Introduction
 |
The Nikon Zf is the retro-styled, full-frame mirrorless camera the company has been working towards for some time.
Following on from the rather ungainly Df, a DSLR, and the social-media-focused APS-C Zfc, Nikon has finally delivered a large sensor Z-mount camera with classic styling.
It’s not all backward-looking, though: the Zf uses the dependable 24MP sensor that underpins much of this price class and pairs it with its latest generation processor, creating a camera more advanced than the Nikon Z6 II but at the same price (an MSRP of $2000).
Buy now:
Style
 |
Nikon says the design is intended to mimic the look of the FM2 SLR from 1982, and the viewfinder shape definitely reflects that. But the slight protruding ridge of a hand grip takes more from 1980’s F3 HP, while the dedicated PASM control on the camera’s left shoulder has echoes of the 1983 Nikon FA. So overall, it’s probably fairest to say that it’s consistent with Nikon’s early 80’s design language.
It’s interesting to see that PASM control, rather than ‘A’ positions on each of the parameter dials, but it is consistent with the FA. There’s a small collar below the ISO dial with a little tab indicating which exposure mode you’ve selected. It’s small enough that you’re unlikely to change modes inadvertently.
Likewise, we’ve seen criticism that it doesn’t have a large, hand-shaped hand grip sticking out from the front. But photographers managed to happily wrap their hands around cameras with minimal front grips for decades before the hand-shaped lump became the standard design. This is meant to be an early 1980s-styled camera, not a mishmash of early and late 80s design cues, and Nikon still makes the Z6 II if you want a camera with modern ergonomics.
There’s a third-party bolt-on grip available from SmallRig (which is bundled with the camera in some markets), if you’re not ready to fully commit to the 80’s aesthetic.
Build
 |
Backing up that style is a higher-quality feeling of build than we saw with the Zfc (or, arguably, the Df). The Zf feels pleasantly dense and solid, and the dials are all metal. Both the ISO and shutter speed dials have toggle locks on them, so you can pop them up while adjusting settings or lock them down if you’re not using that particular control.
The weight is essentially the same as the Z6 II, so it’s not overly heavy but has enough heft to feel solid. And although the styling harks back to an earlier style of design, the button layout is very consistent with that of its more modern-looking siblings. Only the lack of a joystick stands out.
The Zf sees the implementation of 3D Tracking from the Z9 and Z8 finally arrive in one of Nikon’s mainstream models. On the Z6 II, you had to press a button to engage tracking and then think about whether you wanted to move the tracking box’s starting point, whereas with Zf, tracking is essentially an AF area mode, and you can position the tracking box just as you would the AF point. For plenty of types of shooting, you may just be able to point the camera at your subject, initiate tracking, and recompose, obviating the need for a joystick, but if you’re doing the kind of shooting where you need to pre-set the AF point (particularly useful if you want to choose a specific person you want to focus on, the moment you lift the camera into view), you may still notice its absence.
Sensor
 |
The sensor isn’t anything we’ve not seen before. It’s a 24MP full-frame sensor that’s capable of reasonably fast readout and very good image quality. It’s a sensor that produces good levels of detail, excellent dynamic range and performs well in low light. It’s maybe a bit better suited to stills than video, but offers a decent balance between the two.
We’ve seen various figures quoted for the Nikon Zf’s speeds, but the ones Nikon US has confirmed to us are: up to 11fps shooting in Raw and up to 14fps JPEG in the highest continuous mode using the mechanical shutter. There’s also a burst mode that uses e-shutter (and, we suspect, 12-bit readout) to deliver up to 30fps bursts, which includes the pre-buffering option first introduced on the Z9. The rolling shutter rate is around 26.3ms, so you can expect some distortion if you pan or shoot subjects moving quickly across your frame in this mode.
Video from the full width of the sensor goes up to 4K/30p and takes around 22ms to read out, while an APS-C cropped region of the sensor can deliver up to 60p 4K capture. These numbers are very similar to those of the Z6 II and Panasonic’s 24MP full-frame cameras, for that matter. Or the Sigma fp, or the Sony a7 III.
There’ll be plenty of people that snark about how long this sensor’s been about, but there’s very little out there that’s appreciably better unless you want to pay Stacked CMOS prices.
Shutter and stabilization
 |
The use of a more conventional sensor means the Zf has a conventional mechanical shutter of the type the Z8 and Z9 lack. It’ll shoot at up to 1/8000 sec and has a sync speed of 1/200 second. In manual exposure mode, you can select long exposures of up to 900 seconds (15 minutes) if you require.
What’s not visible in this image is the updated in-body IS system. It’s now capable of delivering a performance rated at up to 8EV of correction, according to industry standard tests. Part of this is aided by the camera’s processor, which is more powerful than the one in the Z6 II, but it’s also boosted by a mode that centers the correction efforts on the chosen AF point rather than assuming the middle of the image as the most significant point of correction.
