Approaching The Scene 263: Nikon Z9 Firmware 4.0 Auto Capture Tips
(LINKS BELOW): Nikon’s Z9 Firmware 4.0 brings Auto Capture to this beast of a camera. During my Glacier National Park workshop last month David Archer found a use for it photographing some of the worlds hardest to capture birds in Glacier N.P. Together we’ll show the results and explain how we set the cameras up to get the best results. This introduction will be of particular interest to bird and wildlife photographers excited to try out this crazy new feature.
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@RicciTalks great video on Auto Capture: • Nikon Z 9 Firmware 4.0...
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LINKED TABLE OF CONTENTS:
00:00 Intro to ATS 263
01:10 Tree swallows are incredibly difficult to photograph without autocapture
02:45 Setting up Auto Capture on the Z9
03:45 Determining and setting Auto Capture distance
05:30 Motion, Detection & Distance parameters
13:35 Setting Speed & Size
14:50 Setting what area of the frame is active or inactive
15:55 Recording, Wait time & Detection settings
17:10 Activating, pausing and stopping Auto Capture
21:00 Auto Capture wrap up
As an early adopter of the Z9, this upgrade is like the 2nd time it feels like Nikon gave me a new camera for free. Wouldn't imagine this possibility when I bought the camera. Fantastic! Thanks for the video Hudson!
Thanks Hudson & David for this teaching video on Z9's Auto Capture, Brilliant as always! 🙏
Another very informative video. Thanks guys.
Fabulous tutorial! Please4.0 coming to my new Z8!
Excellent ! All I need now is for the Z8 firmware to update to include auto capture. Or get a Z9 !!
thank you David for your explanation on the Auto Capture tips--It seems a little complicated for me but I also enjoy your marvelous Bird pics--congrats
Great video! Awesome content. Love David’s work - he is amazingly talented.
I have a Z8 and just installed the upgrade that has this feature. This was a great help explaining this feature.
Fantastic video Hudson. Thanks to you and David both.
Great video, Guys! Thanks
Ive used this with hummingbirds, my results varied and now i know why... thank you for the information on distance!
Great video. Both you and David have amazing talent! That looks like a cool feature but at $5.5k for the Z9 and $15.5k for the Z 600 f/4 TC VR S, Nikon has just created the world's most sophisticated and optically superb "Trail Cam". 😂 All joking aside, there are some Barn Swallows living under the bridge where I photograph Ospreys and although I see them every time I am there, I haven't got a shot of them in the 4 years I have been going there. Like the Swallows you saw, these ones are too small and too fast!
thanks
It would have been nice if you had mentioned that full Auto Capture functionality was only available with Z mount lenses. Blew several hours trying to figure out why I couldn't set the near and far distances with my 200-500mm F mount lens. I finally found the answer to the problem on Ricci Talks
Thank you so much Linda I have spent a lot of time trying to set the near and far distance with my F.200-500 lens and could not understand why, now thank's to you I do understand.
Very good video and expanation. You take all the time to explain and all the details. With the newer FW is bird detection a lot beter ??? My respect !!
THanks! Yes. I just spent a week in Charleston on my workshop with a ton of bird photography and the bird detect is indeed improved. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but it is.
I am gonna figure out how to do this as a remote goal/basket camera.
Awesome video. My head is working overtime. My big challenge recently has been capturing dragonflies handheld with a 100-400 Nikkor zoom. This might be the way!? I most often do not carry a tripod.
So ask David if when he is shooting near his water feature if the water movement triggers the camera. Great video…this feature has so much potential!
Good question. When I got home from Glacier, I did set up on the water feature to try to capture bathing birds. As you suspected, the motion of the water did trigger auto capture, so it didn't work for me for that application.
I want that function on my Z8!!!
They had it on it initially before release and pulled it then to be only on z9. Hopefully they put it back on down the line
Thank you so much for sharing the set up and process. It almost looks like setting up for trap photography, is that the correct way of looking at this?
indeed!
Is there a certain setting that needs to be setup to use to see the focus distance? Great video btw, I always learn a lot.
You just have to chose distance as one of the parameters in the top left Auto Capture setup box as we walk through in this video.
Is the camera actually focusing on each shot or do you have the depth of field set to be in focus for the set parameters? -- thanks for the video!!
Focusing. Auto area AfC
Thanks for that Distance update, real handy. Also, you probably don't think about it but the brand of pants you had on aren't in your store.
Patagonia. :)
Great video, I've tried Auto Capture a few times. And then my battery quickly ran out, do you have any experience with this?
It will drain a bit faster for sure, but not if you plug in one of these: amzn.to/467Q2mx
You mentioned an atomos ninja. What does that do? Is it an external SSD? Does the camera still record? Do you have a video of this used with a Z9 and any different features?
Is auto capture also a part of the Z8? Thank you.
23:24 :)
Thanks.
Hi guys ,reading up on Auto Capture and have a question, how do you change the distance measurements displayed in the Auto Capture menu to show feet vs meters. I have my manual focus distance set to feet but this doesn't carry over to the Auto Capture menus. Can't or haven't yet found anything On-Line to tell me how to change this.
I don't think you can. I just use metric with my photography. Japan doesn't use inches and feet. They're base 10 with the bulk of the world. I'm a little suprised you can even change the focus readout to imperial units. Maybe if enough people complain they'll update firmware to switch autocapture with focus distance units, but I'd not hold my breath on that one.
