My Laotian photo model: Nikon Z7 with 24-70 f/4 @ 70 mm, f/5.6

I thought long and hard about the title of this blog, which is a record of my first impressions with the Nikon Z7 kit, including the FTZ adapter and the Z 24-70 f/4 lens. The title shall not suggest that the Z7 is a bad camera, far from it.

The internet is already flooded with hands-on VLOGs from paid-for press events, unboxing videos, and full reviews of the Z7 image quality, although the only available software yet to digest the Z7 RAW files are ACR and Nikon NX-D.  But as long as we cannot look behind the curtain and check the amount of in-camera cooking of the RAW and JPEG files, and there is no way to calibrate the color, it makes no sense to post 100% crops of sample images. And I can’t really call this a review.

I received my Z7 kit last week with the first batch of deliveries into Switzerland. It’s not my first experience with mirrorless though, as I had diversified my equipment with the Olympus OMD EM1 MK II, because of the need for something lighter and less prone to motion blur, allowing to leave behind the tripod when travelling light or when its use is not allowed. But I never used the Oly for serious portraiture or event photography, where focus tracking and accuracy plays a leading role. And the m4/3 sensor shows its limitations in an A2 print, not so much in perceivable resolution but in tonality, something that is difficult to describe if you haven’t seen it in person.

Expecting about the same image quality as from a D850, I was excited that Nikon finally entered the full-frame mirrorless war, as it is often termed. This definitely prevents more Nikon users to give in to the hype and abandon ship. I never considered selling my gear at a loss; the image quality of the D800 series is just too good compared to the conceivable (affordable) alternatives, and the latest D850 is presumably the best all-round DSLR ever built.

In short, the Z7 camera handles well, for Nikon shooters, although it required an entire weekend to adjust the settings in a way that the camera operation stays somewhat in tune with the D850. And although, or because of, the i-button functionality is largely improved, now yielding a menu that is customizable, as well as the custom U1-2-3 modes available on the regular mode dial, these changes are a threat to the muscle memory when using both cameras in parallel.

As a side note, it took me quite a while to adjust to the exchange of the zoom and focus rings on the new 70-200 f/2.8, something that was sold by marketing as an improvement in handling. It would have been more sincere to admit that this change came out of optical necessity, fair enough considering the optical performance of this zoom lens.

The new Z-mount is huge, and it feels strange to mount the FTZ adapter with the large side toward the camera. I can’t get used to seeing the naked sensor only 16 mm away from the flange when changing lenses. It didn’t matter on the Olympus, because the 12-40 zoom is my only lens. Let’s see how susceptible the sensor is to dust and scratches under normal operation conditions. In DSLRs, the sensor is hidden behind the mirror and the mechanical shutter. Of course, the sensor is protected by a thin sensor cover glass, but I don’t know how easy it would be to get it replaced.

I really like that you can reconfigure the focus ring on the new lenses, for example, to exposure compensation; combine this with the M mode and auto-ISO, and save it to the U3 custom setting. Cool!

As a final remark on the handling of the Z7, there is no L-bracket for tripod mounting available yet, but RRS are taking pre-orders. A battery grip is announced for later, but this somewhat defeats the idea of a smaller and lighter body.

The EVF is as good as it gets in resolution, color, and refresh rate; better in low light than the prism viewfinder of a DSLR, offering a preview of exposure (sort of), white balance (sort of) and depth of field. This makes focusing with manual focus lenses so much easier. One of the most important features, imho, is the instant preview in the EVF, so you don’t need to chimp on the main screen. And you can choose the displayed info such as histogram, grid, focus peaking, and level meter without taking your eye away from the finder. However, I wouldn’t feel like peeping into a screen for hours on end, during sports events or on a safari. And there is no doubt that reading data off the sensor sucks on the battery. At least you can easily switch off the monitor by pressing the monitor-mode button on the left-hand side of the viewfinder.

From my own experience, battery life can be an issue though; I had to make do with two charged batteries on a trip to Nepal because an avalanche had destroyed the power line in the Manang valley. Not using live view and refraining from chimping I managed to take hundreds of photos over a span of ten days; this would definitely not be possible with a mirrorless, but then, how often do you shoot without access to the mains supply. The Z7 uses a battery compatible with the D850 but in a new variant that has circuitry to support USB-C charging, the kit comes with a USB-C charging cable and an external charging device. This is convenient for Mac users because separate card readers and chargers can be avoided on shorter trips. I already haul a kilo of electronic junk such as batteries, chargers, dongles, cables, and card readers. It hasn’t gotten better with Apple’s suppression of the card reader, HDMI, and USB ports on their MacBooks.

One XQD card slot can hardly be called professional, as you may have read elsewhere. But XQD makes sense for Nikon, since owners of their latest DSLRs will have the cards, and the kit is delivered with a 64 GB card. Moreover, these cards are about 5 times faster than SD and you almost never notice buffer clearing after burst or focus-shift shooting, and they are supposedly more robust. But I agree, if there is no way to backup cards, again, longer trekking tours come to mind, I’d rather have a second slot for a backup.

