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“IN TERMS OF HANDLING, THERE’S LOTS TO LIKE, AND LOTS OF CUSTOMISATION OPTIONS, TOO” something like white-balance, the button needs to be held while changes are made, making for a bit of an awkward grip. On the rear of the camera is an impressive 3.2-inch touch screen, the right of which offers three ‘virtual’ buttons for the screen’s zoom control and display settings. These work fine, as do the touch screen controls, though with such commands becoming more prevalent, it’d be nice for a manufacturer to include some haptic feedback – as with all touch commands, dabbing at the smooth glass can feel very disconnected. The touchscreen can be used to navigate the main menu, quick ‘i’ menu, and to lock focus or trip the shutter, but you can turn these functions off if you want. Other touch commands are shown on the screen with a box around them, and include setting shutter speed and aperture, depending on the shooting mode, as well as ISO – so, for example, in manual mode all three can be set by touch. In playback mode, the screen responds well to gesture controls like swiping and zooming. The only drawback I found to the touch functions, apart from not being able to move the AF point while the camera was up to my eye, was that when using the main menu it’s quite easy to switch the touchscreen off if you wave a finger around too near the electronic viewfinder – the camera thinks you’ve brought it up to your eye and switches to that view. Speaking of the EVF, how good a mirrorless camera’s viewfinder is can make or break the decision to buy it. The Z 50’s 0.39-inch 2.36k dot OLED display isn’t quite as good as the full-frame Z series cameras, but it’s pretty close, with a very clear and detailed view, and little or no lag or stuttering in the frame rate. It could turn on quicker when the camera is raised to the eye, and it still blanks out when shooting in continuous drive mode, but that’s the norm. When shooting landscapes, particularly in low light, I noticed a slight magenta colour cast, but this wasn’t reflected in the images and there’s a function to correct it in the settings menu. Also on the rear of the camera is an AF-L/AE-L button, a four-way controller with OK button in the centre, an ‘i’ button to bring up the quick menu, the main menu button, and playback and delete. There’s no mini joystick, but the directional pad is used to navigate menus and set the AF point, which works fine. So in terms of handling, there’s lots to like, and lots of customisation options, too – for instance the ‘i’ menu can be set to include the options you use the most. But there are niggles, including not being able to switch on or off the auto
PERFORMANCE: EXPOSURE LATITUDE
-2EV
+1EV
-3EV
-1EV
0
+2EV
+3EV
only subtle noise in the shadows at -3EV. At -4 and -5EV, noise becomes more apparent, especially colour noise, but processing can remove this and images are usable. For the overexposed shots, it was much the same story for +1 and +2EV images, with only minor degradation seen in the latter image. At +3EV, highlights obviously grey and lose detail while, above that, highlights can’t be saved and colours are badly affected.
Though the Nikon Z 50 produces images with great dynamic range straight out of the camera, it’s always worth knowing howmuch you can push or pull things in editing. That’s where our exposure latitude test comes in. Shooting in 14- bit Raw quality, we photographed a scene from -5EV to +5EV, then took the Raws and under- or overexposed them in Adobe Camera Raw by the corresponding value. Dealing with the underexposed Raws first, images showed little degradation at -2EV, and
Issue 73 | Photography News 37
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