- Okay, we've got a new type of video for you today.
We've got Nikon here.
Chris from Nikon is here. (audience cheering)
Thanks for coming, Chris. You're my guest today.
And that's because Nikon,
I don't know if it's just North America or what,
but they have a strange policy
which is that, when a camera is pre-embargo,
which is in this case, we're filming this a few weeks
before it's gonna be coming out,
they won't send it to me and let me play with it by myself.
They have to have a chaperone.
Meet the chaperone, which is Chris.
You're from Mississauga area or...
- Correct. I work at the head office, yeah.
- So not only that, he's Canadian as well.
Okay, Chris. What did you bring?
- Well, I may have brought the fun, new Nikon Zf.
- Okay, and the best part about this too is
that I don't have to be some Nikon shill.
Chris gets to be the Nikon shill,
so he can be all excited about it
and I can be not excited about it.
Is that gonna make for a fun dynamic? I don't know.
And you called it a Zed f.
- I did.
- Because it's Canadian strong.
You can see, where's Patrick?
Oh, and we got Patrick by the way.
Patrick is, - Hello, everybody,
- Operating C cam which is the most versatile one.
That's a nice little shot there. Good job, Patrick.
- [Chris] There you go.
- Vintage aesthetic is what we're going for here.
See these dials?
Is this Nikon's first mirrorless, vintage kind of...
- No. - No?
- No, we have a crop version.
We have a Zfc. - I should have specified.
- [Chris] Also full frame. - [Gerald] Yeah.
- So it's a full frame, vintagey-
- So like the Zfc, but full frame?
- Yes.
- Sensor-wise, it's supposed to be somewhat similar
to like the Z6 II?
- Correct.
- Similar megapixels? - 24.5 megapixels,
full-frame, same basic sensor.
But the big difference is the processor
that comes along with it.
So this is now Expeed 7 processor, basically,
versus dual Expeed 6.
- Okay.
- And it's essentially the same processor
that's in the Z8 and Z9.
- Is one seven faster than two sixes?
- Oh, 10 times faster.
- Oh, wow. That's a significant upgrade.
So same processor as the 8 and 9?
- Correct.
- Okay. That's considerable then.
'Cause price-point-wise,
this thing's coming in at like 2,000 USD?
- [Chris] Correct.
- Just body, right?
- [Chris] Yep, body only.
- And then here we've got a 40 mil.
Oh it is an F2. Is it an F2?
I wasn't sure it was a F2 or 2.8. This is nice.
So this is a newish lens too.
And new for this body or did it come out a little while ago?
- [Chris] Came out a little while ago.
- I think it fits the aesthetic quite nicely, 40 mil F2.
But I gotta check and see how it feels to the,
what are you guys doing here, one over 8,000?
Shutter speed's got its own dial right here.
That's probably why it was jacked up
if somebody wanted to turn the knob.
I don't know, I'm just instinctively putting it to 1/50th.
It's probably in photo mode or something.
Yeah, it's in photo mode and I'm like,
we'll put it to 1/50th.
You guys are probably marketing this more
as a photo camera than a video camera, right?
- We are, but the video specs on it are surprisingly heavy.
So that little small screen
up top will show your current aperture.
- [Gerald] Can you see this tiny little, oh nice.
So you can...
- [Patrick] That's cool. - [Host] Yeah.
Catching glare but, so how's it lookin',
can we go all the way down to F2?
Nice. I'm surprised the lens doesn't have like an aperture.
It feels like a lens that would, you know?
This viewfinder is interesting.
- [Chris] Well it's the same viewfinder
that's in the Z6 II, Z7 II, so 3.6 million dots.
- Flippy screen, that's a novel thing for,
if we're comparing it to a Z6 II, right,
or even any of those other like cameras,
I don't think you've had a flip screen on those, right?
- We have never had a full frame, full flip screen.
- 40 mil looks good. Yeah, I like it.
That's a nice little lens.
F2, it feels nice on the camera.
This camera has a considerable amount of weight.
It actually feels like a film camera
and not like a vintage vibe.
It actually feels like-
- Like the FM2, which is kind
of what this was directly styled after.
- So speaking of that, where the film goes, I can't open it.
Where do the cards go in this thing? Underneath?
- [Chris] Yep.
- [Gerald] I'm not a fan of that.
