Feature Articles

Nikon Z7 impresses with excellent capture details and intuitive handling

By Marcus Wong - 26 Sep 2018

HDR shooting, Sample Images and Closing Thoughts

Built-in HDR

The Z7 also comes with a built-in HDR function that can be enabled for either a single (i.e. the next picture you take), or a series of images (everything until you go back in and disable the function). It seems to work fairly well, but you do have to take note of ghosting from moving objects in the frame (as in the example below).

24mm at f/7.1,1/125s, ISO 100

100% crop.

It seems that High ISO performance on the Z7 is similar to that of the D850, meaning noise is well controlled up to ISO 6400. At ISO 12,800, noise is fairly significant, though we do think that the smudging is slightly better controlled compared to the D850, speaking to a less aggressive noise reduction algorithm. 

34.5mm at f/16, 1/50s, ISO 12,800

100% crop.

 

More sample images

The following sample photographs were shot with the Nikon Z7 in JPEG format, and are copyright to SPH Magazines. These photographs are provided for your reference only and we ask that you do not reproduce them elsewhere. Because of the large size of the full-resolution JPEGs, 100% crops have been provided instead of links to the full-resolution images.

70mm at f/8.0, 1/500s, ISO 800

29mm at f/22, 1/30s, ISO 400

100% crop.

52mm at f/8.0, 1/200s, ISO 100

35mm at f/8.0, 1/80s, ISO100

100% crop.
 

Closing Thoughts

As you can see, colors captured seem to be slightly subdued, though the images show good sharpness and detail at the lower ISO settings. Auto White balance proved to be accurate despite the changing weather conditions of the day, and on the whole straight-out-of-camera  JPEGs are very usable.

From our brief time with the camera, it seems that image quality isn't significantly better than that of the excellent D850, (we'd say they're about on par) but the camera itself is certainly a very capable one that's close to the excellent options from Sony in terms of responsiveness. Additions of in-camera retouch and the ability to assign custom functions to the control ring on the new Z lenses do add something different to the mix as well. 

If this is a sign of things to come, then we're certainly intrigued to see what else Nikon has in store. Hopefully, they'll work out a way to add dual card slots, with one supporting SD cards so that the rest of us can hop on to the system a little more effortlessly. Meanwhile, we're certainly looking forward to testing out the speed of the Z6 next!

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