Watch this before buying a Nikon Z8 - 3 month review 

I said 1/320000 th as a max shutter speed in the video and corrected it on screen to 1/32000th. I guess I should have re-recorded to save confusion.

Great video Darrell. Thinking of getting this camera to go along with my OM1. Great overview. Well done!

Well done Darrell, another excellent vlog. You've established yourself as very watchable vlogger who puts out well presented and highly informative content. I ordered my Z8 with the 180-600 lens yesterday and will collect it on Thursday. I'm really exited to try out the auto-focus system, particularly the subject detection modes which I hope will improve BIF shots. Keep up the good work and we all look forward in seeing more content.

Thank you, I am currently using a D850 and likely going to go mirrorless soon, this was very helpful.

Hi Darrell An interesting video. We’ve been using mirrorless cameras for quite a few years and we think they’re great, though not as sophisticated as yours. Many Thanks Jon and Sandra

Excellent review, I’m gong to change from my existing D850 to a mirrorless, I was looking at the Z8, then the ZF was announced and now Nikon are rumoured to be releasing the new Z6iii !! Choices , choices

Love that! :) thank you

I use the 180-600 Z with my Z 8 and its perfect for African Wild Life >> much sharper images and Internal Zoom with a short throw and lighter than the 200-500

Great video which reflects my views on the z8. Agree on the battery life but I think it's worth pointing out that you can power the z8 from an external power bank through the pd port, essential I would think if you were doing any lengthy video work. You can also use this method to recharge the en-el15c battery in camera when it is powered off. Like you I carry several spare batteries but this is a good work around if you find yourself running short of power. Apart from this issue I've found the z8 a real game changer in terms of auto focus and frame rate. Keep up the good work, great content

I kept my d850s nikon grips all nikon pro glass from 14 -600 not parting with them for disposable junk mk 1 2 3 4 or 5 .

Your Duck photos are Remarkable and the horse in the field of catty- nine - tails is quite beautiful and relaxing I own the Nikon z7ii and have issues with bird in flight focus lockon ‘Do you think the Z8 would do a better job ??? Tkcare David

I use the D850 with 200-500 and 70-200 and 16-35. What’s the ideal combo for birds and wildlife with landscape..with Z8..z180-600 ..400f/2 …16-35… will there be an overlap of 180-600 with the 400 f/2

i really wish it had a flip out screen for filming yourself, external ssd support since large memory cards are expensive. also i find 1/1200 flash sync to be too low for such a pro camera

Hi Darrel, very nice and informing vlog. I do have a question: do you have any idea who large the lossless compression, highless efficiency* and/or highless efficiency photos are which will be written to the CF express card? Please go on making more vlogs.👍👍

I want to replace my Z6ii for focusing, but I'll wait for the Z6iii to see what the specs are. Rumours are saying it will have the same focusing as the Z8 and you can use it as a vlog camera, downside it will not be 45mp. Thanks for the video 👍

I shoot events and I've got my setting to where I get around 1,300 shots per battery.

Great information, thank you. I do think some of your images are a tad over-sharpened?

Nikon please, on the Z8 we would like for next firmware version 3.0, when we turn the top Control Panel display ON, to be a little brighter and with a little more contrast