Fully-articulated screen
 |
One slightly odd choice for such a traditionally styled camera is the inclusion of a fully articulated rear screen. This made a lot of sense on the Zfc, which was explicitly designed for social media content creators, but feels a little out-of-place on a camera seemingly aimed more at stills photographers.
Our preference in these instances is a two-way tilting panel like those used on various models from Fujifilm, Panasonic and Nikon, as they let you tilt the screen both in the portrait and landscape axes while pivoting roughly around the axis of the lens, which makes it easier to make sense of the ways the image will change as you move the camera. In principle, you can hinge a fully articulating display out from the back of the camera in the opposite direction, but then you need to hold the camera with the grip down instead of up.
The viewfinder is a 3.68M dot OLED display, as is totally standard at this price. The optics give an impressive 0.8x magnification, though, so it gives a nice view on the world. As you’d expect, there’s an eye sensor to switch between the rear panel and the viewfinder, or you can close the rear screen over and just use the viewfinder if you want a more convincingly 80’s experience.
Battery (and card slots)
 |
The Zf is based around the EN-EL15 battery that Nikon has used in its mid-priced cameras for many years now. The latest ‘c’ variant is a 16Wh unit that can be charged over USB. It powers the camera to a very reasonable 380 shot-per-charge rating if you use the rear LCD (it’s 360 if you use the viewfinder). Bearing in mind it’s not unusual to get more than twice the rated value, depending on how often you stop to review your images, this is a decent figure for all-day photography.
One concession to size is that Nikon has bundled the card slots in with the battery, something that’s more often done on less expensive models. The Zf offers two card slots: one UHS-II SD card slot and one rather fiddly microSD slot. Disappointingly, this microSD slot only conforms to the older, slower UHS-I standard, so you can’t just leave a fast card in there and treat it as if it were internal storage. Instead, it’s perhaps better considered to be an emergency overflow capability.
Ports
 |
The Nikon Zf has the ports you’d expect from a camera around this level. There are 3.5mm headphone and mic sockets and a micro HDMI port for video output.
There’s also a single USB-C port on the camera’s side (Nikon’s Z8 has us longing for a future where twin USB-C for charging and, say, SSD output, become commonplace). It’s a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) connector, which, again, is pretty much what we’d expect (10Gbps connectors are still rare).
Video
 |
Having said that, the Zf offers a fairly familiar set of video capabilities. With full-width 4K/30 and cropped-in 4K/60, Nikon has made a decent number of improvements.
In a step forward for a mid-priced Nikon, the Zf can capture 10-bit footage internally, opening up the possibility of internal N-Log recording or HLG HDR capture.
It also gains a waveform display to help set exposure (which can be particularly useful when shooting Log) and a dedicated settings display to demonstrate all your key video parameters in an at-a-glance format.
And it’s arguably video shooters who gain most from that fully articulating screen (though the ability to close it over, as shown above, doesn’t exactly undermine the classic look). But, if you’re not interested in video, all its features are kept separate on the mode switch just beneath the shutter speed dial, and you need never use them.
Ergonomics
 |
As with the Df before it (and Fujifilm’s X-T series), you don’t actually have to use the dedicated ISO, shutter speed or exposure comp dials at all: there are programmable command dials front and rear, just as you’d find on any mid-level Nikon from the past 20 years. To an extent, this is useful: Z-mount lenses generally don’t have dedicated aperture rings, so you’ll need at least one of the command dials to provide that function.
Sadly we’re not aware of any F-to-Z-mount adapters that can interpret the position of the aperture ring on older AF(-D) and AI(-S) lenses, so you won’t get aperture information in your EXIF. However, since the adapters also don’t have a motor to drive AF(D) lenses, there’s no particular harm in simply stopping older lenses down to your shooting aperture and getting a fairly convincingly early 80s (pre-AF) experience.
Summary
 |
We’ve only had a short amount of time using a pre-production camera, but there’s a lot to suggest that the Zf is finally the camera that so many Nikon shooters hoped the Df and more recent Zfc would be: marrying the style of Nikon’s early 80s looks with the handling, performance and image quality of a modern full-frame camera.
It won’t appeal to everyone, of course, though we’d be surprised if Nikon doesn’t also create a Z6 III for people who don’t want ‘last century’ ergonomics. And yes, it’d be good if Nikon made more lenses with aperture rings, allowed other manufacturers to do so, or made an adapter that better supported pre-1990s F-mount lenses.
But, while we want to spend more time challenging the AF system before passing judgment on the camera, there’s a lot that the Zf seems to get right.
Author:
This article comes from DP Review and can be read on the original site.
