why Nikon Zf is the perfect retro camera

Hello friends,

Nikon is having a moment right now with the astronauts on Artemis II bringing a whole host of Nikon DSLRs and mirrorless cameras to the moon.

So I guess I’ll jump on the bandwagon and finally talk about my experience with the Nikon Zf. I’ve been in love with this camera for the past couple months now and I can’t stop gushing about it. It really is the perfect camera for me and my style of shooting.

I’ve been buying and selling quite a few cameras over the last few years, trying to perfect my setup, and now I think I found it and I can finally stop thinking about gear so much.

I have thoughts, a lot of thoughts.

I just made a video all about the Nikon Zf here, but if you prefer reading, well read along my friend.

Fujifilm is often touted as the king of making cameras that brings the film shooting experience back. But I’m here to argue that Nikon has made literally the perfect camera, and it takes them just one try. I guess two try if you count the Nikon Df. So you know sit down and grab a cup of coffee. Let’s get started.

Image quality and the megapixel argument

This photo is available on my print shop here

First let’s address the elephant in the room. This camera is only 24 megapixels. 

Is it enough? Obviously. Megapixels are overrated anyways, especially with my use case and my tendency to put a bucket of grain on my photos. I kept thinking I need more megapixels when I knew in my heart that 10 is all I really needed all along. I used the Leica M8 for a hot minute last year (video here) and it’s the most beautiful 10 megapixels I’ve ever seen.

“Society” have conditioned us to think that we need like 60 megapixels for cropping power and huge prints. I have to say that I’ve fallen on this trap too.

I got a Sony A7R2 for film scanning a while ago for very cheap, and that thing has like 42. I just find it kind of boring and uninspiring. The manual experience is not great, and if I say that it looks kind of ugly would you think less of me?

Now that I’ve used the Nikon Zf more, I think 24 is just perfect. When you're cropping, you're also cropping into the lens, not just the sensor. I feel like every time you crop smaller you lose a bit of soul of the lens and the image. It's just better to try to nail the photo in camera. You’d do just fine with like 3 megapixels even, like this guy with his Nikon D1

See more of this series of photos with the Nikkor on my northwest Vietnam hiking trip on this video btw.

Seriously go watch it pls pls I spend so much time editing that video and I’m very proud of the photos too and no one watches it lol

Low light and noise performance

This sensor is super clean. It’s actually so clean that the photos can display some banding when you're looking on it on your computer. Yeah I learned that the hard way. It goes away after I put some grain back into the photo, so that’s the trick.

The low megapixel count make this camera a low light beast. I’d shoot at 12,800 ISO on this camera no problem. The noise has an organic quality to it, whatever the hell that means.

Maybe the secret sauce is in the lower megapixels where the noise appear more cross. Sometime I daydream about this idea to shoot this camera like 51,200 ISO because you know it's there on the dials, maybe with a soft vintage lens as well.

Shooting experience

Maybe buying cameras is not about the specs anymore. Old cameras have become so good that the best camera for you is the one that provides you with the best shooting experience. Does the camera help you to shoot the way you want to shoot and do you feel good when you are using the camera? The Nikon Zf is that camera for me. I’ll elaborate.

Physical dials

When you're shooting different types of photography you need different exposure triangle setups. I think having the exposure triangles right at your hand at any moment is the optimal way of changing them. With dedicated physical dials you can prepare your camera for changes in conditions like setting the shutter to 1/50 to slow down the snow and rain before you even turn the camera on.

I’m also more confident that the dials will stay in place. I can’t remember how many times I accidentally bumped the ISO to 12,800 on other cameras. Just give me all the physical, marked dials. Damn it! To be fair the Nikon Zf would be even better if the lenses have aperture rings as well, but alas Nikon just didn't plan for that.

Manual focus assist tools

This is the most important feature of Nikon cameras to me. Fricking green box confirmation and fricking eye-AF for all mannual lenses.

The manual focus green box confirmation, well is a box that confirms that you have nail focus in that spot. Kind of like a rangefinder. Simple right? No, it means everything.

It’s basically a rangefinder equivalent for EVFs. No longer do I feel held back by my manual lenses. In 100% of cameras I always have to do the peaking plus punch in confirmation. And it's a considerable slowdown. If you use peaking in your life you probably know that it's inaccurate as shit, especially when you close down the aperture. With the Zf I can just adjust until the green box turns green and I got focus. It’s literally voodoo magic.

Manual focus lenses are important to me because of their renderings. I kept thinking back about how beautiful my Voigtlanders render the scene. That’s why the first thing I got for the zf is the Voigtlander 40mm f1.2 (watch the video).

Some people would say "Why don't you just buy this clinical sharp lens from Viltrox or something?"

And to them I say "So's wiping your butt with a leaf but it's not how a man gets around."

It's just too real, too boring. There's no poetry, no romance to the photos.