@@HudsonHenryPhoto Thanks I was going to delete my question I did find the answer on page 31 of the Auto Capture PDF file from the Nikon USA site. Just seems silly that you can change it in one area and not the other. Thanks for the fast reply, this function has a lot of variables associated with it but it's only as complicated as you choose to make it in my opinion. Took a while to figure out you can't get into the menu itself to set it up if your rear screen is flush to the camera body 🙂.
how come i can't change the distance via the AF? could this be because of hte back button focus?? which i learned from you :-) but with i find a great asset to using my camera's
Nope. It's actually keyed to the BBAF in the Auto Capture software. the back AF-On button sets the close distance and the Shutter sets far even when set (as every pro working would) to BBAF. But... You can't set closer focus distances for longer lenses. The focal length determines the limits For my 800mm PF you can't use auto capture at distances less than 18 meters. For the new 600 TC, it's 16 meters. For the 100-400 it is 8 meters. It's not the lens's close focus that limits it. It's some parameter the engineering team at Nikon set for maximum focus speed with longer lenses.
Thanks Hudson. In that case I was trying it out way too close from a subject
Hi Hudson, I tried the Auto Capture today using my Z9 on woodpeckers coming and going in their hole, I only got 32 photos. Camera said battery was exhausted. Does that sound right, is there something you do to help with battery life. I did leave the camera out for about 5 hours but I surely expected more than 32 photos. Thanks for any thoughts.
It's all about those distance, motion and subject settings. That's going to determine what triggers it. As for the battery, it's running full time like your finger was half on the shutter. I'd be surprised if the Z8 lasts an hour on internal battery. You'll need to plug the PD battery bank in via Usb-c. I link a great one with the camera here... Www.hudsonhenry.com/atslinks
Hello Hudson, I'm not a Nikon shooter (yet?), but the Z9/Z8 tech specs are amazing. But there is one thing I'm wondering about, so I'll ask a question that might be blasphemous to Nikon shooters. Strictly by the eyeball test for image quality of a subject that doesn't require the AF magic of the Z9/Z8, are the Z9/Z8 files better than, equal to, or inferior (in any way) to files from the Z7 ii? I'm most curious about resolution and color/tonal rendering. By the way, your photography is outstanding!
They're extremely comparable having shot thousands of images through z7, z7ii, z9 and z8s I've owned. The z7 sensor has a tiny bit more dynamic range at base iso on paper, but I really don't notice it in practice. Ever since the D800 landed over 10 years ago Nikon's sensors' image quality has given me nothing to complain about whatsoever.
@@HudsonHenryPhoto Thank you, sir. I appreciate your sharing your experience!
All of these bells and whistles make me feel more like a computer operator than an photo artist.
There's still a ton of artistic thought going into it. Sure it's not for everyone, but photography has always been a left brain / right brain balance from the darkroom to modern tech. How far to one side you prefer is an individual choice. The point is these fast little buggers were physically impossible to capture like this without the technology and still a challenge with it. :)
Hudson, right on the mark. I've spent about 6 hours of my day taking pics of tree swallows skimming the water catching insects and one getting a handful of shots that were acceptable, one shot that was good! And that's out of several hundred shots!
I should probably embrace all of the new capabilities, even though I don't need them all. What's a motor drive?
I feel your pain!@@CR-hb4wu
@@kenjordan5750 Thats it! The motor drive made people feel that way... Every time new tech comes to the photography world, there are many that feel its cheating or not photography in its pure form.. when 35mm processing machines came out and took over the darkroom, when in-body meters took over handheld, when motor drives saved our thumbs and gave us multiple frames a second, when af replaced manual focus, when sensors took over film/slides, etc... it goes on and on. And with each of these, there were "traditionalists" that took awhile to accept and embrace it. Whats funny is, I use to do this "auto capture" (albeit not to this level) with my old film camera... can't remember if it was the Nikon F4s or N90s but the multi function back was needed to do this. But I would set my camera up, and in the settings, set it to only fire when camera was in focus. Then id use a cable release and lock it so the shutter was always pressed. When a subject would show up into the prefocused area, the camera would fire. So I was doing this in the early 90's. But this is that on steroids 😅 and I love it. Have so many scenarios where I can use it.
In the beginning, you place the camera in Manual Focus on the target. Then later on, it was mentioned that you have Auto-area AFC. Are you in manuel mode or in Auto focus mode?
The manual focus is merely to determine the distance to the target, but I note later that you can do that via the auto capture setup now by merely autofocusing your target during the setup. There is no need for manual focus at all. :) auto area is correct.
I understand, thanks.
Does this work for star trails, fireworks, lightening?
Nope. The intervalometer (and sometimes some ND) are your best friends for those situations. Just let it run and pick the best. For lightening, put on enough ND to get a good 10 second expousre and run the intervalometer at 11 seconds interval. You'll get great stuff. Fireworks I just play around with 1-3 second exposures and trigger as the mortars hit the apex. Star trails I did years ago before pinpoint milky way shots were possible. Intervalometer running constant for hours and blend in post.
My conversion to meters isn’t great, LOL!
This feature is already available on the Z8, unfortunately it only works with "Z" lenses
Yep as of this week they proved me wrong on two counts. They were able to port Pixel Shift over to the 8 without an IBIS update and they chose to give Z8 shooters Autocapture. It works fine with adapted lenses, you just can't set the distance parameter. Turn that off and you you're off to the races with the old F glass.