The Nikon Z9 is a fantastic camera, but its size and price have proven to be serious barriers for many shooters. So now Nikon has this, the Z8, which is basically a Z9
with the latest firmware, but at 30% smaller and
nearly 30% cheaper too. What's not to like? Let's get undone! ♪ Gerald Undone ♪ ♪ He's crazy ♪ What's happening, everybody!? I'm Gerald Undone and every second that you aren't running, I'm getting closer. As usual, for disclosure, Nikon lent me this camera
to make this review, I don't get to keep it, no money changed hands, and Nikon does not get any input on this video's production or get to preview it before it's posted. This video does have an
actual sponsor though and that's iFootage. Now I don't like to make videos that I've already made and since this is fundamentally a Z9, I'd like to think I
already made two videos on this camera. So if you wanna know
about the regular stuff that's mostly unchanged, I suggest you watch my initial review. And I also have a video about the 2.0 firmware and the Nikon Raw. So instead, today we're going to be focusing on what's been improved and talking a bit about the 3.0 firmware that I never covered, because this camera comes with those latest features at launch. So let's start with what's
different about the body. It's smaller, which
means a smaller battery and less heat dissipation than the Z9, which we'll get to in a second. Ergonomically though,
it's a big win for me. It's not nearly as heavy as the Z9 and feels more like DSLR body. It's still large for a mirrorless, but very comfortable if you're used to something like a D850. And it's very spacious and forgiving if you've got big hands. The LCD screen is great. It doesn't flip out, but it's 2.1 million dots and gives plenty of mobility for tilting
in both orientations. The button layout is mostly the same for better or worse and the experience is extremely familiar. The body isn't as
weather sealed as the Z9, but it's still highly
resistant to inclement weather. It still features 3.5 millimeter
headphone and mic jacks, a full size HDMI port, and a USB-C port for power delivery, but now they have a second USB-C port just for communication, which is nice, because lately I've
been rigging out cameras and running into issues where I can't use the USB-C port for power if I want to use it for anything else. This isn't a problem here, which is cool. The card slots are different than the Z9. You now have one CFexpress slot, which is backwards compatible with XQD, and one SD card slot. Normally I would complain that this limits our ability to do backup recording with higher bitrate codecs, but Nikon still hasn't
implemented redundant recording in video anyway, so the different card types isn't really an issue for video shooters. However, I did complain
a lot about the card door on the Z9 and I'm happy
to report that this door is much easier to open. Although it does take some getting used to because part of the
grip opens with the door, so you have to reposition your hand. As I mentioned, the battery
is the smaller EL15c, the same form factor you'd find
in many other Nikon cameras, but it does mean we take
a hit on record times. Now as usual with any overheating tests, it's important to keep
ambient temperature in mind. I can offer advice for shooting in a climate-controlled
environment or outdoors up to about 24 Celsius or 75 Fahrenheit, but beyond that, your mileage may vary and very likely decrease. Also, remember that Nikon
now has a temperature threshold setting in the menu. They advised me that when
it is set to STANDARD you can expect about 60
minutes of 8K recording and when set to HIGH, you'll get closer to 90 minutes. And I found those numbers to be reasonably accurate in my environment. When set to 8K24 with the H.265 codec, I recorded for one hour and 35 minutes before the camera overheated, and after letting it
cool and recording again, I got another 19 minutes
before the battery died. So about one hour and 54 minutes on the battery in that mode. In 4K24, which is oversampled from the 8K, I recorded for one hour and 58 minutes without overheating
before the battery died. In both modes, I got
a "Hot Card" warning after about 20 to 30 minutes. This is because I was
using the CFexpress slot. You likely wouldn't see
this with the SD card recording. Now it's interesting to
note that you can extend the battery life in 4K24
recording by plugging in USB-C power delivery, but this camera still possesses the two hour and five
minute recording limit. I've asked Nikon why this
exists multiple times and I've still never gotten an answer. In a way, you could
