslrs have that it is true i don't have in-body image stabilization but if i have a stabilized lens that it wouldn't even matter i i don't think this one is stabilized though no so tough luck it does matter okay you won that one that that quarter didn't go great for me but sports and wildlife is next there we go all right finally my wildlife test we're gonna head down to the water hopefully there are some animals to take photos of and they've got this huge 600 millimeter f4 and i think you're going to be surprised when i put that on here it's better i don't think so [Music] this little body doesn't balance this big old lens very well but nikon finally made a vertical grip for this so you can get that [Music] [Music] this advertises animal iaf and sometimes it works with cats and dogs if they have dark eyes and light fur but it doesn't ever work with wildlife that i've found and in fact you pretty much have to use a single autofocus point if you want to be able to select a subject among a crowded background or if there are branches in the foreground so the autofocus system basically reverts to old style dslr where you're using the thumb stick to move the focusing point around all right so i know that you're making fun of my dslr like it's outdated technology but this is a really great wildlife camera and i've been using it up until i switched to the r5 it has 3d tracking so the tracking is really excellent and also with the vertical grip you get nine to ten frames per second and that's not bad because a lot of cameras boast that they get a high frame rate and they really don't when we go out and start shooting yeah so that's what i found with this shooting action in high mode i get four to five real world frames per second tracking autofocus and then i can put in high plus mode but then i don't get a real-time view through the viewfinder which means i can't track moving subjects and there's so much viewfinder lag that if i'm shooting even a flying seagull then the most i can get is about three frames and then i lose track of it because while you're shooting the lag is crazy so if i were shooting wildlife sports or any kind of action there's no way i can currently recommend the z7 mark ii i would definitely tell people stick with your dslr for sports in action just way better yeah and that's not the only mirrorless camera that has that problem that is the reason i did not switch to mirrorless for wildlife until this year when i switched from this d850 for wildlife to the canon r5 and it's because that that blackout that you get it messes up your tracking you know you'll get a shot where you finally get a bird to dive and hit the water to be fishing and you miss the shot because you can't see what's going on and you and you're losing your subject in the frame so that is actually really important in practice you talked about 3d tracking and it works great on the d850 you can have a single autofocus point you put it on your subject and then wherever it moves it continues to track it that's so important for shooting sports where you want to shoot a particular player maybe it's your kid maybe it's your favorite athlete not the defenders that are surrounding them this does not have any kind of tracking like that if you put it in all auto focus points it will pick the subject for you and then track it as it moves around the frame but you can't select a specific subject at all and if you do want to use tracking you have to take your eye away from the viewfinder and then touch the rear screen to select a subject and then it does a good job tracking it but you can't be shooting telephoto with the rear screen it's just too hard like you really need to be using the evf they could fix this with a software update but we've been complaining about this for a couple of years and they haven't done it yet complain harder okay i think we're ready to tally up the score and uh declare a winner i won but mostly because of the video features i won if you're a stills only shooter the d850 might be the better choice the dslr definitely better for sports in action yeah for travel photography portraits they both work well but this is smaller and the eye detect makes portraits work a little bit better that's true i don't think this will keep you from getting great photos when you're traveling but that will is a little bit lighter but this doesn't feel nearly as good in the hands no way this has better grip better buttons and dials lighted buttons like it's a proper pro body whereas it still feels like kind of a lightweight consumer body but if you're shooting any kind of video and you're not going to be in front of the camera you're behind the camera this is superior in every way to the d850 i'll give you that it's way better at video and the live view on this is appalling nikon has come a long way so if you are considering upgrading to mirrorless now might finally be the time you can also win a free z7 mark ii we'll literally buy it for you and give it to you at windowscamera.com or you can have a sony a7r iv or a canon r5 a final thank you to our sponsor keh for making this possible sell your old cameras lenses tripods and more to keh at this link and use this code to get an extra five percent you can also save money by buying from keh at this link and getting a 180 day warranty this code will give you a 5 discount thanks for sponsoring this video keh did you say subscribe subscribe give us a like and subscribe bye guys

Channel: Tony & Chelsea Northrup

Views: 148,507

Rating: 4.6948023 out of 5

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Id: 31n0NJiFcvM

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021