Nikon Z8 & Z9. The first 10 settings I always change.

hey everybody in today's video we're going to be talking about the first 10 settings that I'd recommend you change in the Nikon Z8 and the Nikon z9 this video is specifically designed to get you running change some of those settings that you would just change once and then never change ever again just to make sure the camera is set up correctly and then as you start to use the camera in the coming weeks you can then start to really customize how you want it to work so this is not going to go into the full customization of the menu settings maybe I should do that but in this video we're mainly going to be looking at those initial settings that I would always go and change these are the things that I change when I get my first new camera and how I want it to work Straight Out of the Box the first setting really straightforward and this is not a sign of things to come a lot of these get way more complicated very quickly but the first setting I would change is setting the time and date for some reason in Nikon Z series cameras the camera does not prompt you to set the time and date when you first start the camera this is something that did used to happen on older dslrs but doesn't happen on new Z cameras so you might have noticed that there's a small flashing red icon in the corner of your screen and you might be wondering what that icon is well it's telling you that you have not set the time and date so definitely go do that first the next setting that you're going to want to change is your image quality and more importantly your raw recording settings in the Nikon Z8 the default raw recording setting is high efficiency star and the default image quality setting is jpeg normal so if you know that you want to use this camera in a raw format I'd imagine that most of you would then you want to change your image quality to raw or raw plus JPEG and then you would also want to make sure that you are changing your raw format from high efficiency star to lossless compressed if you want the best raw quality out of your new camera if you don't necessarily need lossless compressed and you are in a situation where you want to have smaller file sizes and larger buffer rates and extended periods of time of shooting then high efficiency star is definitely worth using but do keep in mind that that's what it will be set to out of the box it will not be set to lossless compressed out of the box so just make sure that if you wanted to go and change that that you do for the next collection of settings we're going to be talking about autofocus settings specifically so the first one is AF activation this is a setting that I personally go and change myself on every new camera that I use I always go and turn autofocus off of my shutter button because who even uses the shutter button to focus anymore right I know that some of you still do but for me personally I moved away from focusing on the shutter button a long time ago and I've never looked back since so one of the first things I do is I remove auto focus from the shutter button that helps me not just in things like sports and Wildlife but it also helps me when it comes to landscape photography as well so I've always got into the habit of focusing using AF on rather than focusing using the shutter button so I turn that off the only problem that that might cause you to have would be if you hand the camera to somebody else so if you hand the camera to somebody that doesn't know about using an af1 button and they just expect the camera to focus from the shutter button obviously that's not going to be the case when you change this setting the other autofocus setting that I always change straight away is focus Point wrap around this is a really simple one it's not necessarily going to make your autofocus any faster or change any performance like that but it does make it easier when it comes to moving your auto focusing points around Focus Point wrap around allows you to wrap your point from left to right and top to bottom if you don't have Focus Point wrap around turned on then what will happen is once your focus point hits the edge of the frame it just stops and then if you needed to get to the other side you'd have to go right back across the frame again whereas with Focus Point wrap around turned on you can just wrap that focusing Point around to the other side left to right top to bottom whichever way you want to go just makes it so much easier to move your focusing points around now this next setting is incredibly important and that is your focus Point display options and most specifically your focus Point display options for AFC so one of the things that a lot of people always used to ask me about Z6 and z7 was when they're in AFC the camera won't show you the box in green it always stays red and that is not something that you can change on a Z6 or a z7 but it is something you can change on a Z8 and the z9 if you go to Focus Point display and then specifically AFC in Focus display that will not be turned on by default so if you turn that on now your focusing box will be displayed green when it's in focus and red when it's not in Focus also if it's something that interests you you can change the color of 3D tracking here as well if you would prefer a red 3D tracking box as opposed to the standard white 3D tracking box then you can change this in the setting below another autofocus setting that I always change is focus Point selection speed Focus Point selection speed is not going to increase the performance of your autofocus don't get this setting wrong it does change the speed in which you can move the auto focusing box around on the back of your camera so if you're using single point wide area small wide area large or any of the dynamic modes or 3D tracking the speed at which you're able to move the box from left to right up and down this setting changes that speed I personally prefer to set this to High by standard the camera is set to normal if you're used to cameras running at normal speed and you change it to high the first thing is you might figure out that high might be too fast and that it takes a while to get used to I do recommend sticking with it if you do find it that it is just way too fast and it's not working for you then obviously change this back to normal it's a personal preference but I generally prefer to set mine to high okay so for this next setting I would always recommend that you turn on extended shutter speeds this is particularly important for those of you that want to shoot with slow shutter speeds for Landscapes architecture macro photography any situation where you might be doing a long exposure turning on extended shutter speed gives you access Beyond 30 