say it works out nicely that it will either
overheat or the battery will die before that two hour mark anyway, and at that point you could just
do a card and battery swap every two hours, which will also help cool the camera. But it's just important to remember that if you need to record
long, uninterrupted clips, you'll need to hook up
an external recorder, which should also reduce
the overheating too. Speaking of cooling
off the camera, though, let's talk about the
hottest mode, 8K60 raw. In this mode, I got a yellow
temp warning at 11 minutes, a hot card warning at 12, then a red temp warning at 15 minutes, and then a red warning with
the word high at 23 minutes. It's funny how much
information Nikon tries to give with the overheating. You end up with a lot
of stuff on your screen. And then when it finally
overheats it starts a countdown, which is stressful, but helpful. Anyway, I made it all the
way to 24 and a half minutes, but then my card was full. This was using a 650 Gigabyte
ProGrade CFexpress card and I was using the more compressed raw. If you use the high quality raw, you get less than 15 minutes
with 650 Gigabytes at 8K60 Anyway, I quickly formatted
and started recording again to keep the temperature
up on the camera and the card, and was I able to record for just over another 23 minutes before it overheated. So that's about 48
minutes total of 8K60 raw with a quick format halfway through. If I let it cool for one minute, I could record another 10 minutes. If I let it cool for five minutes, I could fill the card again with another 24 minutes of recording. When recording in 4K60 on this camera you have the option to
enable extended oversampling, which lets you oversample
beyond the usual 4K24 and do it up to 4K60 as well. In this mode, you can expect
similar performance to 8K60, since that's basically what
the camera is reading at. In my test, the oversampled
4K60 overheated at 56 minutes. If, however, I recorded 4K60 in the binned or line skipped mode with
oversampling turned off, then I didn't experience any overheating. Lastly, let's say you record
a more modest 8K24 Raw, well first I only got
an hour of card space on that 650 Gigabyte card, but I did manage to quickly format it at that one hour mark and record again immediately and do that until the battery died, which for me was one hour
and 53 minutes total, which logically is similar to the 4K24 oversampled performance. So what's the verdict? Well, you're limited
to two hours recording either way unless you record externally, and many of the modes can get you almost two hours of battery
life without overheating. The modes that do overheat
more quickly should still get you close to an
hour in a studio environment and at least 50 minutes at 24C or below. But it also cools down quickly, so if you're just recording clips, I don't see this camera
being an issue for you, but if you want really long takes, you're gonna need to buy
an external recorder, and at that point, there's probably better options for the money. Now while we're talking about all these different recording modes, let's talk rolling shutter, because I didn't have my strobe when I reviewed the Z9, so now I can give you some actual numbers regarding the read speeds of this sensor. So if you record using
the full 8.3K sensor whether that's for an 8K recording or an oversampled 4K recording, you can expect about 14.5 milliseconds, which is slower than
something like an a7S III, but probably the fastest
of these full frame 8K hybrid cameras. If you shoot 4K120 or
the line skipped 4K60, the read speed drastically
improves to 4.9 milliseconds, which is extremely fast. I really like how Nikon
gives us the option between a slower, but higher quality 4K60, or a fast-reading, non-oversampled 4K60 for when we need that. I wish more brands would do this. If you switch to the DX crop, which still does some oversampling, but from a lower
resolution starting point, the 4K up to 60 frames per
second reads at 9.6 milliseconds, and 6.6 milliseconds
if you shoot at 4K120. This suggests that there'll
be some minor quality loss when comparing the 4K120 to the 4K60
in this mode, as it can only read faster if it isn't processing as much data. But overall, this is a fast sensor. Again, probably the best in its class. You know what else is best in its class? The new panel lights from iFootage, the PL1-80BN and 80C. The 80BN sets a new standard
for bi-color lighting with its innovative BLWW mixing technology which combines blue, lime, warm white and cold white LEDs to give
more precise performance and exceptional color accuracy, which also more closely mimics
