Nikon Z8 and the meaning of professional cameras in the Midjourney era

We’ve all seen it by now ad nauseamThat what generative artificial intelligence is capable of doing in the graphic field. Images made by Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Dall-e or Adobe Firefly are everywhere. They are astonishing artefacts, reaching such a level of quality that they even win a category prize in a prestigious photographic competition.

For reasons that we can only ascribe to a phenomenon of collective technophilic hypnosis, the discourse on generative AI in recent months has insisted on the way in which these tools they will now replace graphic designers, now photographers, now photo-editors, or Photoshop experts or editors. They are so tense valid for some specific uses of photography (particularly within marketing and stock photos), how much far-fetched in almost all other forms of photographic practice.

To think that AI can replace photography tout-court would in fact mean accepting that suddenly there is no longer any need to document, reproduce and remember realitybut we can be satisfied with simulacra with crooked hands, imaginative landscapes instead of postcards, dreamlike portraits of people who never existed instead of photos with relatives at the wedding.

It doesn’t take much to sober up and shake off the inebriation of the last few months, between the pope with the duvet and Donald Trump arrested for fake. To reconcile with photographic art, it is enough to visit a good exhibition, or leaf through a good reportage book. Instead to realize the abyss that still separates the photographic technique from the imitations spit out of a data center, it is enough to pick up and try out a latest generation camera for a couple of hours. Like new Nikon Z8, previewed last week in Italy and available in stores for a few days.

Semi-intelligent tools for reproducing reality

Among the many semi-intelligent tools for reproducing reality, also known as video cameras mirrorlessthe Nikon Z8 stands out for its features and equipmentbut above all because it is the more compact, portable, light and less expensive version of the flagship Z9 of the Japanese brand. With the launch of the Z9 at the end of 2021, Nikon had made a courageous choice: it was in fact the first ultra-professional level camera to do away with the mechanical shutter altogether. For the Japanese manufacturer, left behind in the battle of mirrorless cameras against competitors such as Canon and Sony, it was a necessary risk, useful for enabling advanced functions such as 120fps burst with AF tracking of subjects.

The experiment was successful, the Z9 achieved its goals on the market, and now Nikon has taken the next step, bringing that technology to a more compact device, suitable not only for sports or nature photographers but also for a wider cohort of professionals, first of all wedding photographers for which weight and dimensions are decisive. The Z9 came as a definitive counterpart to the top of the range D9. Now the Z8, with its own price revised downwardsis ready for replace in all respects one of the historic reflex cameras most loved by Nikonists, the D850.

Artificial intelligence, used well

If it is true that the Z8, in terms of specifications and image rendering, is superimposable in all respects to the Z9, it is also true that reducing the size and weight of machines of this professional level is a respectable engineering feat. And that’s not all: a camera that has a different weight and handling allows the photographer to think and make different shots. In this the Z8 is therefore the consecration of the project that started with the flagship at the end of 2021, whose innovations Nikon now “democratizes”, also lowering the list price by more than € 1,000.

Among those innovationsin addition to the aforementioned electronic shutterthere are also some steps forward inuse of deep learning to enable new methods of subject recognition and tracking. Just like on a smartphone, the camera uses (pre-trained) inference algorithms to recognize faces, human subjects, animals and vehicles, including aircraft in the sky. Unlike an iPhone or an Android device, however, the camera is not always connected to the internet, the processing of images for recognition takes place only in the camera.

The smartphone experience

The affinities between the Nikon Z8 (or Z9) and smartphones run much deeper than one might expect. In fact, the absence of the mechanical shutter means that at the moment of shooting the camera does not operate an instantaneous recording of the light information that reaches the sensor, but a “freeze” in real time of the continuous flow of information arriving at the sensor. And above all of what our eye also sees in the Real-Live viewfinder, a small monitor which in our opinion no longer has anything to envy to the analogue viewfinder of pentaprism cameras.

The cameras on our portable devices work in much the same way: they seamlessly record a series of consecutive moments, then save only a few seconds before and after you press the shutter button. Nikon Z8 does something similar but with a resolution, precision, detail and level of focus that no smartphone can ever aspire to.

