ilkka_nissila

That's a UK store. Purchasing from the UK by a customer in the EU is just not very easy at all, I've experienced delays of 1-2 months where the item spends most of that time quite close to me in customs but I can't get it because they take their sweet time. Probably some paperwork is not correctly done by the store, resulting in long waits. As for gray market, I'm not really aware of the existence of a gray market for Nikon lens sales in the EU area. Isn't gray market without manufacturer's warranty? The EU doesn't allow the deflection of warranty responsibilities just because of a different company imported it, so there is no incentive for lower priced gray imports (Nikon would not be freed of any responsibilities by using an unofficial import path to the EU market, so where would the lower price come from?). Anyway there is no way I would buy such an expensive lens without Nikon's support for it. Prices do vary in the EU stores and often there are lower prices than Nikon Store's own prices or their recommended retail price. Also the taxes are different in different countries within the EU and Finland has quite high VAT. I believe stores are expected to charge the VAT according to the country where the product will be shipped to (rather than the country the store is in) but I'm not 100% sure. Anyway the 400/2.8 TC is an item which not many people can afford. On higher-volume lenses there are often significant discounts even in the EU area. Eventually perhaps the 400/2.8's price can come down once the eager and wealthy have purchased their copies.

Dieter, In your post you accidentally attributed a part of Mike's post to me. To clarify I am not selling my gear (or considering such actions) to help in the purchase of a 400/2.8. 😉

If I bought it from the UK, the lens would probably be buried in customs and perhaps never arrive. 😉 EU has such love for Brexit Britain.

15499€ here.

Not only expensive, the 400/2.8 TC reportedly has very long waiting times before delivery (I was told 12 months), but if there is one in stock that is of course a different matter. I don't see an acute need for new kit in your case (or many other posters for that matter). 😉 The 100-400 does focus closer, but at least I find the autofocus can be difficult with that lens in close focus. I'm hoping to shoot some frogs with it next month; my reference is the 200mm f/4D AF Micro-Nikkor which I can use with manual focus with the aid of focus peaking on the camera (or autofocus with a DSLR). I'm keen on seeing how the two lenses perform for such subjects in practice. Obviously the 100-400 allows adjusting the framing more easily while the 200 Micro is more optimized for close-ups but an older lens. The zoom does have in-lens VR which should be helpful if not using a tripod. With the 200 Micro hand-held it's rather loose in framing. 😉 I prefer using a small tabletop tripod in this case.

It makes sense that Nikon would advertise the 800mm as hand-holdable because it is uniquely so among 800 mm lenses of roughly comparable maximum apertures (though there are not many with exactly this aperture, there are some with nearby f/5.6 which are arguably less hand-holdable, and at the end of the day, at this focal length, perhaps 1/3 stop is not that great a difference in the quality of the finished images as it is in portability and price). However, some of the controls on the lens (such as the rear Fn button, the Memory Set button, and switches) are not accessible when hand-holding the lens in normal shooting position. This is true of just about every larger Nikon telephoto and suggests that the designers thought there are users who would be using the lens on a tripod or monopod. Otherwise there is no practical way of using the Fn button, for example, while shooting, unless it is programmed as a toggle. I personally know that I was often uncomfortable using the 500 PF hand-held for longer periods of time and consecutive hand-held shots had widely varying compositions (because I couldn't hold it in exact position). I got good results with it, but still it's less controllable when hand-held than when using a tripod. With even longer focal lengths it becomes progressively more difficult to achieve precisely composed results consistently hand held. Of course, it could be that this only bothers me and not others. 😉 I have no present plans on purchasing the 800 mm though. I think the 400/4.5 is the best suited one for my uses of the ones that they currently make. The 100-400 is nice and a flexible lens but it doesn't quite match the impressive out-of-focus rendering I see from the 400/4.5 (in posted images mostly) and also the 2/3 stops can contribute to image quality in photos of mammals especially (nocturnal ones such as deer). What is nice about the 100-400 is that it does appear to perform well wide open, and it does not change balance much when the zoom setting is adjusted. However, still I see images from the 70-200/2.8 to be crispier than the 100-400, and other people's images from the longer primes also. The 100-400 is very hand-holdable, though. Use of the rear control ring while holding the lens does get a bit awkward but it's possible. As long as the lens is not much heavier than the 100-400, I don't see any problem with temporarily holding the weight of the lens from the camera, but for a longer period of time it would not be terribly comfortable.

