Tag Archives: Nikon Z7

What If I Could Keep only One? Mid Term Assessment of the Nikon Z7

September 28, 2019 by Stephan Russenschuck | 1 Comment

Readers of this blog may have noticed that I followed the crowd and went mirrorless last November. Not in the sense of jumping ship to Sony (as seemingly all bloggers and youtubers these days), but adding the Z7 to the Nikon DSLR kit.

I was recently asked: what if I could keep, or better, carry only one? I am afraid that there is no simple answer, though I would be inclined toward the Z7 since I added the fabulous Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 S lens. Still, I refrained from the clickbait title “The End of the DSLR” for a good reason.

Continue reading »

Posted in Equipment reviews, Image quality, Uncategorized Also tagged , |

Badass Fins and Badass Distortions

December 16, 2018 by Stephan Russenschuck | 0 Comments

1959 Chevrolet Impala, La Habana Centro. Nikon Z7, Z 24-70 f/4 @ 24 mm. Distortion correction with the generic profile in ON1. Nothing is really straight in Havana, but it is not that warped.

The word badass has both negative and positive connotations, unlike the separate words bad and ass suggest. The positive meaning describes something impressive, admirable, and cool. The negative meaning refers to something frightening and tough.

The tail fins on the 1959 Chevrolet Impala (here in La Habana Centro) are badass. Fins started to appear on American cars in the early 1950s and peaked at the end of that decade. The pinnacle is the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Seville. The fins supported the concept of design obsolescence; although quite technically similar, the cars and their fins grew bigger every year, so that customers could clearly see the difference between the models.

The geometric-distortion aberrations* of the Nikon 24-70 f/4 S for the Z6 and Z7 mirrorless cameras are definitely badass, whether or not they are a matter of concern will be the subject of this post.

Continue reading »

Posted in Equipment reviews, Image quality, Travel photography Also tagged , , , |

Beware of the Mirrorless Hype

October 7, 2018 by Stephan Russenschuck | 2 Comments

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.

Continue reading »

Posted in Equipment reviews, Image quality Also tagged , , |