What pictures does the Nikon Z8 take

On smartphones, artificial intelligence also serves to compensate for the “physical” disadvantage of smaller sensors and optics, developing images to “imitate” professional cameras.
The results are generally good (excellent on top of the range like iPhone 14 Pro Max, or Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra). However, to date they still cannot be compared even remotely with the results obtained from machines such as the Z8, especially if equipped with large, complex and defined optics.

During we “weighted” the preview test of the Z8 with one of the most recent lenses in the Nikon portfolio, the Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.2 S, a large, heavy and very bright lens perfect for portraits. Despite the size of the lens, the Z8 remains manageable and highly tameable. It only takes a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the controls and the position of the keys, studied to perfection, even for those of us who do not have a “Nikon muscle memory” in their hands.

The absence of a mechanical shutter is not heard and you get used to the fact that the shutter noise is actually an audio file reproduced ad hoc to emulate the descent of the curtain on the sensor. Likewise the electronic viewfinder does not in any way regret the optical one of the reflexes. The photographic results, as we have already mentioned, are almost indistinguishable from those of the Z9, but size and weight do matter. And so with the Z8 we find ourselves – in our opinion – working better on the photo also thanks to the less cumbersome presence of the photographic tool.

Nikon Z8 is in conclusion the definitive consecration of the project born with Z9. Like the top flagship, the camera has a number of fundamental differences compared to competitors of the same range (such as the total absence of the mechanical shutter). For all the Nikonists who were still waiting for the right camera to leave the D850 at home and retire the pentaprism, the time has finally come.

Two words about the video

In our test of the Nikon Z8 we focused solely on the photographic component, for reasons both of time and of personal interest and experience. However, one would be wrong not to mention the excellent videography skills of a hybrid camera suitable for both photographers and videomakers.

With the Z8 you can record video in 8K resolution from 24p to 60p (N-RAW only), 4K from 24p to 120p, and create time-lapse videos directly from the camera. These features allow you to record images with excellent sharpness, even of fast-moving subjects, thanks to the full AF/AE and the 5-axis stabilization system, which can reduce vibration by up to 6 stops. Additionally, the Z8 has the ability to record 12-bit RAW and 10-bit Apple ProRes 422 HQ video directly in-camera, eliminating the need for an external recorder. Another noteworthy feature is the maximum video length: around 125 minutes in 4K UHD/60p and around 90 minutes in 8K UHD/30p. The long recording duration is particularly useful in shooting contexts that require uninterrupted video-taking sessions, such as documentary production or weddings.

Nikon Z8, the technical characteristics

In a nutshell, here are the main features of the new Nikon flagship:

• 45 MP Stacked CMOS sensor: This is a sensor developed by Nikon, and not by Sony. Different from the one used on the Nikon Z7, it effectively produces images identical to those of the Z9

• Expeed 7 processor

• Burst shooting capability of 30 fps in jpeg and 20 fps in Raw + Jpeg. It can also shoot up to 120fps in a scaled-down 11MP format. There is also an option to take full-frame photos saving at 25MP.

• 493-point autofocus (AF) system with 3D Tracking and recognition of people, animals and vehicles. In particular, the Z8 has a mode dedicated to aircraft, which it can follow during a trajectory in the sky.

• Real Live viewfinder with blackout-free Dual Stream technology. This technology processes information from the sensor in two streams: one for burst data (with blackout) that is saved directly to the card, and the other for the scene viewed through the EVF.

• 3.68 million dot EVF showing a video stream of the scene.

• Capable of shooting 8K/60p video in N-Raw, 8K/30p uncropped in H.264/H.265 8/10 bit, and 8K/30p uncropped in ProRes HQ 10 bit.

• Like the Z9 already, the camera uses only the electronic shutter (like a smartphone).

Nikon itself makes no secret of the fact that the Nikon Z8 is, in short, a more compact and lighter Z9. However, there are some functions that the Japanese company has decided to debut on this model and which, the company tells us, will probably arrive later on the Z9 with a firmware update.

Nikon Z8 is available in Italy from May 25, in the following configurations: