Photography News Issue 61

Camera test 54

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Nikon F lenses on Z cameras

The F mount dates back to 1959 and when the classic Nikon F came out. In the intervening years we have seen many modifications including AI-indexing, AE and AF, but the same basic F mount is the same now on Nikon DSLRs as it was nearly 60 years ago. That’s some feat of longevity. But there comes a point

the 47mm wide F bayonet. The Z bayonet is the largest mount in the 35mm full-frame market sector. The larger bayonet with such a short flange distance gives the company options with future IBIS developments, designing better performing short focus rather than retrofocus lenses, and going for high-spec products – Nikon already has a 58mm f/0.95 Noct S in development. The short back

and that’s what the FTZ adapter offers. This optics-free, weather- proofed adapter has a built in CPU and there are 11 contacts so it can chat with the camera and the lens. What this means in practice is that over 360 Nikon lenses can be attached to a Z body (and many more third-party lenses) and 90 current lenses give full AE and AF tracking compatibility. This degree of compatibility might not to apply to all third-party lenses. Sigma has recently announced that there is no problem with its current products. Tamronowners are less fortunate if you’re considering the Z 7 because there are, apparently, compatibility issues with Di/Dii II lenses. performancewas pretty consistent throughout the aperture range. Maximum aperture at 70mm again delivered a very capable performance with good sharpness and fine detail nicely resolved and this was across the frame. Here, though, the benefits of stopping down were more evident and the centre and edges of the frame looked even better at f/8 and f/11 where images looked really impressive. However, I’d have no qualms shooting wide open at the 70mm setting – indeed, this applies to any focal length. Vignetting can be seen at f/4 at every focal length although it was not too significant and stopping down to f/5.6 got rid of it.

I tried the FTZ with several Nikon G lenses including the 14- 24mm f/2.8, 85mm f/1.8 and the 70-200mm f/2.8 GII. You have to say that while the adapter does add a little size to the pairings, the combinations work very nicely in terms of AF and autoexposure. The foot of the FTZ has a tripod bush provided so no problem fitting the FTZdirectly into a tripod which is a good thing although Nikon missed a trick here and it

could have designed the foot so it was also Arca Swiss compatible. For those with a few Nikon F lenses, it makes sense to buy the kit with the FTZ included because in effect it only costs £100 – it’s £269 when bought separately. It means you can enjoy your existing lenses until you replace them with the Z system equivalent when they become available. Indeed, you could just stickwith your old lenses should you prefer.

when the narrow F mount can do no more hence we have the new Z bayonet which has a rear flange distance of 16mm, is 65% slimmer than the F mount, and an inner diameter of 55mm, which is 17% wider than

flange distance of the Z bayonet means it is no problem fitting existing Nikon F bayonet lenses while retaining infinity focus

Nikon Z 24-70mm f/4 S

Nikon’s 24-70mm f/4 for the Z system gives good handling and while you know that the lens is on the camera, overall balance of the combination is very good indeed. For this test, the lens was tried at 24mm, 35mm and 70mm settings with the Z 7 mounted on a Novo Explora T20 tripod. The lens showed itself to be very capable throughout the focal length range and at most apertures. At 24mm and f/4, the centre of the image looked impressively crisp and that level of performance was maintained as you moved towards

the edges. In fact, the level of performance was so good that stopping down to f/5.6 and f/8 didn’t make that much difference to the centre although the edges looked more defined. Stopping down to f/11 and then to f/16 and f/22 did see a fall off in resolution as diffraction had an impact and f/22 is best avoided. At the 35mm focal length, a similar pattern of events followed, ie. impressive maximum aperture performance, some but not huge

benefits with stopping down and a falling away of resolution at f/16 and f/22. F/8 is just about the optimum aperture at 35mm although

24mm

35mm

70mm

Autofocusing itself is swift, silent and sensitive in all sorts of lighting

bit Raw shooting. Using a G-Series Sony XQD card (write speed of 400 MB/s) I got just shy of 10fps in 12-bit lossless compressed Raw. In 14-bit lossless compressed Raw, the rate was nearly 9fps and 19 frames before any buffering which took 15secs to clear. The 9fps shooting rate comes with AF tracking with set exposure. If you want both focus and exposure tracking the maximum continuous shooting rate is 5.5fps. That is pedestrian compared with what’s available but the Z 7 is a very high resolution camera and even amodest 5.5fps is enough for most users. If you want longer, flat out bursts go to JPEG* where I got a run of 37 frames before the camera slowed to 4fps.

The Z 7 has five-axis (pitch, roll, yaw, up and down) in-body image stabilisation offering up to a claimed 5EV benefit with S lenses. It also works with F bayonet lenses with VR fitted to the body with the FTZ adapter. The system worked very well. You can see its effect the moment you bring the eye to the viewfinder. The effect is very smooth too, without the erratic jerky movement you see in some image stabiliser systems. See the panel Trying IBIS to see how it performed. The Z 7’s AF system has 493 phase detect points – the Z 6 has 273 – which covers about 90% of the image area. You can use them in five ways: Pinpoint AF, Single- Point AF, Wide-area AF (S), Wide- area AF (L) and Auto-area AF. In the first four named modes you can move the active focus area around the image using the focus lever or with the touchmonitor (except when the camera is up to the eye). Pushing the OK button, centres the AF point/ zone – a dot appears in the centre of the focus box to identify the AF point

F/4

F/5.6

F/8

F/11

F/16

F/22