the natural light of the sun. They also have an RGB
option with the PL1-80C, which actually manages to
double the output intensity of its colors compared to competing lights with similar wattage. Both lights feature a fine-tuned, 45-degree beam angle
granting a threefold increase in illuminance while
maintaining power efficiency, which allows for
consistent lighting even up to three meters away. And the lights can be controlled using the intuitive precision dials on the fixture itself or
with the iFootage Lumin app, which now offers a presets function that gives the ability to elegantly switch between different lighting
setups within the same scene. I highly encourage you
to discover the power and precision of
iFootage's new panel lights by using the link in
the description below. Now let's talk about dynamic range. So you've got four different
options for recording, there's the H.265 codec that will get you up to 8K30 or 4K120,
there's ProRes 422 HQ, which goes up to 4K60, there's ProRes Raw
which is 4.1K up to 60p, but I don't personally
mess with ProRes Raw much. I'm not a big fan of it and
I use DaVinci Resolve. And then you've got N-RAW which is the only way to get 8K60, but can also do 4.1K up
to 120 frames per second. So let's start with ProRes 422 HQ 4K24 in N-Log to get a baseline
sense of performance. Using the Xyla 21 and Imatest, we measured a total of 14
stops of dynamic range, which is reflected here
under Slope-based DR. But we also like to
determine how many clean stops of dynamic range we
have when factoring in noise, which can be seen here next to medium, which is with a signal
to noise ratio of two, and there we get 12.1 stops, which is a respectable score for ProRes, which tends to be less
forgiving than H.265. If we bump the ISO to 4000 from 800, which is this camera's second native, we can see that we
maintain our 14 stops total and 12 stops medium, which is great. However, if we switch to H.265, we get some very bizarre results. The noise reduction is
so intense that Imatest is suggesting that all
14 stops are preserved all the way down. And if you look at the graphs, the color channels have all bled together to form a black line, instead of separate channels as normal. The same thing happens
at both native ISOs, and even when shooting 8K in H.265. So I had a look at the shadows, brightened them up in post, and then compared them
to the ProRes version and sure enough we can
see significant blocking and artifacts when compared to ProRes, which explains the weird results. However, after further testing, I noticed that the issue
mostly resolves itself after a few seconds of recording. Now, there's still far
too much noise reduction in my opinion, especially
when compared to ProRes, but it's at least usable
and measurable now. And when doing that, we
see 13.8 stops total, but now with a medium score of 13.3, which is how you know the noise reduction is too aggressive. You shouldn't be able to
jump from 12.1 to 13.3 just by switching codecs. The 8K version when sampled from later in the clip isn't as offensive, it measures 12.4 on the medium, which is much more logical when you factor in the oversampling that
occurs by dropping an 8K clip on a 4K timeline. So my advice is that if
you want to shoot H.265 on this camera, shoot in 8K, but if you have to use 4K H.265, make sure you aren't
putting anything critical in the first few seconds of the recording. Give it a little buffer time to smooth out those artifacts in the shadows. But ProRes HQ is definitely
the better option all around. Now let's talk about N-RAW. If you drop 8K raw on an 8K timeline, our medium score drops to about 10 stops. This should give you an idea
of how noisy the raw is. But to fairly compare
it against the ProRes, we need to put it on a 4K timeline to account for oversampling
and the 4K limit of ProRes. When we do that, the score jumps to 11.6, which gives us our baseline before any noise reduction is applied. This is a very manageable starting point and more detail is definitely preserved in the raw when comparing
it to ProRes 422 HQ. So if you like to finetune
the noise reduction in post, this would be the way to go. But again, we have to consider
those absurd file sizes. I can get nearly double
the record time of ProRes than I can of N-Raw in
its most compressed state. So I'd say the overall
best codec on this camera for balancing image quality and usability would be the ProRes 422HQ. You can still oversample
all the way up to 4K60 from that 8K image, but with less hassle than the alternatives, while gaining a streamlined
post-production experience. But I should mention that the raw panel for N-RAW in DaVinci
