I have 24-200 on my Z8 and it rarely leaves the camera. I know what the snobs will say - it is unable to fully realize the resolution of the sensor and it has other optical shortcomings. All true, but I’m not going to bring my camera with me at all if I also have to bring a backpack full of lenses at the same time. When I actually need a ton of resolution, I can slap a cheap(ish) 40mm prime on. So kudos to Nikon for not bowing down to the snobs.
I think all the bickering about “snobs” and whatever the opposite is comes from people doing very different photography and for some reason transferring their choices onto others and vice versa. E.g. I mostly photograph wildlife, often in dark forests, so this (28-400) lens is too slow for me. There are also prime lens purists, but in wildlife they mostly stick to birds, because good luck photographing e.g. small mammals like squirrels with that (I do follow one photographer who manages to do it, but it’s beyond my abilities). Your choices will be different still if you photograph mostly still scenes, maybe portraits etc, where your shutter speed lives in a dimension I generally don’t venture into. There is also the question of taste about how much depth of field you like, what apertures you like, how tightly you like to crop, whether you skew more towards low-key, high-key or balanced exposure etc.
I wish people were more cognisant of the diversity of photography different people do and not make universal judgements about gear or techniques in general.
It has to do with post-hoc justification of very expensive purchases.
Nobody wants to drop prosumer+ $$$ for body + glass and then realize that theirs isn't "the best" (for whatever definition).
And so, when faced with a scenario, they illogically try and construct an argument in which their purchases is indeed the best, in all ways, for all of time.
Hence why it happened with consoles too (also there, immaturity). ;)
It goes both ways. And your explanation explains only one way.
Many people will try to explain to you that they can shoot everything on their smartphone. What is left unsaid is that those people never shoot in demanding light conditions, scarcely ever shoot anything faster than a human etc.
In mamy of those discussions there is also a token asterisk added “except in sports and wildlife” and continuing with blanket statements, as if those two avenues were some fringe activities that the reader probably doesn’t want to do.
Truth be told, for most scenarios a high end phone _does_ produce better pictures than an interchangeable lens camera without specialized lighting setup. Take a pic of a landscape or a person with the latest iPhone and the result is often better than what you see with your own eyes. And I’ve been shooting with various dslrs for the last 20 years plus. Can I get better results with pro gear? Sure. But not with zero effort. Half of my large print outs are from iPhone.
A large part of this is HDR that “just works”, versus the broken mess in every other scenario.
A case in point: Lightroom on iOS can process an RAW photo with HDR grading and even export it in any of three HDR formats… none of which can be opened on iOS.
My Nikon camera can take HEIF photos like an iPhone (with HDR), and transfer it to my iPhone with an app, but the files are non-standard in a way that the iPhone can’t actually be used to share them with anyone, making this a frustrating non-feature.
It’s just incredible how broken HDR still is in 2024.
PS: Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, a professional HDR colorist application added native HDR output just last week! My previous iPhone had this for nearly a decade now.
Yeah I have no idea why camera companies refuse to come Jesus and embrace computational photography. Seems like a vast, unplowed field to me. That’s what I’d do if I was in their shoes - there’s no reason why a full frame dslr has to take worse pictures than a phone in any conceivable case
I have exact lens setup. The mentioned telezoom rarely leaves my camera unless I need a portable camera that’s when the 40 shines. I have no problem with resolution since I use Z6 II.
I switched to 24-200 during workshop with Pinkhassov as he is a strong proponent of superzooms.
I'ver been a pro photographer for over 30 years. Sigma's 60-600mm lens is a marvel of engineering and I can't recommend it enough. I've used a lot of superzooms in my time but nothing holds a candle to the sharpness and clarity of this lens throughout its range. However, it is large and unwieldy.
For a general "do everything" camera - Sony's RX-10 is also remarkable. It has a built-in 24mm-600mm optic in a small, portable package. This camera can do photo and video with ease. It has a far larger sensor than Panasonic or Nikon's equivalent versions. My complaints with this camera are the poor manual focusing options and the low dynamic range of video which requires careful exposure to not blow out highlights.
I have not used the 28-400 in this article. But I do know that the shortcomings of these wide-to-telephoto lenses (not sharp throughout the range, poor construction) seem to have disappeared.
I wish Sony would release a new version with updated "AI" auto focus, the new menus, and 4k60 10bit. The Mark IV is till great though as a single do it all camera.
These days, those carrying a DSLR aren't doing so by accident or wannabeeism, and it's probably helping them enjoy the trip a lot more.