- [Chris] I know.
Because let's check, are we gonna have plate interference?
1/4-20" and then there's the door.
You'd have to run like a little Arca Swiss or something.
You know, if you ran like a 501,
I feel like you might get an interferer there a little bit
but battery wise, we're using same battery but what is this,
the C revision or whatever?
- Yeah, so that's actually the B right there
'cause that's just what I had available.
- Yeah, the EN-EL15c.
- Correct.
- [Gerald] And then this is weird.
You've got an SD card, UHS2 maybe?
- [Chris] Correct.
- [Gerald] And then a micro SD card slot.
- Yes.
- What?
- Well we wanted to make sure
that people still had dual card functionality
because this camera is gonna hit a lot
of different customers and we wanna make sure
that we know with the original Z6,
original Z7 did not have dual cards.
So we wanted to go and make sure that this one did have it.
But you're talking about the size
and how it kinda feels small
but heavy and kind of really solid in your hands.
There's certain things that we had to go and do to make sure
that we kept that size as small as possible
and one of those was the memory cards.
- Are you telling me you can't put two SD card slots
in there? - [Chris] No.
- So when you lose the grip
so the battery right now is flipped sideways,
usually it goes into the larger hand grip.
- Right. Yeah, okay.
- So you do gain a lot of extra space by doing that,
by essentially flipping that battery
and cutting out a lot of the internals
by still having a VR system in there,
by still having all the extra Wi-Fi and internals
that we'd expect in a regular camera of this day and age.
- Right.
- There were certain things that we had to do,
one of 'em was we had to go
with micro SD to give dual cards.
It was either that or just one card.
- Secondary slot function, I'm looking at it now.
So it seems like,
the micro SD is providing full functionality though.
For the photographers out there. what's the spec for photo?
I think I remember
from the briefing, it's 14 mechanical burst and 30?
- Correct, up to 14 frames a second
and then if you go JPEG only,
similar to like a Z8, Z9, it'll be in our C30 mode
and that's JPEG only, full resolution.
- But electronic shutter.
- Correct. - Right.
So 14 is mechanical. - Yes.
- [Gerald] There's quite a few functions
on the top of the camera.
So we've got manual and then your priorities
and then all the way down to auto
and then a couple function buttons
on the front, which they almost look like, like onyx
and stainless, kind of like little,
they look like cuff links or something,
you know what I mean?
Like little details.
Okay so we got a mic in and is that a headphone out?
- [Chris] Correct.
- [Gerald] So we got full ports there. Micro HDMI.
- I knew you'd love this one.
- Yeah.
- I mean, I sell a cable for it
but still, if you're gonna make an argument
about how you have to put a microSD card in here,
I don't think I'm gonna be able to get you
to put a full size HDMI port and then just USB-C.
You got the power delivery protocol like you had in the...
- Correct. Yep.
- [Gerald] That's nose grease right there
if I've ever seen it.
So similar button layout.
No joystick, like little nipple thing.
You used the D-pad for moving around the focus point.
So let's talk about, okay,
so 3D autofocus or 3D tracking, right?
- So we had 3D tracking with almost all of our DSLRs
for however many years, a long, long time
and the Z9 was the first to bring it into mirrorless,
- [Gerald] Gotcha. - Z8 as well.
And because we have the same processing power
with those two cameras,
we were able to bring it in with the Zf as well.
- [Patrick] Is there any sort of like, baked in film presets
and stuff like that given the body style?
- Not dedicated presets?
We do have like over 20 creative presets.
So you can go and dial in almost like Instagram filters.
- [Patrick] Yeah, yeah.
- And then we do have a dedicated black and white mode.
- I just saw that right here.
- [Patrick] Yeah the new monochrome, right?
- Yeah, so monochrome mode up top there.
- [Gerald] So you go photo, video or black and white.
When you're in black and white, is it just photo?
- Correct.
- [Gerald] Let's put it over there.
- [Chris] Ooh.
- So compared to the Z6 II then,
what would be some of the showstopping features
for photo shooters?
- The big difference is the processor.
So that gives you all of the deep learning algorithms
that we built for the Z8, Z9.
That's now included
in here with all the subject detection types.
So you can go and not just do, let's say dogs and humans.
You can go and do birds
and planes and everything's all built in.