I bought the Z7 mostly because of the lightweight 24-70 f/4 zoom lens, which turns out to be very sharp (widish) open, consistently across the aperture range and focal length, right up into the corners. I notice a tiny flange misalignment that makes the upper left and lower right corners tack sharp while there is a little falloff in the corners of the other diagonal. Stopped down to f/8 there isn’t much of a difference to one of Nikon’s sharpest lenses, the about $ 2 k prime 28 f/1.4 and no visible difference to the 45 f/2.8 PCE.  That is to say, the Z 24-70 beats the 24-70 f/2.8 for the F mount by quite a margin; a lens that accounts for about 70% of my images but I never loved. It’s worse than the 14-24 f/2.8 and the 70-200 f/2.8 at the corresponding focal lengths and it lacks image stabilization, which sets you back to to the rule 1/(2*f) to 1/(3*f) for the required exposure times.

The Z-mount zoom also focuses closer than the 24-70 f/2.8 for the F mount.  I won’t say more at the moment before I haven’t seen the final results from CaptureOne. I’m not expecting big surprises though, because my judgement is based on shooting the F mount lenses with the adapter on the Z7, so I guess that the same in-camera sharpening and distortion corrections are applied. Talking about the FTZ adapter, I am delighted to see that it doesn’t compromise the focus speed in real world applications.

The AF system is snappy and the field of coverage extends over about 90% of the image area. The joystick has the same functionality as on the D500 and D850 and allows to assign back-button focus. The AF system gives the impression of a true phase-detection system (like in the DSLRs) and doesn’t show the typical hunting of earlier mirrorless cameras, including the Coolpix A, and live-view focusing on the DSLR. As a first time for a Nikon, there is in-body image stabilization (IBIS) which Nikon calls in-body VR. It also works with the older non-stabilized primes via the adapter. However, here is the elephant in the room, the IBIS performance is nowhere near the claimed 5 stops. It gives me a maximum of 2.5 stops when using the electronic front-curtain shutter. On the other hand, the Olympus isn’t much better although a smaller sensor, and thus a smaller moment of inertia, should increase the bandwidth. This would also correspond to my somewhat higher perception, which comes from the fact that you can get critically sharp images at 1/10 of a second, a time domain that is simply inaccessible with a DSLR.

The following table shows a test that I performed out of curiosity whether, or not, there is still a need for the Olympus (apparently there is for video but I am not in position to give a qualified comment). The test setup consisted of the Laotian statue placed at eye level with a camera to subject distance of about one meter. A series of 3 times 10 exposures was shot at 35 and 70 mm focal lengths, continuous autofocus on the statue’s left eye and a ¼, 1/10, 1/30, 1/60, and 1/125^th of a second exposure time. The table gives the keepers out of a series of ten when critical sharpness is required. The uncertainty between the three series is about one shot out of ten for exposure times up to 1/30 and less thereafter. Add another bonus shot when relaxing the criteria, for example for prints smaller than A4.

Keeper rate within a series of ten. Averaged over 3 series.

According to CIPA testing the Z7 was rated at 5 stops which suggests you can get consistently usable shots at 0.5 secs for 70 mm focal length (5 stops below one over 2 times focal length), which I could clearly not reproduce. At 0.5 sec I could perhaps get one usable shot in ten with IBIS enabled. But 2-3 stops are realistic and there is, indeed, a visible difference between ISO 400 (which may even yield a more organic look) and ISO 1600 that shows noise and reduces the highlight head-room by two stops. The Olympus and Nikon yield about the same stabilization, while the vibration reduction of the 70-200 f/2.8 lens follows suit at 1 stop. But what is more astounding is that both mirrorless cameras give defocused images at about a rate of one in ten images (compare lines 3 and 4 in the lower table).  This is a behaviour that I had observed with the Fuji GFX 50s and that I was warned about by a colleague who often takes family portraits with a mirrorless. The phase detection AF system of the DSLR copes much better with the tiny movements that not only require stabilization but also slight refocussing. This is also reflected in the AF tracking performance that turns out much better on the D850.

Before someone tells me that image sharpness is not required to create art, I must say: I am slightly obsessed about image quality and aware of the fact that nobody asks a cook about the pot in which he has prepared the dish. But this is a bit like saying: better healthy and poor than rich and sick. There are images in the reportage and street photography genre that don’t require technical perfection. Nobody cares about the focus plane or grain size in Nick Ut’s Terror of War, but subjects like Michael Wolf’s Transparent City are another matter. Without a high resolution and absence of coma and flair, these images simply make no sense as a large print.

On an upcoming trip to Havana I will carry the less obtrusive Z7 combo around my neck, while the D850 is in the backpack and comes out for portrait shoots and tripod work. Which camera I will take to the Himalaya next year still needs to be decided and will depend on the next lens releases for the Z mount. I applaud to see slower lenses on the roadmap. Who shoots landscapes or architecture at f/1.4? For that matter I would have much preferred Otus-grade lenses at a maximum aperture of f/2.8 with half the weight and price.

For the time being, I am holding on to my DSLR. SR