The three newest lenses for Nikon Z-mount are now showing up in camera shops. These lenses are designed to cover Nikon’s DX format (APS-C) sensors, as found in the Nikon Z 50, Z fc, and Z 30 cameras. All three of these lenses appear to have a solid design and construction. Each one offers a 9-bladed diaphragm, weather sealing, and fast stepping motor AF
With this trio of primes, Nikon DX shooters will have a nice set of very fast lenses for street, landscape, and portrait photography. Moreover, all of these new lenses are priced at under $500 US.
I just received the new Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8S Nikkor Z for Nikon Z mount mirrorless cameras. I’ll be testing this lens in the coming weeks, but here’s a quick preview of how it looks and feels:
Thanks to B&H Photo for loaning me a copy of this lens to review!
Fisher Towers under moonlight, Moab, UT Nikon Z7 with 20mm f/1.8 AFS G Nikkor and FTZ adaptor, 20s f/2.0 ISO 3200
I recently got the Nikon Z7 mirrorless camera, and I decided to make a quick trip over to Utah to do a little test shooting. For this shot, I set up the camera on my tripod and used my Nikon 20mm f/1.8 AFS G lens via the Nikon FTZ mount adaptor. Much to my surprise, the Z7 was able to focus on the towers in near total darkness (the viewfinder image was completely black).
I must say that I was impressed with the overall image quality from the Z7 for night photography. I’ll be posting more about my experiences with this Nikon mirrorless camera over the next few weeks, so be sure to check back!
The Fujifilm X-T1 (Graphite) edition offers some new features that will also be available to original X-T1 owners via a firmware update in December 2014. Image courtesy of Fujifilm.
Fujifilm announced a new color (Graphite) X-T1 body to be released later this year. While it looks really nice, it’s really the same camera as the original (black) X-T1, which I use as my primary travel/family camera. The bigger news, however, was a firmware upgrade coming in December that will match the original (black) X-T1’s features with its silver counterpart. I looked through the firmware features, which you can read here, and the following items caught my eye:
Electronic shutter option for fast primes: You will be able to shoot at a shutter speed of up to 1/32,000s with the electronic shutter. That’s perfect for using a fast prime in bright light without having to stop down. The downside is that this feature will only work with the 23 f/1.4, 25 f/1.4 and 56 f/1.2 Fuji prime lenses (I’m scratching my head on that one).
Natural Live View Mode: Because the X-T1 uses an electronic viewfinder (EVF), the viewfinder displays the scene with in-camera settings applied, like monochrome or “Velvia” mode. What that means is that sometimes the viewfinder image is too contrasty or saturated due to the chosen film emulation mode. Natural mode will display a normal image in the viewfinder, while the captured images will have the film emulation settings applied to them.
Linking the focus area to the metering area in spot metering mode: This is something my Nikon’s do, and it’s a feature I find quite useful. Currently, the spot meter uses the center of the frame, meaning you can’t just choose a metering area with the focus points without recomposing the shot.
Sadly, the one feature I really want, ± 2EV bracketing, wasn’t on the list. I hope Fuji reconsiders and adds this feature… it would make HDR capture so much easier!
I had a chance to sit down with Tony Sweet for this episode of The Sensor Plane podcast. Tony and I discuss the recent advances in mirrorless camera systems; he’s started using the Fujifilm X Pro-1 and he recently took it on a photo workshop he led in Havana, Cuba.