seconds so by default the camera will let you choose 30 seconds and then it goes into bulb or time but if you turn on extended shutter speeds you can go beyond 30 seconds and you will find that you will then have access to 60 90 120 all the way up to 900 seconds in your Stills exposures this next setting is a must for most of you and that is the high frames per second viewfinder now again by default the viewfinder in the Z8 and in the z9 will run at 60 frames per second you can turn this to 120 frames per second now when you do that you have to go and turn that on in the camera's menu first of all and then when you do that you will see a slight change in battery life but it's not anything that I've deemed to be massively noticeable I've tried shooting with this High frames per second display on or off I generally prefer always running my viewfinder at 120 frames per second I wouldn't recommend turning that on and off if you're worried about battery life unless you're really concerned about battery life for me it's not been an issue on the Z8 and it's definitely not been an issue on the z9 with the bigger battery so just something to keep in mind if you are concerned about battery life it will ever so slightly change the amount of battery the camera uses but I think the benefit it's massively outweigh that that faster frame rate in the viewfinder is particularly important for things like Wildlife Sports fast moving subjects and you being able to track and follow that fast moving subject as well is really all down to how quickly that viewfinder can refresh and show you the subject in front of you so I'd always recommend turning that high frames per second view on unless you're a landscape photographer but for most people it's a benefit now I have thought about why someone might not want to turn this next setting on however I can't really think of a reason and that is to do with the Z8 sensor Shield so the Z8 and the z9 both have a sensor shield now that sensor Shield is not activated by default you have to go and turn that on in the cameras menu otherwise it will not activate when you turn the camera on and off so I'd always recommend going and turning that on if you want that sensor Shield to drop down when you turn the camera off that then puts you in a position where your sensor is going to be covered it reduces the need for cleaning Dust Landing on the sensor and so on it's definitely not like a fool proof thing but it will help in reducing the amount of dust that lands on your Imaging sensor so just something to be aware of that you do have to turn this on now one other thing I'd like to mention about the sensor Shield at this point I do see a lot of people say oh why doesn't the sensor Shield activate when I change lenses so the correct way to change lenses is to turn your camera off if you're changing lenses without turning the camera off you are effectively causing yourself more issues than it's worth when you just take the lens off straight away You're disconnecting the lens from its main power source without it effectively allowing to turn itself off this is particularly important for lenses that use VR they have a specific module in the lens itself that moves if you just disconnect a VR lens without turning the camera off that VR element does not have the opportunity to lock in place and it will then rattle around and move around in your lens so don't just take your lens off without turning the camera off first so hence why the sensor Shield does not activate until you turn the camera off it will not activate if you just take the lens off without turning the camera off so turn the camera off first take the lens off put your new lens on turn the camera back on away you go that is my key piece of advice stop taking your lens off without turning the camera off stop it and then finally the last setting that you might want to change is the Nikon z8s camera sound now the location of the speaker that generates the sound is in a slightly different place on the Z8 as it is on the z9 so with the z9 it was right under the eye cup and you could effectively really hear it even when your face was close to the camera the speaker being in a slightly different place on the Z8 means that you might need it to be a different volume especially if you come from a z9 personally I still set the volume to one because I want to hear it but I don't want anybody else to hear it and especially wildlife and things and so on so for those of you that are shooting in different situations where you might be shooting in quiet locations in quiet situations you might want to go and change that volume and for those of you shooting in very loud situations you might want to set it to the maximum volume and a little tip for you if you are shooting in a very loud situation and the max volume just doesn't allow you to hear the camera fire obviously because you don't get that physical feedback anymore you can plug in a pair of headphones and the shutter sound will play through your headphones if you were really shooting in a really loud environment and you still needed to know when your camera was firing or wasn't firing plug some headphones in and that sound will play through your head science so I do hope that you found this quick overview of the settings that I go and change first in my Z8 and in my z9 useful obviously there is always going to be personal preference when it comes to settings and there's always going to be those Deep dive settings that you want to go and find and spend a little bit more time on making sure that you set your camera up the way that you want it to work for you but hopefully these initial settings I've gone through I've just given you a little bit of insight into some of the most important things that I change straight away whenever I get a new camera if you have found this video useful do consider subscribing to the channel we are very close to 50 000 subscribers and that is something that I never thought I would have ever said and even to this day I still believe that to be the case that I just never would have anticipated that the success that this Channel's had and the comments and all of your kind words it just means a lot to me so thank you all so much for that thank you for watching these videos there are a couple more videos on the way shortly some of them are going to be about the Z8 some of them will be about other things I don't know what those things are but they'll be about other things so we'll see but I do hope that you've all found this video useful and as always thank you so much for watching goodbye

Channel: Ricci Talks

Views: 38,251

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Id: qXyvKGbax5A

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023