At least for me, it's often a nice nudge to go off the beaten path or try to find nice viewpoints, pay more attention at what I am looking at and the little details.
It's a superzoom, regular tourism is exactly the use case for these things (and, by the look of it, something this lens does really well at!)
When I'm shooting wildlife, I'll almost always use my 100-400, maybe with a 1.4x teleconverter for even more range if I need it and the light allows it. For walkabout purposes, or indoors, I'll use either my normal zoom (24-70 f/2.8) or my wide angle (16-35 f/2.8). All of those lenses will almost certainly significantly outperform this lens at their respective niches, so you only use a lens like this if you expect to take photos of a wide variety of subjects in a wide variety of conditions, but can't/don't want to carry three (or more) lenses around with you. That pretty much describes tourists to a tee.
Yup, the only use case for lenses like this is when you don't know what you're going to be pointing it at. If I have my stuff available I'm not going to use a superzoom. But when I'm limited in what I can carry I'm almost certainly carrying a superzoom.
For walk around photography, I usually use an Olympus E-M5 with a 12-40 Pro lens. It's tiny compared to most of the Nikon and Canon offerings. That's enough zoom for most subjects, from landscape to portrait. In practice, I just haven't found the need for more zoom during regular "walk around" photography. I do have a 100-300 zoom when needed, but the added bulk of carrying around a super-zoom all the time? No thanks.
I own d810 and had d80 and d7100 in the past years. Their current lineup (bodies, mostly) just doesn't appeal to me - if I ever transition to mirrorless, it'd probably be Sony.
Agreed that it's nice to see them pushing forward with their camera lines. Thank god for conglomerate revenue to see them through rough patches.
Imho, the idiotic video recording limit really bit them in the ~2010s and let Cannon take a lot of their consumer/prosumer share. And is still a thing(?), maybe not on newest lines, albeit less impactful now that full-resolution makes tethered external storage a better solution. https://kagi.com/search?q=nikon+z+video+record+limit
It seemed like a missed opportunity from a technical perspective to provide a simpler warranty-voiding user toggle in software (i.e. set a bit somewhere). They'd still get to maintain the tax benefits of not "officially" being a video recorder, but it would have lessened the impact of ripping, editing, and recompiling firmware.
Someone here explained it, some time ago. The <20 min recording time has something to do with how the device is classified, for import and tax purposes.
I'm not a pixel peeper but I don't find this lens all that impressive. I'm sure it's a very versatile lense with this range of zoom so it could be the one and only lens in your camera bag. But it does have the hallmarks of a "jack of all trades" lens. Not to mention that f/4 at the wide end is not terribly impressive. and 8 at the telephoto even less so. Sometimes these couple of stops make a lot of difference when you need more light or to freeze the shot.
On the other hand the old Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8 was a dream for me. The buttery bokeh alone made that lense a must have in every dslr shooter's bag. I miss that lens and the bodies it was made for.
Off topic: it’s been a number of years since I shot with a DSLR (had kids, found I always used my phone since it was with me and travelled far less for far different reasons). I have totally missed the mirrorless wave. I’d like to jump back in.
I used to enjoy Nikon DSLRs, but second hand knowledge has led me to believe Nikon really fell behind Canon and Sony and that I should look to a Sony Alpha now.
Any recommendations out there, or suggestions about pros and cons of where the different brands shine these days?
Context: I don’t shoot video, enjoy shooting primarily still scenery but would love to get into animal photography now that I live in the mountains. I used to do a lot of night photos, Milky Way, etc.
First mirrorless for me was the Fujifilm X-T5. High resolution, great design, easy and fun to use. I find editing is rarely needed with the film simulations. I started with the 16-80 f4 and it really is an excellent all rounder but for wildlife the XF150-600 can’t be beat. Light and sharp!
It may be excluded by your available budget, but the Nikon Z8 is probably the best overall camera in the world right now.
It’s a high resolution stills shooter with 20 fps! There is no mechanical shutter so it is totally silent. Eye detect, animal detect, bird, etc… all work much like with the Sony cameras.
Unlike the competition, it has a very fast sensor readout (nearly global shutter) so there is no “jelly” effect when shooting video or fast action.
The video capabilities are just crazy: 8.3K RAW at 60 fps with 12-bit color! Nobody else can do anywhere near that. Even the 4K video formats can be configured to downsample from 8K for quality directly comparable to high-end cameras used for making movies.
Every other hybrid camera “line skips”, resulting in pixelated video with a lot of noise and other artefacts.