Nice video. Two remarks. You mention the shortest exposure time as one three hundred and twenty thousandth and I guess that must be one thirty two thousandth (there's a factor 10 between them). When you try to explain the stacked sensor, that's really not what it is. In the case of "stacked" there are two chips: the sensor and an auxiliary chip. The "labour division" (who does what between them why how) between these two is a matter of design as well as evolution of "step size". The auxiliary chip is completely in the dark. Explanations follow. The sensor is a multilayered chip that has a regular grid of photocells at the side of the lens. Each cell is a light sensitive diode that, behind it, connects to a C-MOS circuit where a charge is built during exposure and this is completely analogue. Each cell with its circuit is a photosite. When you "take a photo" the electric charge of each cell is scanned and this analogue value (a "real" number in maths) must be converted into digital "integer" number. Old digital cameras would scan the electric charge one by one, line by line. That is very slow. They also would use the mechanical shutter to delimit the time of exposure. So we have a couple main tasks in taking a digital photo: (a) exposure and charge building, (b) scanning the charges, (c) converting the analogue values to digital values, (d) placing the digital values in the frame buffer. With the electronics (chip) industry being able to put 2 times more components on the same area every two years, chips become more powerful, potentially faster and more functions can be concentrated into one chip than in the past. That rate of innovation (increasing component density and decreasing component size) was predicted, promised, decades ago by Intel's executive John Moore and hence is known as "Moore's Law". Since a couple years, people have wondered if we are at the end of Moore's Law. In the chip printing industry, the base unit of production is a "step" and the current step size is 4 nanometer. If you calculate the maximum size of a photodiode in the sensor's surface, then this must be about 1,000 by 1,000 steps today. If a transistor is 1*1 then you could put a million on the back of one photodiode (except it cannot do anything because you need connectors and spaces between components.) While, say, a Hasselblad X1d, or older Nikon D700, has a discrete (separate from all else) analogue-to-digital (AD) conversion circuit that will do the AD conversion 1 by 1, suggesting that (b) still happens 1 by 1 too, other designs scan the photosite charges line by line or column by column. At some point, AD can potentially shift into the sensor in a way where each photosite has its own AD circuit directly coupled. When folk rap about "global shutter" then this pertains to a sensor where all photosites are exposed at the same time without any time parallax - it is stil possible that photosites are read line by line (or so). As chips have limited connector space (length) at the edges of the chip, we see chips, like today's CPUs, that have "vertical" connectors. Today's sensor chips have either pins at the back sticking out (like CPU chips) or receptacles and the auxiliary chip precisely connects to that with receptacles or pins. Potentially, part of the work done by the image processing chip (EXPEED - also the CPU of the camera) in the past has been shifted into the auxiliary processor and/or the sensor chip. Add Moore's Law effect to the two EXPEED 6 processors (MUST have dual I/O paths) and peripheral chips/sensor with the EXPEED 7 in the Z 8/9 being 10 times as powerful and there's more bandwidth for, say, clever AI - the firmware file of Z 8 is 2 times larger than that of a Z 7ii. As said, the labour division between all these chips - deciding on such division is called architecture in IT - is an architectural or design choice that can change over time when technology is innovated. Shifting time critical work forward (nearer photosites) reduces latency and facilitates higher speeds. In the last physics Nobel prize, people got awarded who worked on an ability to "see" things happening in the attosecond time domain (1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 10^-18) - there are 31,250,000,000,000 (thirty one and a quarter trillion) attoseconds in the Z 8's shortest exposure time of 1/32,000 sec. One thing the auxiliary chip stacked to the sensor chip does not do is work with light. It's completely in the dark in a literal way. While the sensor is analogue, note that it also is colour blind. As the sensor "sees" the entire humanly visible spectrum of light, in old black & white (B&W) film terms we would call it "panchromatic" because it sees all spectral colours. Panchromatic B&W film was 3rd generation that followed the 2nd of "orthochromatic" B&W film (2 spectral colour bands) and this followed "monochromatic B&W film seeing only one spectral colour band. In that sense, calling a Leica "Monochrom" is a misnomer. Its sensor is panchromatic and the resulting images have zero colour as black, grey, and white are no colour.

Hi Darrell, Have enjoyed your 3 month review and concur with your summary. I moved up to the z8 last month, from a z5 which I've had for just over 2.5 yrs and am in the learning curve. I was primarily a landscape amateur but interested in wildlife, hence the move to the z8- the auto focus has been astounding and am also trying out video more. Your comments about the z100-400mm vs the 200-500mm were appreciated as I am considering the switch due to size/weight benefits- do you have a review?. I notice you had an L bracket that only fits half the base- what brand is it and do you recommend it over say the small rig one? Thanks.

Hello Darrell, this is a very informative video. However, I still ask myself a question. I have a Z6II which is very good for landscape but has big focus gaps for wildlife photography. I'm hesitating between a Z9 and a Z8. The Z8 is cheaper but I'm still waiting for the firmware update to be equivalent to the Z9. My main question is this: apart from birds, dogs and cats, does the Z8 recognize other animals correctly? I saw a squirrel and a horse in the video but there was no indication of eye refocusing. I mainly photograph “out of category” animals, badgers, deer, rabbits, etc. Are they recognized? Thank you in advance for your response. Continue to highlight our wildlife. I wish you an excellent year 2024.

Af is good enough. Way better than z6ii

Hello, can you tell us the L-Bracket you have on the Z8?

Great you don’t regret buying it after spending that amount of money.

So that’s what happened to Jim Bowen from Bullseye🤣🤣. Great review👍👍👍

Why not just buy a D850? The issues with the Z8, camera strap mount breaking, overheating, lenses not locking, etc

Who actually uses 20fps . I can get deer airborne with single shot !