- [Gerald] And then the stabilization's supposed
to be drastically improved, right?
In the briefing they said that the Z6 II was like,
a five stop rating for the VR or whatever.
And this one's supposed to rate up to like eight stops?
- Eight stops.
- And there's some novel feature where like,
depending on where you move your focus point
or something, it's like-
- Yeah, so you can go into the menu
and you can turn on a new mode
so you can link the VR, the location
of where the VR is going to be the most effective.
You can link that to where your autofocus is.
- Let's talk about video stuff.
So I'm gonna flip the switch.
So let me get this straight.
We've got three professionals in this video
and not a single one of them remembered
to talk about the sponsor of today's video, Storyblocks?
Well luckily, editor Gerald is here to take care of that.
I'm gonna keep working on the video.
Hopefully you're enjoying it.
And in the meantime, lemme tell you about Storyblocks.
So Storyblocks is a stock media platform
that boasts a massive library of high quality assets,
aimed to strengthen your video production.
Their subscription model provides predictable costs
without any paperclip licensing.
You just pick a plan, pay that fee and that's it.
And you'll enjoy unlimited downloads
of HD and 4K video files,
images and motion graphics templates.
And the platform is intuitive and easy to use
and new content is added regularly to ensure
that you have access to up-to-date assets
to satisfy your project.
And if you're an Adobe Creative Cloud user,
you can now access the entire Storyblocks library right
in Premier Pro or After Effects
by installing a clever little plugin
which can really speed up your workflow.
And whether it's those motion graphics templates
or the high quality stock footage,
remember that with Storyblocks,
anything you download is 100% royalty free forever
with no restrictions on
where you can distribute your finished projects.
So to get started with unlimited stock media downloads
at one set price, head over to storyblocks.com/undone
or click the link in the description.
All right, now back to dealing
with Patrick's elbow creeping in in every single shot.
It wasn't until the Z9 came along
that you could actually record N-log.
You had to hook up a recorder on the Z6 II, Z7 II, whatever.
So internally you would be like,
you could do 8-bit flat or something, right?
That's what Nikon's called flat, right?
- Yep.
- And flat's decent. - Mhm.
- But so you're stuck with 8-bit flat,
you wanna go to N-log, you wanna do 10-bit,
you wanna do any of those things,
it's gotta be an external recorder.
So there's obviously caveats with that.
This non-video camera is the first like,
I dunno what you wanna call it, non-pro body full frame
that you can shoot internal 10-bit N-log.
- Yep.
- That's an important thing.
- It absolutely is.
- 4K up to 30 over sampled from the 6K sensor.
- [Chris] Correct.
- 4K60 which there was also something
about that, right, where it was like at one point,
it wasn't in a camera then it was like,
a firmware upgrade or something.
They said it's complicated.
- Yeah. - It's not complicated.
It's 4K60 at a 1.5x crop.
- 1.5x crop, correct.
- Not oversampled, obviously you got a 4K readout.
Did Nikon give any kind of rating on like,
what they expect like, how you can get 4K60
or like hot environments for 4K24, stuff like that?
- So I don't have exact numbers just yet.
The camera can go and record the same time limit,
so 125 minutes, so the two hours and five.
- Has anybody ever told you what the two hour
and five minutes is about?
- Even the Z9, it's two hours and five minutes
and that's not because it's overheating.
It just goes, "All right, that's enough.
Two hours and five minutes."
- Even if I knew, I'd have to kill you.
- I suppose though, I mean that's
about how long the battery generally lasts
on these cameras anyway.
But you'd think, hook it up to power delivery,
you have a Z9, it ain't gonna overheat.
Let me record for four hours or something, you know?
What am I doing?
But anyway, and two hours and five minutes.
Why the five minutes, you know?
Like anyway, so it has that.
I think like one of the previous Z cameras had like,
a 30 minute?
- Z6 II and 7 II.
- Redundant with recording and video?
- No.
- And you can't use the micro SD, right?
- Correct. - So there's that.
I'm looking through some
of the extra like, video functions here.
Zebras, I see. You said there are waveforms?
- [Chris] Correct.
- Where would I find those?
Nikon's menus are still insane, the like,
"A 16, look under the Gs, G12!"
It's like we're playing bingo
on the back of this thing here.
Where's the waveform? I flipped.