I think these long lenses are still primarily meant to be used on a tripod or monopod, otherwise it is not easy to figure out how those lens controls are meant to be used in practice. 😉

Okay, I was looking at a different image (p. 9). For me the problems with manual mode include the clumsy way to access EC and relatively time-consuming adjustment of shutter speed (in 1/3 stops it can take time to scroll (say) from 1/3200 to 1/200s. However, for other situations I do need the 1/3 stop control and so I'm not going to switch to full stop increments on the Z8. With the Zf the full stops are available on the shutter speed dial and 1/3 stops on the main command dial, without having to go to a menu to access the two options. E.g. when a deer goes from open area to inside a pine forest, the exposure settings needed change wildly in seconds. Aperture priority with Auto ISO handles this fairly well: A fast shutter speed with moderate ISO is suggested by the camera in bright light and when in the forest, it sets the maximum ISO I have set in the menu and achieves the rest of correct exposure by allowing the shutter speed to slow down. Often the deer stop for brief moments once in the forest, and a slowish shutter speed can work better than fast shutter speed with ultra-high ISO. Easy access to EC is important in this scenario because the forest is dark but there can patches of bright light. I am really bad at panning at slow speeds though. But moderate speeds can be OK and slow speeds can be successful once in a while.

Well, gannets feeding can involve pretty fast action in close-ups; Maybe it's an appropriate shutter speed.

The shot details say it was at ISO 2000. Two stops below sunny 16 seems reasonable with sun with a light cloud cover which is consistent with the appearance of the shot. I like A mode because it allows easy exposure compensation (EC) on the main command dial so I don't have to press and hold a button and then turn a dial to adjust EC which to me is very cumbersome in comparison. Shutter speed in A mode can be controlled with the minimum shutter speed setting in the Auto ISO menu. In the case of relatively fast shutter speed combined with small maximum aperture, the choices are not exactly luxurious. But it's interesting how differently people feel about these choices. 🙂 For birds in flight, different shutter speeds lead to different visual outcomes and the fast shutter speed is just one option. It's a lot harder to get good results with slow shutter speeds but it can happen, with the benefit of implied movement and lower noise.

On Saturday we got quite a lot of fog, and it was warmer than the forecast for the following days so I figured I'd try to find some deer to photograph, if they had come out of the woods. Z8, 100-400 at 400mm, f/5.6, 1/400s, ISO 3600. The following one is from Monday after we got some snow. Z8, 100-400mm at 400mm, f/5.6, 1/400s, ISO 1400. Finally some climbing. Z8, 100-400 at 400mm, f/5.6, 1/400s, ISO 320.

