Gear, Tips and Tricks

Nikon Z8 Owners: Never Worry About A Dirty Sensor Again

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Change this setting before removing the body cap

Nikon Z8 sensor

Ever since interchangeable lens digital cameras entered the market in the early 2000s, sensor dust has been a constant nemesis of digital photographers. There’s just no way to really keep dust out of your camera, unless you never change lenses in the field. Blower bulbs and sensor cleaning kits became a mandatory accessory for digital photographers, and even then the occasional dust bunny would still show up on an image.

Mirrorless cameras are even more prone to sensor dust given that the sensor is completely exposed to the elements when you remove the lens or body cap. Thankfully, the Nikon Z8 and Z9 cameras offer a great feature to prevent dusty sensors, but it’s disabled by default.

If you have a Nikon Z8 or Z9, there’s one setting you should make before doing anything else when you get your camera. This one setting will keep dust off of your sensor and save you time post-processing your photos.

Nikon Z8 & Z9 Sensor Shield

The Nikon Z8 and Z9 cameras have no mechanical shutter in front of the sensor, just like most mirrorless cameras do. But these cameras offer a great feature: a sensor shield.

The sensor shield is similar to a camera shutter, except it’s sturdier and serves no purpose except to protect the imaging sensor from dust. However, the feature is disabled by default in the Nikon Z8/Z9 cameras.

If you enable the sensor shield function before removing the body cap from your brand-new Nikon Z8 or Z9, you may never need to worry about a dust spot on your images ever again.

Get my Nikon Z9 (and Z8) wildlife settings guide here

Enabling the Sensor Shield

To activate the sensor shield feature, go to the Setup Menu (wrench icon) in your Nikon Z8/Z9. From there, scroll down until you find the menu item labeled: Sensor shield behavior at power off.

Enable the sensor shield from the Nikon Z8/Z9 setup menu

By default, it’s set to “off,” meaning that the shield isn’t deployed. Change the setting to “on.” and you’re good to go. If you make this setting change before removing your camera’s body cap for the first time, you may never need to clean your sensor ever again!

Note that if you do need to use a blower to clean your image sensor, you’ll need to disable the sensor shield before powering off your camera so that the sensor can be exposed for cleaning.

Podcasts, The Image Doctors

The Image Doctors #188

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New Fujifilm X-S20 Mirrorless Camera

This week, Fujifilm announced a new mirrorless camera to improve upon their previous small form-factor body, the X-S10. The new Fujifilm X-S20 offers a 26 megapixel APS-C sensor in a compact body with fast frame rates and AI-based subject detection autofocus. It’s an excellent choice for photographers looking for advanced features in a small form factor.

Nik Collection 6

We’ve been using the Nik Collection suite of plugins for over a decade, and they are our go-to filters for fine-art image processing. We’ll take a look at the new features in the latest release, which we both agree is well worth the $79 upgrade price. Our patrons can tune in to our bonus video this week and get a tour of the new features.

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Podcasts, The Image Doctors

The Image Doctors #187

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Photographer Spotlight: Joel Meyerowitz

This week, we’re spotlighting Joel Meyerowitz, whose color street photography transformed the way photographers and artists viewed color photography. Check out Joel’s work at his website, joelmeyerowitz.com

Hands-on with the Olympus 100-400mm lens

Rick and Jason both have the Olympus 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 lens. This week, we went out for a quick field test, and we offer our opinions of this lightweight 200-800mm equivalent from Olympus.

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Articles, Gear, Travel

The Sheer Audacity of Size

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Putting an 800mm lens in a shoulder bag?

Billingham Hadley Pro camera bag
The Olympus 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens easily fits in the small Hadley Pro bag from Billingham.

A few years ago, I was gifted a Billingham Hadley Pro shoulder bag. It’s a very well-made waterproof bag that is ideal for use as a walkabout bag for smaller kits. It’s dimensions are fairly small: 15 3/8″W x 6 3/8″ D x 9 3/8″ H. This makes the Hadley Pro an easy bag to put under an airplane seat as a personal item when traveling. I’ve taken this bag to places like Croatia and Scotland, where it was perfect for a small travel kit, like a Nikon Z7 ii and two zoom lenses.

However, I never thought I’d use this bag for transporting a super telephoto zoom. That is, until I tested it with my OM Systems OM-1 camera and Olympus 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 lens, which has an equivalent angle of view to a 200-800mm lens on a 35mm format camera. By removing the lens collar (something I don’t need for hand-held shooting anyway), I was able to easily fit this telephoto zoom into the Hadley Pro bag. The OM-1 with 12-45mm f/4 lens attached fit as well, and I still had yet another empty compartment available to me.

Top view of the Billingham Hadley Pro bag with 100-400mm lens and OM-1 body with 12-45mm f/4 lens attached.

My colleague, Rick Walker, pointed out something else while we were out shooting together. One could theoretically pair the 100-400mm with the outstanding Olympus 12-100mm f/4 zoom and have a two lens kit that covers the entire range from 24-800mm equivalent, in a bag that fits under the seat of an airplane. Mind blown!

Articles, Gear, News

I Sold My Nikon Z9

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Rethinking the trade-offs in sensor size with modern digital cameras

If you follow my YouTube channel or The Image Doctors Podcast, you probably saw that I recently purchased a OM Digital Solutions (formerly Olympus) OM-1 body and an assortment of lenses. This is something I’d been contemplating for quite some time, given that the majority of my photography involves travel and wildlife. The OM-1 is not a perfect camera, but it has some features that make it extremely compelling for photographers who want professional quality in a vastly smaller package. It’s also far less expensive ($2199 USD) than a comparable 35mm format body (think Sony Alpha A1, Nikon Z8/Z9, Canon R5).

Each of these cameras is outstanding. They offer subject-detection based AF systems (including bird and vehicle detection), excellent in-body stabilization (IBIS), and high speed shooting of 20fps or greater for raw images using an electronic shutter and stacked sensor technology. The biggest difference then? Size. The OM-1 is a fairly small (1.3 lb) camera, but the lenses it uses are in some cases downright tiny. That one factor alone is what made me consider the OM System gear for my work.

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