Nikon seems to be the only company right now that actually give a crap about the manual focusing experience, and I commend them for that (although their official FTZ adapters don’t have the feature for some reason, and you need like the megadap for that, read below). Manual focusing is never the priority of any other manufacturers because they want to sell you their modern autofocus lenses and don't gain anything from adding this stuff. props to Nikon for that.

Lenses

I have a few native mount lenses for this camera, and also the megadap etz pro plus as the middleman to adapt my manual vintage lenses to.

• Nikon 26mm f2.8 Z: This is the least talked about lens. It's just a second focal length in a tiny package that I can just toss in my bag when I want that spontaneous street photography look. I chose the 26 instead of the 28 because it seems to have more of that microcontrasty, you know, Zeiss rendering. Nothing against, the 28, I’d probably love that too. I already have all the vintage lenses in the world that gives me the look of the 28 though. But it’s nice still if you want a cheap, autofocusing 28mm lens which still makes very nice images.

  

  Nikon Zf, Nikkor 26mm f2.8

  
  

• Nikon 24-120mm f4 Z: This is for when I actually need the versatility of a zoom. Again check out that hiking trip video.

  

  Nikon Zf, Nikkor 24-120 S

  
  

• Nikon 40mm f2 Kit Lens: You may ask why would I get this one when I also have the Voigtlander 40mm f1.2? The answer is obviously for the autofocus. Sometimes I have to walk my nephew with one hand and then I won't have another hand to manual focus my lenses. I've been getting into flash photograph as well. The Godox IT32 I got have a wireless flash function which I can hold the flash with one hand off to the side you know, like the Bruce Gilden special, and then I won't have a hand to manual focus too.

  

  
  

• Jupiter 8 50mm f1.5: This is a tiny, tiny L39 lens. It’s so small and light and cheap too. Like 100 bucks. This is the kind of stuff I love shooting on the Zf.

  

  Nikon Zf, Jupiter 50mm f1.5. Look at that three deeeees pop. I love how wide open, this lens only have a little sharpness circle in the middle, which makes the photo very dreamy. I haven’t closed down this lens since.

  
  

• Megadap ETZ adapter: This is the most versatile and sturdy way for me to give all my vintage lenses green box confirmation. The E-mount is definitely the most versatile mount after the Z-mount, and that’s why I got this. You can go the M mount pipeline and adapt everything to M, and then M to Z. I just find the E mount route to be more versatile and sturdy.
  

• Techart TZM-02: I’m still interested in getting this one day to autofocus my M mount/LTM mount lenses, as I’ll been slowly building my collection babck.

If you're not satisfied with the Z-mount lenses, you can adapt anything under the sun to this camera. I’ll be a nerd and adapt vintage lenses all day. I’ve even been eyeing the Sony 20mm f1.8 for a while now in case I want to get into astrophotography again. It’s usually sold on my local market for like almost half the price of the Nikon equivalent, which makes the Nikon quite hard to swallow, even though everyone says it’s a very nice lens.

Build quality

It’s one of the reason why Nikon cameras go to war and go to the moon right. They are very sturdy and they feel like high quality durable tools. I’ve used a few Fujifilm cameras before, especially the newer ones like the X-T50, the build just feel a little bit cheap and the paint comes off easily. I actually wrote a “review” of that before here, which I am now ashamed of for singing so much praise. After like 3 months of uses I can feel the obvious downhill in build quality compared to the X-T30 before that, and that wasn’t great to begin with either.

I do remember seeing reports about the screen ribbon cable of the X-Pro3 getting torn off too, and I guess that’s why that camera get discontinued so quickly. And even with the GFX50sii I had for a short stint, I saw that fragile ribbon cable exposed behind the screen and it shakes me to the core. I just can’t really “trust” Fuji cameras to last, unlike Nikons.

I think the first few generation of X-trans cameras had much better build quality, so maybe I’ll try one of those someday if I ever go back to Fuji world. But I honestly don’t see a lot of reasons when the Nikon Zf does everything I want from Fuji and more.

Fuji wasn't always like this too. I think they see all the hype and decided they are going to milk this shit as much as possible. It's kind of sad and I say that as someone who used to love Fuji cameras.

Viewfinder and screen

The viewfinder is large and bright and clear. It’s not the best VF in the world. It's the same "resolution" as the 50sii, like 3.7 mil dots or something, yet somehow I found this to be much better somehow.

The lack of “photography-centric screen” is fine to me. I just close the screen and shoot it like a film camera for most of the time. I love that I can do that actually, because it mimics the film camera experience which makes this camera ever slightly bit more immersive to me. And I sweat a lot and I live in a tropical country. I always smear my sweats onto the screen which feels pretty bad, so being able to close it is nice.

Sure the transformer ass screen of the A7RV would be unequivocally the best screen in any cameras, but, you know.