- So when you flip it around, when you flip it around,
you can go and turn this off
but this is designed to be easy and if,
so let's say you're trying to see yourself,
you don't want all that extraneous information
when you're just going and looking at the tank.
- [Gerald] It's cool that it's an option.
I assume you can disable it too.
- [Chris] Absolutely.
- [Gerald] So there, it's like waveform
and then no waveform. (laughs)
You know, something I've always liked
about Nikon's menus is, so I can show you this Patrick
at the same time.
Wait, I can't even turn on the menu
when the screen's flipped out!
- Because of the mode that you're in.
- Okay, tell me, how do I turn this mode off?
- Self-portrait mode. - Okay.
- You want self-portrait mode off and now-
- We'll show them that.
Down in the wrench menu there, there's a self-portrait mode.
That's what's putting on the limitations.
So now do we got a waveform?
We do. Okay.
So what were we actually talking about?
Oh yeah, if you go up here to frame size and frame rate,
I like that the resolutions are all displayed based
on ascending frame rate.
And PAL is in there too, which is nice.
So it's like you don't have to go in
and switch the frequency of your whole camera.
It's like 24, 25, 30, 50, 60, just in like a logical order.
In case we didn't mention it by the way,
this is a interchangeable lens,
I think I turned everything backwards on Nikon,
interchangeable lens camera.
It's not just this 40 mil just
in case I didn't make that clear or whatever.
- Yeah you can buy body only,
you can buy with the normal Z 24-70mm f/4 lens,
or you can buy it with the special edition 40mm.
- I'm operating from the perspective of like,
well how do I feel about it as a vintage camera rather
than how do I think of it as a camera as a whole,
and I think that whole, you know,
conundrum is why I generally kind
of write off vintage camera vibes
in my head because it's like,
you're making sacrifices for a certain look, you know?
You could argue that maybe the dials are more efficient
but then at the same point it's like,
you gotta put 'em to third stop
and then use your back dials anyway.
So they're just taking up real estate. So no, Patrick.
I don't like it but as far as vintage cameras go,
not only is this the most legit seeming one of like,
like you said, it actually looks like a Nikon film camera,
if all people just wanna know is
whether or not like I'd sound off on the video,
the testing might not produce any results anyway.
It might test very similar to a Z6 II.
So in that case, it seemed to just fix some
of the annoyances I have with the Z6 II
without really inflating the cost.
So beyond that, it's just gonna come down
to whether you dig it, you know, and if you do, then buy it.
It's not like it's the same price as the other ones.
So, you know.
- You're right about the weight.
Immediately, the weight is really nice.
It's funny 'cause it's niche and it's kitschy a little bit,
but it legitimately feels like an old film camera.
So I know, like the hipster side of my brain is kicking in
that a lot of people are gonna love this.
- [Chris] We didn't skimp out
on the actual build of the camera.
There's partial magnesium alloy body
with our carbon fiber blend as the other side,
brass dials, full weather ceiling, so.
- I dunno, Gerald, I like it. I like it. (chuckles)
I wanna play with it, yeah.
- [Gerald] What do you think of it for the price?
- I think for the price, the thing I like about it is that,
yeah, I would be buying it as a niche camera.
Like I don't think, me personally,
this would be my main camera, but I would love to have it
in the kit of cameras to be honest.
And the fact that if I was like, you know what,
on this trip I'm only gonna bring that Nikon
and not feel like, oh, I'm not gonna able
to shoot much video with it
'cause it's gonna suck and I won't have my flip out screen
if I wanna vlog or something like that,
that nothing is sacrificed on the other side
with the video, is smart.
'Cause I think now, every camera, the tech is there
that you should have everything built into these cameras now
that you shouldn't have
to make this weird compromised choice.
Whereas I feel like with this, if I just picked it up
and it's the only thing and I just had this 40 mil,
I could shoot a client project with it.
I could do anything with it, right?
- Am I even in focus?
- It picks you 'cause the camera knows you.
(everyone laughing)
- Should I get one from Nikon?
And also, should Nikon stop requiring chaperones?
Did you like Chris? Was he entertaining?
Because he shouldn't have to come.
You could just mail the camera.
- I'm gonna turn Gerald into a hipster photographer.
That's my job to figure that out.
- Show over! (laughs)