Thinking of getting a Nikon Z9

BillN_33

BillN_33

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I've been a Nikon shooter for years - from the F2 and F3 etc etc to the D850/810/D750 and previous models

I have a lot of Nikon glass 24-70VR - 70 200VR - 300mm f2.8G VR - 600mm f4 and the newer 105 f1.4E - 300PF and 500mm pf - etc., etc.

I always been happy with Nikon glass, but as I shoot lots of birds a few years ago I felt that Canon had overtaken Nikon and I nearly switched to Canon

plus I feel that the mirrorless body with help with the stacked macro shots using MF lens

Reading the reviews the Nikon Z9 tracking system seems to have caught up with Sony and Canon, so I now fancy a move to Mirrorless and a Z9 which I would use with all my Nikon F mount lens and FTZ adapter.

I would be grateful to hear from Z9 owners about what they feel about the Z9 - which can now be bought for £5k with the FTZ adapter, (I know it's not cheap, but I'm well into retirement), but would seem good value for money
 
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BillN_33 said:
I've been a Nikon shooter for years - from the F2 and F3 etc etc to the D850/810/D750 and previous models

I have a lot of Nikon glass 24-70VR - 70 200VR - 300mm f2.8G VR - 600mm f4 and the newer 105 f1.4E - 300PF and 500mm pf - etc., etc.

I always been happy with Nikon glass, but as I shoot lots of birds a few years ago I felt that Canon had overtaken Nikon and I nearly switched to Canon

plus I feel that the mirrorless body with help with the stacked macro shots using MF lens

Reading the reviews the Nikon Z9 tracking system seems to have caught up with Sony and Canon, so I now fancy a move to Mirrorless and a Z9 which I would use with all my Nikon F mount lens and FTZ adapter.

I would be grateful to hear from Z9 owners about what they feel about the Z9 - which can now be bought for £5k with the FTZ adapter, (I know it's not cheap, but I'm well into retirement), but would seem good value for money
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I’m am in the same position as you retired last year and i have the 750 850 z6 and a lot of f glass got the 14:30 z / 24:70 f4 z/24:200 z/ 50 f1:8 z/ 85 z f1:8 just got the z9 last week and still learning how to use it with the 500pf go for it it’s later than you think lol
 
I'm in the position that the Z9 is too much and Z7ii is too little. I do birds but I feel my limitations are more towards operator than equipment.

If and when Z8 comes then my D500 and D810 might make way for that, but the D850 is still new to me.
 
welshwizard645 said:
I'm in the position that the Z9 is too much and Z7ii is too little. I do birds but I feel my limitations are more towards operator than equipment.

If and when Z8 comes then my D500 and D810 might make way for that, but the D850 is still new to me.
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I was waiting for the z8 or z6 3 or whatever but decided not to wait for months years waiting on it so went for the z9 I know it’s way better than I a will ever need
 
I recently tried a Z9, to compare against my D500 and see if I could justify the cost of upgrade. - I have to say that I only shoot wildlife, including 'BIF'.

My personal opinion after 2 days with both cameras, was that although the Z9 is a very impressive bit of kit, the results achieved, did not tempt me to change. - In fact, I have just bought another D500!

I'm sure that things will change in the future, but for now, the D500 still rules, when it comes to 'performance and value for money' in my opinion.

Whatever you end up with, I hope you enjoy using it!
 
Bill, as you know I have also always been a Nikon shooter with various bodies. I’m still using my D5 at times however the Z9 has become my most used body. I have similar lenses to you and they all focus as fast or faster on the Z9. Only you can decide but for me it’s a game changer. All bodies have their good and bad points though. I wasn’t sure about the ISO capabilities of the Z9 however I’m fine using at high iso with a little topaz Denoise . It’s not far off the D5 for high iso but beats it in so many other ways. Your money your choice but I’m enjoying the camera although it a big steep learning curve.
 
Been using my Z9s for some time and there is a learning process to them but it’s a very capable body, and with the glass you mentioned would be formidable. You don’t mention what you would be shooting but love both mine for my use case, never used canon or Sony as I prefer ergonomics and colour reproduction of Nikon so I will not make sweeping statements of what’s better or worse but I will say I’m impressed at the tracking ability of the Z9. I was initially down on ISO ability until I realised I was regularly shooting higher ISO than I had ever done with far better results at a a higher resolution. If you know anyone nearby borrow theirs and try, heard a few people saying they thought it too much for them and I can understand why If I’m honest.
 
If one does buy a Z9, is it essential to immediately also purchase CFe cards, or will Sony XQD cards suffice (assuming I don’t need or want huge bursts)?
 
just been looking at the additional costs - plus a couple of questions

a Z9 plus FTZ II is about £5k
Memory cards - 2 x 128GB at £170 each, plus a card reader, £100 = maybe up to £500 in total
additional battery = £200

also a couple of questions - my iMac 27" 5k is from 2014 running High Sierra - which I think is the latest MacOS that this iMac, (and also my MBP), can take - will this cause problems? - I'm quite happy at the speed in processing the RAW files from the D850 - (and I realise that I could upgrade the iMac with a SSD upgrade to obtain a little more "speed")

Lightroom - again running LR 9.4 release that again I think is the max that can run on my iMac and the High Sierra OS - will LR 9.4 recognise the Z9 camera?

Great to receive your comments and thanks for the above replies

Just as a passing comment, it is interesting the the Z9 costs £1,500+ less than a new D6
 
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toohuge said:
Cards are expensive, but you can use the USB c on the camera for transfer instead of a card reader ?

I don't think lr 9.4 will read the files. I had the same problem with a z7ii and had to upgrade the lr version. You may get away with converting to tiff and then importing
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Thanks

I believe that I cannot upgrade LR 9.4 as long as the computer will only run MacOS High Sierra - and as my iMac 5K is from 2014 the highest OS spec, (I believe) that will run on this machine is High Sierra 10.13.6 - so it would mean buying a new Mac, (I'm happy with the iMac that I have)

(almost getting into the usual upgrade cycle - new camera = new computer and upgraded software)
 
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BillN_33 said:
also a couple of questions - my iMac 27" 5k is from 2014 running High Sierra - which I think is the latest MacOS that this iMac, (and also my MBP), can take - will this cause problems? - I'm quite happy at the speed in processing the RAW files from the D850 - (and I realise that I could upgrade the iMac with a SSD upgrade to obtain a little more "speed")
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100% pc upgrade time first and foremost before any other discussion
 
BillN_33 said:
Thanks

I believe that I cannot upgrade LR 9.4 as long as the computer will only run MacOS High Sierra - and as my iMac 5K is from 2014 the highest OS spec, (I believe) that will run on this machine is High Sierra 10.13.6 - so it would mean buying a new Mac, (I'm happy with the iMac that I have)

(almost getting into the usual upgrade cycle - new camera = new computer and upgraded software)
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According to THIS you can upgrade to Big Sur.
 
Bill, to answer your original questions - yes, Z9 is a nice camera, but it is not a cure-all. It is no different to upgrading to a D6 in the sense that it'll be a jump technologically to your existing cameras. Single-digit bodies are always a step up from the Dxxx. Saying that, there's a learning curve to get the best out of any new cameras. Is the 'improvement' worth the extra ~6K investment you suggested? Only you can answer that. I updated from a D4s and it is my profession. I very rarely chase tech as I truly believe that you are better off learning how to best use the tools you already own.
 
If I want a new "Z" Nikon it looks as if I need to upgrade my 2014 iMac and also my similar age MBP

spent a few hours looking at various solutions

Maybe this will work

buy a 13" M2 MBP with 16GB and 1TB and add an external 1TB SSD
connect it to my 2014 iMac and use the iMac as a Monitor - desktop machine - (update - apparently this will not work - a 2014 27" iMac 5K cannot be used as a monitor with a new MBP) - back to square 1!!

I will then have the latest MacOS which will allow me to update LR and (I need another Laptop anyway)

additional I will need to upgrade MicroSoft Office as the version I have is from 2008, as I believe the 2008 version will not run on the latest Macs

so add £2k to the cost of buying a Z9 or Z whatever

anyone see any problems?
 
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Unless you need to portability I’d say look at the mac mini and buy a decent monitor. 16 or 32gb of ram are more important than the M2, always worth checking the Apple refurb site.
 
going back to my question of XQD, I have a shiny new Z9 on the way to me as we speak, but whilst I will in the future upgrade all my XQD cards to CFExpress ones, I have about 10 XQD (all 128gb Sony G), so a little loath to splurge out on CFExpress cards so soon after getting the body (I need to recover financially from that first), especially as I'll also need another card reader (already have a Sony XQD USB reader). I'll only be shooting in short bursts (I don't machine gun, and certainly don't need more than a few seconds at best), and for video will probably stick to 4k up to 120fps in 10 bit interval (currently have no use for the 8k or Raw video formats - maybe that's for the future), so would my XQD's suffice for the next month or so.

I know the Z9 is a beast and therefore deserves the best cards you can feed it (and I will get them eventually), but I want to grow into it over several years so plan to take my time pushing it to my limits.
 
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If you can shoot at the frame rate or video settings you need on the Z6/7ii then you will be able to use the XQD cards as you do now. It's only if you get to wanting higher frame rates or video you will find the limits of the XQD cards.

You need about 800Mbs to be able to use all the video modes of the Z9, and even at the 20fps I don't worry about more than a second or so. So in this case I use the Angelbird 512gb SE cards. These are low cost and have really performed well for me. I rarely if ever use 20fps so I never have to worry about buffering on those, and should I want to shoot at 8k then they will, but 8k files are so big I don't think I'll ever want to do it.
 
PeteStewardson said:
Unless you need to portability I’d say look at the mac mini and buy a decent monitor. 16 or 32gb of ram are more important than the M2, always worth checking the Apple refurb site.
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been looking at alternatives

strange that the new 24" M1 iMac has a maximum of 16GB - Apple seem to be "holding back" on this iMac?

when I bought my last 27" 5K iMac in 2014 I specified 24GB

will the new M1 iMac process D850 and Z9 RAW files as well as a 13" MBP with the M2 which can be spec'ed to 24GB plus

also there is an interesting utube vid on converting my 2014 iMac to a display monitor - (for some time Apple have prevented this happening, i.e. using the iMac as a second display for say a MBP)
 
BillN_33 said:
been looking at alternatives

strange that the new 24" M1 iMac has a maximum of 16GB - Apple seem to be "holding back" on this iMac?

when I bought my last 27" 5K iMac in 2014 I specified 24GB

will the new M1 iMac process D850 and Z9 RAW files as well as a 13" MBP with the M2 which can be spec'ed to 24GB plus

also there is an interesting utube vid on converting my 2014 iMac to a display monitor - (for some time Apple have prevented this happening, i.e. using the iMac as a second display for say a MBP
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target display mode I think its called, i also looked into it for my 2011 iMac and a Mac mini,eneded up buying a 24 iMac ,sold it to my sis inlaw and bought a Mac mini with an LG monitor but didn't like the matt screen so sold it and bought a late 2015 5k 27 iMac which has a gorgeous screen but Monterey is the last OS I can use and with 24 gig ram and internal SSD it pretty good but the M1 Macs were like lightening compared, but I cant afford the new apple screen to pair with the mini.
 
I'm using an M1 Max Mackbook Pro, admittedly with 32GB of Ram, and it is pretty fast. Image processing generally needs as much ram as you can give, although the apple silicon embedding the Ram and storage in the same package seems to speed everything up a fair bit.
 
Thanks Pete (y)
 
On the subject of Macs, I currently use two. One is my 2021 Mac mini (that I'm using right now), and that's a M1 Chip with 16gb Ram and 500gb SSD. It works perfectly for all my Z7 II files (and my OM-1), so would suspect it also will do well with the Z9 files (unless we are talking about 8k Raw video files, then I don't know).

My main computer though is my pride and joy is my 2022 (august this year) 16" MacBook Pro with the M1 Max 10 core CPU and 24 Core GPU. 32gb of ram and a 2TB SSD. It's an absolute rocket and beats my Mac mini hands down at pretty much everything and by a considerable margin. To give you a for instance, it replaced a 2016 15" Mac Book Pro with 16gb ram, an Intel 6 Core I7 processor and 1tb SSD. I recently rendered a 45 min 4k video in Davinci resolve and the older MacBook took 48 mins 23 secs to complete. The exact same project on my new MacBook completed in just 4 mins 35 secs - absolutely crazy. The 16" retina screen is a work of art and the best "monitor" I've used used for photography. Oh, and the battery life is astounding and easily lasts a day.
 
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SsSsSsSsSnake said:
target display mode I think its called, i also looked into it for my 2011 iMac and a Mac mini,eneded up buying a 24 iMac ,sold it to my sis inlaw and bought a Mac mini with an LG monitor but didn't like the matt screen so sold it and bought a late 2015 5k 27 iMac which has a gorgeous screen but Monterey is the last OS I can use and with 24 gig ram and internal SSD it pretty good but the M1 Macs were like lightening compared, but I cant afford the new apple screen to pair with the mini.
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Target display mode ended in 2014 when the new Retina 5K iMacs were introduced - since then it's not been possible to use an iMac as a display screen/monitor
 
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Now we've had firmware V3.0 do you think that's it for the major advancements? No other camera has gone past v3.5 IIRC?
 
You still got your Z9 Pete - thought you had sold it ?
 
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