shinyobject
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If anyone is interested in my first impressions of the Z5ii coming from Fuji:
Things I’ve enjoyed about the Z5ii:
- Autofocus is noticeably quick and the various tracking modes reasonably intuitive; I haven’t had to use the joystick very often to position a focus box, which is nice.
- Single point AF is very good;
- Continuous shooting is flexible and reliable, and even ‘spray and pray’ shooting, which I never did before, returns more usable images than I expected;
- JPEG engine (picture control) keeps up with what Fuji offers and it allows easy downloading and sharing of presets with others;
- Grip is ergonomic;
- manual focus experience is nice even with a focus-by-wire lens, as subject detection will let you quickly magnify the EVF on what you’ve told it is the sort of thing you want to photograph;
- this is not Z5ii-specific, but I’ve always wanted a full-frame sensor to play with, and it is certainly scratches a certain itch to be able to blow out the background a little more easily than otherwise;
- similarly, IBIS is a treat that I very quickly took for granted;
- also not specific to the Z5ii, it’s nice to be able to plug the camera into the usb cable and transfer straight to the PC rather than faffing with SD cards.
Things I’m getting used to:
These are not cons, just things I’m having to learn about.
- the i menu is a useful way to access many settings, but I’m having trouble filling it up with things that I care about beyond autofocus and metering settings. I’m happy to take suggestions for useful things to put here (my shooting tends to be candid shots of family and events, including some sports sometimes).
- The AF-ON button, if I read some online chatter rightly, can be configured to have a different focus type than the half-push of the shutter button: eg. 3D tracking on the AF-ON button and Wide zone on the half push. However, I haven’t been able to figure this one out myself, even with the internet’s help (so far). I am fine with not being able to do this, by the way, if I’ve formed the wrong impression, but perhaps someone can tell me if I’ve missed something?
- I need to learn more about how to get the most out of automatic subject detection modes, as my best photos so far have been using other settings.
About Fuji: it’s worth noting that my Fuji experience isn’t fully up-to-date. I’ve shot with an X-T3 for the last several years and haven’t tried the later Fuji cameras. It’s still a fine camera, even though it’s a bit dated vs the Z5ii. It has the advantage of being smaller and lighter, and I like the menu system layout (even though that might be a familiarity bias). I can see myself getting an X-E5 or similar one day so that I can use my beloved XF 35/2 on a more modern body.
Finally, I think Fuji’s marketing has done super well to convince people that their jpeg engine is far better than other people’s. I like their jpegs, to be sure, and have several prints from SOOC jpegs that I treasure. But after using the Nikon picture control engine, while I do think Fuji might be a bit more intuitive in some ways, I don’t think Fuji jpegs are streets ahead (though if you care about film grain, you need the Nikon ZF in Nikon-land). Where Fuji does well is in linking the different jpeg algorithms they offer to film types, which gives them a certain legitimacy. I enjoyed Scott Tucker’s Nikon picture control settings for this reason. I am not sure how Nikon could deal with IP issues if they were to go this route themselves, but I don’t think the name ‘Picture Control’ sells the capability of their cameras.
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I got the lenses backwards. The Atlantic Ocean shot was with the 35mm, the cornbread with the 105mm. Yeesh. I must've been drinking beer when I posted those.
I can say that switching between matrix and center-weighted metering works.