Resolve has been improved. While I still wish you could decode to other well-known gammas, the clips are now correctly
displaying as 12-bit, the exposure adjustment
now works more logically where one point of
exposure equals one stop, instead of the previous 0.5 system. And the overall performance
of N-RAW seems smoother to me. However, the white balance adjustments still aren't easy fixes
like others I've used. You can't just type in a white balance and move on like you can
with other raw types. There are major color shifts
that need to be caressed. This is a disappointment
and furthers my case that ProRes 422 HQ is the
best choice most of the time. Another thing that's
improved since the last time I used the Z9 is the Nikon LUT. There is now a version
two of the LUT that fixes the issue of having major
jumps in the tonal range. The new LUT transitions
much smoother between stops. And I've noticed that
the LUT and view assist for the Z8 is a close match
to that v2 LUT for the Z9, so that's good. One thing to keep in mind though is the v2 LUT raises
your final exposure more than the v1 LUT did, so you might have to
retrain how you expose if you shot a lot with the v1 version. But again, the view assist on
the Z8 helps a lot with this. The colors of the new LUT
are slightly different too. Not a major departure,
but slight differences in luma and tweaks to the hues. I'd say the new LUT is
slightly more color accurate, but it's not a huge
difference once you account for the exposure change, but
the gradations are nicer. Now as I mentioned, there are some other improvements I haven't covered that
came with the 3.0 firmware for the Z9, which we'll
find here in the Z8. First off is the new Hi-Res
Zoom feature for 4K video. Basically, it uses the 8K
resolution of the sensor, but instead of oversampling, you can use the extra
resolution to zoom up to two times smoothly into the frame. It works well for what it is and could definitely be
handy for certain situations, but it does have some caveats. First, it only seems to work
up to 30 frames per second, and it also seems to disable
subject detection when enabled. Autofocus still works, just not as well. What's cool though is that you can set it to be activated by the
control ring of your lens so it feels like you're actually zooming. And speaking of lens rings, Nikon has dramatically expanded the lenses that support the new
linear manual focus throw and distance customization. Last time I had the Z9 this
only worked on two lenses, but now every lens I've tested works, some just require firmware updates. This is great and makes manual focusing a much nicer experience. They've also added integration for wireless timecode using AirGlu and the Atomos UltraSync BLUE. There's also been
improvements to the autofocus for better reliability. They've added more
subjects like "airplanes" and enhanced the tracking. I can't give a comparison here as I don't have the previous version, but I'd say it does feel pretty confident in most situations, but still struggles with
low light autofocus in video and is still highly dependent
on which lens you're using. I'd give it a 7.5/10 if
that's worth anything. And yes, for the photographers watching, it even takes pictures. It actually takes them very quickly, and firmware 3.0 brought some additional high-speed capture modes. And if you're in photo mode and you rotate to vertical orientation, the on-screen information
restructures itself to look better for vertical shooting. It doesn't do this in video
though as far as I can tell. Well, that's pretty much it. Like I said, this camera is fundamentally a firmware-upgraded Z9 in a much smaller and cheaper package. And that's saying something, because the Z9 is great! So as long as you don't
mind the worse battery or thermal management, this is nothing but upsides. And those issues aren't as impactful when you consider the
peculiar two-hour limit both of those cameras
put on your clips anyway. And you can always add
a grip to this camera to match the battery life
and form factor of the Z9, but for less total cost. And this is a cheaper entry point as well if you plan on adding external recording hardware to get past that two-hour limit. So no matter how you slice it, you're gonna be spending less
to get the same or better. They've basically made a great camera more accessible and
that's a win in my books. Alright... I'm done. (light upbeat music)
Gerald for the deep dive tech specs and Sidney Baker-Green for real world editing. Im really excited for my Z8. I absolutely never would have been able to afford it if I didnt work at a retailer for Nikon EPP.