For the longest time, I used the Nikon D500 for all my wildlife photography needs. The D500 was (and still is) a killer camera that can handle pretty much any kind of wildlife scenario. But as you probably know, Nikon stopped making DSLRs and my Nikon D500 was getting a little old. Plus, for a while, I had seriously pondered switching to full-frame – so the Z8 seemed like the logical upgrade path. Now, after using the Z8 for several months, I’m pleased to present my detailed review of this amazing camera.
If you’re interested in buying this camera, consider buying it at B&H through this link because it supports me as a full-time content creator. You can also get anything else through that B&H link to support me as well. So, let’s get on with the review!
And don’t forget, all images in this review have been taken with the Z8!
Notable Features
The Z8 has a fast, stacked sensor that means blackout free, silent shooting at 20FPS. It has 45.7MP so plenty for cropping, and no AA filter so its images are super sharp. It’s got the EXPEED 7 processor and has various subject recognition modes such as bird autofocus that work very well and often find the birds eye. Basically, it’s a huge upgrade from the D500 and it has pretty amazing image quality. The advantage of a full-frame camera is that it almost gives you two focal lengths in one compared to an APS-C camera because while a crop sensor gives you a “crop”, you can’t uncrop with it.
Honestly, the biggest upgrade for me from the D500 wasn’t actually the faster speed, but the silent shooting with very good autofocus. As soon as I got the Z6, I often preferred using it over the D500 simply because of the silent shooting. Unfortunately, the autofocus of the Z6 is rather weak and it also has a bit of a shutter delay in the sense that what you’re seeing in the viewfinder is a split (but noticeable second) behind what you get when you press the shutter, which makes it more difficult to get the correct moment in bird photography.
Handling and the Physical Stuff
The Z8 is a medium-sized camera. It’s more manageable than the Z9, similar to the D500, and bigger than the Nikon Z6. I don’t have a strong opinion on the Z8 size. In some ways I like the Z6 size a little better, but the Z8 size is also quite nice and has a grip that better suits my hand. It fits long lenses well. The build is also nice, and I only have one complaint: the port covers don’t have metal hinges like on the D500, which were easier to use.
The screen is a two-way tilt screen, but it’s not articulating. That will irk some people and not bother others. For wildlife shooters, a tilt-screen like this is superior to an articulating-only display, although the Sony-style combined articulating and tilt-screen is probably the best. That being said, the flip-articulating screen will be a serious flaw for those who use this feature a lot to shoot videos of themselves.
Overall, the Z8 is solid. Can’t complain about the build quality at all.
Autofocus Performance
The autofocus performance of the Z8 is excellent. One of the biggest changes of the Z8 (and the Z9 for that matter) compared to previous Nikon cameras is the plethora of subject recognition modes. Like earlier models, it has human eye AF but it’s also got a dedicated bird AF mode as well.
Bird AF works well. For close birds, it frequently finds the eye when the bird is fairly close but defaults to full-body detection when the subject is farther away. I found it worked very well, but not perfectly. For example, when birds were more distant and surrounded by branches, sometimes the focus wasn’t perfect. But of course, in these situations, the photo won’t be very good anyway. When birds were surrounded by many branches like in this photo, I did find that occasionally the autofocus would lose the subject, in which case I still found single-point AF to be slightly superior.
For other animals, the story is similar. After shooting deer in a field for several days, I also found that the autofocus was very good, but the autofocus would occasionally be confused by the wavy grass. You can of course improve the performance by restricting the autofocus to a smaller area using the wide area modes, which luckily can be customized to specific areas.
There are also airplane and vehicle modes. Since I only shoot wildlife, I can’t comment on these.
My evaluation is this: the subject detection is very useful, and if you use it properly, it should work almost every time in photographically useful cases. Speaking as a wildlife photographer, I’d say the autofocus of the Z8 is very good, and certainly much better than the Nikon D500.
I do have to give credit to the D500, though, as it is really not far behind if you don’t take into account subject recognition (and even the D500 has primitive recognition).
High ISO noise Performance
I tested the Z8 versus the Z6 in terms of high ISO noise performance. At low ISOs, downsized Z8 files to Z6 resolution look very similar to Z6 files. At higher ISOs above 6400, you can start to see that the Z6 files look cleaner. On the other hand, the Z6 has an anti-aliasing filter and the files are also naturally softer. Once you sharpen the Z6 files to equalize for this sharpness, the files look much more similar, and a UIQ algorithm test shows that just after equalizing for the additional information in the Z8 file and the softer Z6 file, the true performance difference between the Z6 and the Z8 is about 0.2 stops, so, negligible.
If you’re really interested in a super-detailed high-ISO performance comparison between the Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z8, I suggest you take a look at the following two videos which really go into a deep-dive on the topic with more mathematics that you’d probably care to look at:
Synchro VR Performance
The Nikon Z8 has synchro VR, which allows the cooperation of the IBIS mechanism and the vibration reduction on some lenses, like the Nikon 600mm f/6.3 PF lens. I compared the overall stabilization performance compared to the combination of the Z8 and the Nikon 500mm f/5.6 PF lens and it’s noticeably better, both with stills and video performance. I mean, if a bird is REALLY still, you can shoot at speeds as low as 1/30 of a second if you can really hold the camera in a stable position (without a tripod!), although 1/30 is probably the lower limit, and 1/80-1/125 being a more realistic range. At that range, the Nikon D500 and 500mm f/5.6PF lens struggled far more.
