Thanks to everyone who stopped by and endured my two hour and twenty-five minute presentation on the Nikon Z8 last Friday. Despite working from a space that needs renovation and isn’t yet ready for studio use, things went smoother than I thought they would.
That said, there’s one thing I need to fix. At the point where I was trying to demonstrate buffer performance, the camera couldn’t be heard and I was in DX mode, as well. So let me fix that here.
First, the camera has two cards in it: the slowest ProGrade CFe card (128GB 1700MBs) and the fastest ProGrade SD UHS II card in it (64GB 250MBs). The first audio file below is with the camera set to Lossless compressed NEF and Overflow (only primary card is being used), the second is with the camera set Lossless compressed NEF and Backup (both cards being used):
You’ll notice that with one card active the camera fires off 20 frames per second for about five seconds before we get into a buffer constrained situation. However, note how fast images are still being taken despite the buffer being full.
In the second clip, you’ll notice that you get 20 frames per second for about four seconds before the buffer fills, and then the continued images are taken much more slowly with the buffer full.
My point in the presentation (and here) is that the camera is only as fast as the slowest active card. If you want maximum performance, don’t use the SD slot actively while photographing bursts.
A number of questions came up during the presentation, most of which I answered quite quickly (and even that took 25 minutes at the end). Some of the more common ones had to do with things I didn’t go deep on in the presentation. Over the next two weeks I’ll try to provide a bit more coverage in those areas here on this site.
Finally, one thing that didn’t get fully mentioned is that some software already supports Z8 raw files. You can open a Z8 file in Adobe Raw 15.3 for instance. Here’s a couple of quick and dirty images and processing (Z8, 400mm f/4.5 VR S):
Again, I’ll continue to provide coverage of the Z8 prior to the release of the camera on May 25th.