Look and feel

The Nikon Zf has a beautiful classic design mimicking the film cameras of yesterday years like the Nikon FM2. When I use my film cameras I always have these little thoughts going on my head about how we don't make things like we used to. This camera has lots of camera rizz. Is it vain to like how your camera look and feel? i'm a fancy boy. 

Battery life

This camera battery is great. I have two spare batteries in my bag when I travel but I've never bust them out before. The camera has USB-C charging too so I just top up the camera when possible.

Metering

This camera has Highlight weighted metering which is everything I wanted in modern cameras. The Ricoh GR series is the only other camera I used that have it. Never again will I worry about blown highlights, which I got constantly when I used the 50sII. The dynamic range of all modern cameras are so good that bringing the exposure up in post just doesn't really matter. But having your highlights be blown out absolutely does.

(The lack of) grips

Yeah you kinda need one.

This camera is like 700g in weight and with a grip it's like a little bit over 800g. Which is like 20000 pounds or something my dear American friends. I do envy the weight of the Sony A7C series sometimes, but you know, I'd still prefer to have the dials.

• this Neewer Grip is large and grippy and I guess is the best one if you use larger lenses.

• this Smallrig Leather Grip is lighter with not a lot of grip, but it looks cooler and has a thumbs up, which might be all you need.

You might get away with no grips too if you use very small lenses like the M mount stuff or the 2 “kit” lenses, but yeah otherwise just kinda have to accept that you need a grip I think.

I'm not very thrilled about it since it's like another 100 grams added to the weight I have to carry around my neck. But you know, it is what it is.

Weight

That 800g is about the limit of what I consider an all-day camera. I also usually mount my action camera on top of my main camera like this—it's another few hundred grams on my neck so every bit of weight saving counts.

JPEGs

The built in JPEGs are great if you want something that just works, you know like a nice clean professional look. The Rich Tone Portrait profile of this camera make great looking skin tones.

They do actually look quite nice, but it's just not my cup of tea. These days I'm more into getting the lo-fi film look, as you might have guessed.

Recipes

I don't really use recipes anymore as I've been quite satisfied with my editing these days, but I really appreciate that you can literally just do anything under the sun with this camera and the recipe and the Nikon imaging cloud software.

You can basically put all your edits into the JPEGs with the NX Studio and then you can put that edit up into the Nikon imaging cloud thing and then everyone can use that. It’s very cool honestly.

Video features

I don't really care about video features on my photo camera, but I'll say that this camera with its dedicated video switch is nice. You get 4K 10-bit N-Log, which is all I need for my videos. Stabilization is not as good as an action cam, so you have to be very steady. But you know, I actually find it nice to have video features on my camera when it's like a vacation or something and I don't want any extra gear.

Quirks

Let's talk about some quirks.

The white balance often leans a bit warm but it’s fine, I always change my WB in post anyways, and I do lean WB to the warm side often.

There's also something that no one told me about the Nikon world: the lens mount is reversed. Of all my other cameras and all the other mounts I've tried, the lens mount goes the other way. So yeah, it still trips me up to this day. I learned this the hard way when I first got my Nikon AI-S lens.

The menu system is a little bit convoluted but then again I've never used a Nikon before. It’s kept the same so professionals feel familiar with all their cameras, which I can respect. So many small annoyances though.

I also wish there was like another custom button or two. Surely there could have been another button on the back here for AF-ON. There is also no dedicated AF-MF switch. You have to press a button and switch the dial to change it.

Price and value

This Nikon Zf is decently affordable for a full-frame camera and the 40mm that comes with it is amazing too.

The pricing of Nikon cameras and lenses has been quite competitive I think. The 28, the 40, the f1.4 “classic rendering” stuff and some of the f1.8 “modern S line” stuff like the 50 are pretty well priced.

And I think this single Nikon Zf just... I don't know, kind of invalidated the whole Fuji camera lineup for professionals. Fuji lastest bodies and lenses are so absurdly priced and it only seems to go up. The Nikon 40f2 is like half the price of the Fuji 27f2.8, for example. Think about that for a moment.

Have you seen the price of an X100VI these days anyways still? It's absolutely ridiculous.

Conclusion

In the end I think it's important to really ask yourself what do you need from your camera. I don’t care about burst rates, or high megapixels, or video features. I love manual focus lenses, so it's great if the camera helps me use them to their full potential. I love the dials so I can dial in my settings before turning the camera on.

As it turns out, I'm a fancy boy. I want my camera to look nice and be fun and tactile to use.

I've stopped shooting film cameras mostly because of all the faffing around I needed to do at airports, but I still get those camera out and hold them on my hands and just cock the shutter from time to time just to feel that dopamine hit. I think this camera is a good alternative to that.

Figure out what you want and buy the cameras that fit your needs, I guess that’s my message.

Until next time,
Peter.

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