On a slightly related topic (sorry if it belongs to another thread), Nikon launched a settings guide for wildlife photography for the Z8 and Z9: https://download.nikonimglib.com/archive6/jsNgx001E7HK063uyaG39rhhoL57/Z9Z8_TG_Wildlife_(En)01.pdf I found it interesting that in the wildlife guide, they suggest setting auto ISO max ISO to 2000; I've sort of come to the conclusion that the Nikon 45 MP sensor works at its best up to 2000 and above that the 24 MP and 20 MP sensors come onto their own, but this doesn't quite mean that there is no benefit to the high resolution above 2000, it's more subtle than that. But I find it interesting that Nikon would themselves come to the same recommendation. (I think this is widely disagreed upon, but as a user of multiple cameras I've come to these conclusions. 😉) They also have settings guides for sports, auto capture, and video. In DSLRs I found that one could better understand some aspects of the logic of the autofocus modes by reading the corresponding guides. https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/589/Z_9.html It does seem a bit bewildering, how many options there are for settings nowadays. Even when shooting, I sometimes end up getting tangled up in settings. I have been taking the first deer photos of the spring on Saturday and Monday, and I don't find it at all easy to come up with the right AF area settings that would work for a variety of scenarios. Deer tend to be dark and perhaps the AF has sometimes hard time recognizing the closest subject's face and eye(s). Most of the time things work well but some of the time I do get out-of-focus results. I do like the silence of the Z8 in this situation it allows photography to continue for a longer time. For photographs of people I like the custom wide-area modes the most, making horizontal bars that cover the area where I would typically have faces, but with wildlife I've come to like the wide-area S best, as it allows a certain amount of specificity while enabling subject detection. Hopefully this is something I'll learn to do better in the future. 😉

Well, none of us work for Nikon or if we did, we probably wouldn't be able to talk about product details. 😉 From the past Z8 and Z9 update history, most features are the same, but the latest updates always seem to include something the other camera didn't get, in this case wide-open viewing for manual focus mode, and in the Z8's case there is Pixel shift. I imagine the reasons for this can be twofold: 1) product differentiation: Nikon would like people to find each model exciting on its own and justify for people to purchase that particular model, even if we already own some other cameras. 2) Nikon firmware engineers didn't have enough time to implement and test all features and so the FW updates are launched with what they finished on time. Bird detection could be more demanding computationally and maybe it would adversely affect battery performance in Auto Capture? Or there could be some issue that they haven't been able to resolve yet. I don't know. 😉 They may also want to sell the Z9 II and Z8 II models soon, so leave something for those models perhaps. 😉

It's the sensor which moves freely when the power is off or when LV is not active. In other models such as the Z8, the sensor is locked in position. I believe Nikon changed the ibis design to squeeze it into the thinner body of the Zf.

If you have several minutes of totality and your camera takes full size raw shots at 20 fps I don't know how there could be a situation where there is not enough time to get some correctly exposed frames. Personally I don't want to take any risk with my eyes and would not take off protective glasses even during totality as such experiences are not worth it for me to get a view of the event - I really need my eyes, and know people who have done solar photography and diminished eyesight as a result. Anyway I cannot see how several minutes would not be enough to get some correctly exposed frames. I am not saying it's not good to do one's research - it is, prepare as well as you can. To the original question, no, there does not appear to be a way to bracket in one direction only. I would do the following: set up the manual exposure for the partial eclipse based on trial shots with the normal bright sun in the frame and the filter on. Maybe shoot with slight bracketing sequences. When the totality comes and the shots go dark, then switch to automatic exposure (aperture priority) and run broad brackets. This way you don't have to change the manual exposure settings by a large amount between the different phases; by switching between M and A modes the camera will do that for you and once totality ends you can go back to M and the camera will remember the original settings. Switching between large contrasts (normal viewing of the partial eclipse with filter on and the totality without filter) in manual mode would take some time cycling across 1/3 stops. The Zf has the nice option of easy access to full stops on the shutter dial and I've really come to like it (1/3 stops are available on request from the main command dial). This is a faster way to make large exposure changes, but I would still do it by using M and A and M modes, in that order. What the FW 2.0 of the Z8 added is larger set of increment options: Increments of 1.3, 1.7, 2.3, and 2.7 EV have been added to options available when ¹⁄₃ step is selected for Custom Setting b2 [EV steps for exposure cntrl]. Increments of 1.5 and 2.5 EV have been added to options available when ¹⁄₂ step is selected for Custom Setting b2 [EV steps for exposure cntrl]. Bracketing programs with increments of 2.0 EV or more offer a maximum of 5 shots. I would imagine some of those options would work for you, setting the camera to bracketing burst and CH to do the brackets quickly and continuously.