In short, the Z8 and Nikon 600mm f/6.3 lens is a vast improvement in terms of lower shutter speed shooting compared to the D500. Of course, the D500 also had a mechanical shutter, which tended to produce shutter shock at lower speeds. In fact, in real life, I remember many instances in the rainforest of Brazil where the image quality of my shots was reduced because of this, whereas the Z8 has absolutely no problems in this regard.
Video Features
The Z8 is a pretty capably video camera. It has 10-bit H.265, ProRes, and Nikon Raw formats, and can shoot up to 8k. Although 8K will certainly be welcome for many, its ability to shoot 4K120 is even better for me. Plus, the footage at 4K looks very detailed. The incredible stabilization and beautiful video footage means you can get some pretty awesome video clips of birds and animals handheld at 600mm, which is incredible. My only wish for video mode would be 240FPS in 1080P but 120FPS is pretty good.
The camera comes default with SDR and N-Log profiles. The N-Log is pretty nice, and Nikon’s also got a couple of Red LUTs that you can use too. Honestly, 10-bit N-Log H.265 is already very nice. I also tested N-Raw and ProRes formats, too. N-Raw file sizes are huge and I’d never use them, and the ProRes format is totally unsharpened compared to the H.265.
In terms of video tools, the camera has zebras, which is welcome except that they can’t be used in stills.
Notable Deficiencies of the Nikon Z8 (a.k.a. Z8 II wishlist)
The Z8 is one of the best cameras I’ve ever used. Therefore, it’s hard to find deficiencies in it. That being said, there are a few:
- The Z8’s startup is not instantaneous. For a camera this expensive, the camera should start up faster. It’s pretty quick and practically probably not a problem, but the D500 from 2016 can start up instantaneously.
- If I had to be really picky, the bird and animal subject recognition mode could be improved a little. Sometimes, with some kinds of animals, the eye is clearly visible and yet the camer can’t recognize it. I haven’t found my photography to be impaired by it because in many such cases, other area AF modes work fine, but it would be nice.
- Let’s talk about the viewfinder! It’s got 3.69 million dots. To me, it looks rather low-resolution. Even the Panasonic G9 has 3.86 million dots. It really needs to be upgraded to one of those 9.44 million dot-viewfinders of the Sony A7R V. It just doesn’t look as good as an optical viewfinder in good light. Of course, there’s nothing really wrong with it. It’s usable and won’t interfere with your photography. But I think it would be great to have life-like resolution in the viewfinder. I guess the rear-LCD could also use a bit of an upgrade but since one typically doesn’t put one’s face right up to it, it’s not as pressing as a viewfinder upgrade.
- I like the feng shui of a completely silent camera, and that’s why I don’t like that the Z8’s IBIS mechanism makes a loud sound when parked. IBIS is very good, but the IBIS unparking mechanism is annoying. You can at least prevent this sound when you enter the menu by turning on silent shooting, but when the camera wakes up/goes to sleep or turns on/off, it makes a very clacky sound. Cameras like the Panasonic G9 can park and unpark the IBIS silently, so the Z8 should be able to do this too.
- The Z8 doesn’t have zebras in photo mode. In my opinion, the histogram is really outdated, and the Z8 should be able to use zebras or even waveforms in photo mode, which are much more intuitive in my opinion. It can use zebras in video mode so it should be able to use zebras in photo mode.
- The sensor of the Z8 is good. Really good. But it could be a bit better with regard to noise performance. Not sure if this is physically possible but maybe with the evolution of global sensors, this will improve. (Note: I rarely have trouble here. But recently, I encountered ONE fringe scenario where line pattern noise was a bit of a problem. So, this is a really MINOR point).
- Extended menu banks are okay, but Nikon needs to overhaul the entire settings system and make it easier to switch to different complex settings. For instance, the user should be able to choose what sort of settings are carried over to different menu banks, akin to how you can choose which settings to use in the “Recall Settings” function.
- The Z8 doesn’t have pre-release Raw. I am pretty sure the Z8 could do it, even if at a slightly lower framerate. Please Nikon, just add it in a firmware update! (Again, I’m saying this only for other wildlife photographers. I wouldn’t use it myself.)
- The build quality is really good. But it doesn’t have the refined feel of the flagship DSLRs like the D5 or even the D500. It needs to “feel” more solid.
That being said, these are very SMALL complaints about the camera. None of them are impairing, and none of them would make me upgrade to a Z8 II simply because such an upgrade would be WAY too expensive for me. But if Nikon magically said they’d give me a Z8 II, these are the features I’d want.
Overall
The Z8 is an amazing camera, and for me it’s practically perfect for wildlife. The complete lack of mechanical shutter with a fast enough sensor to enable silent shooting without worrying about rolling shutter is huge. It’s autofocus is also very competent, and its 20fps burst rate should be enough for most situations. Its video capabilities are also very impressive, and its synchro-vr is very useful in wildlife when your subject is standing still, and has allowed me to shoot at very low shutter speeds.
If there’s just one thing I’d change about this camera, it would be to make the IBIS locking mechanism silent as well, as I really don’t like its sound.
Overall, I’d absolutely recommend the Nikon Z8 for wildlife shooters. In my opinion, due to the lack of shutter, it could easily be a camera you use for the next fifteen years without problems. Yes, Nikon is going to come out with an even better model, but for most this will likely be all the camera you’ll ever need.