Z8 Firmware 3.01 - Report on improvements in studio/strobe AF

[anotherMike]

Yea, that's what I'm thinking as well - in addition to the A14 setting, they tweaked something.

I shot a *lot* with the 85/1.2S and had zero problems with AF across 2 days, so like you, believe they did some more "silent" updates...

 

[Terrible Photographer]

That being said, to say the difference in AF consistency and accuracy was VASTLY improved would almost be a laughable understatement. To put it mildly, I thought the AF was good enough on the Z8 that I shot the entire second day on the Z8 *only* and left the D850 sitting there ignored. There is no way I would have done that if I was not confident in the Z8 now. I was shooting both static as well as substantial (thousands) frames of improvisation/free form movement, meaning the model is constantly moving, all the time, no stops to "pose", and I left the Z8 on AF-C (the first time I could trust this mode in the studio), wide custom AF grid, settling on a 5x9 pattern with people/face/eye subject detection on. I made a reasonable attempt to keep the grid over the pertinent part of the model during posing and that was it. I tend to shoot at F/9 and F/10 in the studio. I use Elinchrom strobes, often with grids or eggcrates as mods, which cut down on the ambient for sure.

THIS SHOULD BE A STANDARD OPTION ACROSS ALL Z's.

Seriously. It blows my mind this wasn't the default. Can't wait for the Z9 and Z6III to get this.

 

[aniltulsi]

If the switching ON A14 improves AF, then can’t it be kept ON for all situations, like Wildlife or Street photography? Is there any drawback keeping it ON in some situations?

Was trying to test the utility of switching ON A14 for wildlife, but didn’t see any difference. It is more useful for studio setup, where you setup the camera for exposure by flash, but focus using the light bulb, which is far below the correct exposure value. Opening up the aperture compensate for this fall in light quantity and helps AF better. In wildlife, as the exposure is set as per available light, and AF happens for the same setting, AF works fine, and opening aperture further doesn’t help much.



However, I find its description little strange, as it says this is useful for “live view”. In the DSLR world, I understood there was difference between viewing through optical viewfinder and LCD, which was the live view. In Mirrorless camera, everything is live view only.