Now that some of you have your Z50II in hand, the questions I tend to get have to not so much do with how does it work or does it do X, but rather how you should configure it.
Here's a few short bits to consider:
- PHOTO SHOOTING menu — Everything (other than focus and release mode, which I'll deal with separately, below) here is pretty straightforward. However, if you're picking any Image quality that includes RAW, make sure you go to RAW recording and select Lossless compressed. Why? Because you still may have a converter that doesn't understand the High efficiency modes. I tend to also suggest you get out of the Autos (no Auto ISO, no Auto Picture Control, no Auto white balance) and take more control over what the camera is doing. That's particularly important as you try to learn what the camera is doing, as Auto functions make it difficult to understand what's doing what.
- VIDEO RECORDING menu — If you're going to record video, the key here is to first set Video file type, then set Frame size/frame rate. That's because certain options in the latter aren't available for what you select with the former. To get full exposure control in video, remember you have to be Manual exposure mode (M).
- CUSTOM SETTING menu — #A6 is where you set Back Button Focus (make sure to go one right Direction pad press further and set Enable. #A7 has to be on to enable AF-area mode handoffs (Hybrid Button Focus). In #A10 I suggest you set the border width to 2. If you're going to use Pre-release capture, you need to set the options in #D3. #D6 will interact with release mode. If you want the up to 15-minute long shutter speeds in S and M exposure modes, you need to set #D7. I'll leave the #F1, #F2, and #F3 customization options to you, but I'd tend to start without them and use your first sessions to figure out what you want exposed upwards into a physical control. These three functions are the gold mine for getting your Z50II working the way you want it to.
- PLAYBACK menu — You might want to set Picture review to On (monitor only) or Off.
- SETUP menu — There's a lot here you'll want to review as soon as you can, but for your early basic photography, nothing that's a "gotta do." Distance units to feet if you're American, Save focus position to On, Save zoom position (PZ lenses) to On, plus setting Image comment and Copyright information should be on your to-do list at some point. I like Self-portrait mode to Off and Slot empty release lock to Release locked.
- NETWORK menu — If you're going to use Nikon Imaging Cloud, SnapBridge, or the ML-L7 remote, you'll need to spend time configuring those here.
Okay, that's the main menu items you want to deal with, but there's two big things that people are asking me about, autofocus settings and release mode options.
The autofocus setting questions tend to all come from people using AF-C. AF-S is pretty straightforward, and a lot of folk using that just pick Single-point AF, put the cursor on the subject, focus (and if using Back Button Focus) reframe, and take the image. Heck, if you're using the rear LCD to compose, you can configure the touch controls so that you just tap and the camera focuses there and takes the image instantly.
My usual advice with AF-C and subject detection is "start wide and narrow." That means Auto-area AF and AF/MF subject detection options to Auto. Start first by narrowing the subject detection (say to People or Animal or Birds, depending upon what you're photographing) [by the way, Nikon, why is animal singular and people and birds plural?]
Once you understand how the subject detection works, then start narrowing the area that is being contemplated. Create the widest possible area in Wide-area AF (C1) and start there, then try Wide-area AF (L), then get to Wide-area AF (S). Nikon's "wide" defaults with the Z50II works pretty well, but you'll eventually get better results by narrowing the camera's choices and taking some control. That's the point of "start wide and narrow": learn what the camera does and then see how you can manipulate it to do even better.
Release mode is probably going to be the most contentious of Z50II subjects, partly because it's a US$909 camera. If you're expecting the Z8/Z9 no finder blackout and no rolling shutter goodness here, you're dreaming. The Z50II, Z6III, and Z8 actually scale pretty naturally upwards in capability when it comes to release mode and your view in the finder. I'll be going over this in much more detail in my Black Friday talk at Creative Photo Academy, but you're likely to want to pick a compromise capability on the Z50II. Electronic first-curtain shutter does pretty well at Continuous H, but you only get 7.9 fps when taking raw images (8.3 fps with JPEG). While EXPEED7 is obviously up to the task of keeping up with a camera's top capabilities, the Z50II's shortfall is that its image sensor isn't. I'm actually a little surprised at how much Nikon has squeezed out of the 20.9mp sensor, but it's not blackout free without drawbacks at 11 fps, 15 fps, or 30 fps as it would be with a Z8 or Z9.
Since release mode interacts with focus on a camera with a mechanical shutter, you're going to have to experiment a bit to see where you might want to set the Z50II for action. Again, I'll have more to say about this at my Black Friday talk.
Bonus: Nikon updated the firmware for the 16-50mm f/3.5-6.3 kit lens today (version 1.02). This fixes one of the dreaded error messages that kept coming up wanting you to press the shutter release to reset the camera.
As for all those questions about books: yes, I'll have a separate Z50II book. No I don't have an ETA.
