Nikon ZF Review 2024 : Stunning Design but is it any good?
My In-depth Nikon ZF Review
Hello and welcome to my Nikon ZF review, today I will be talking you through my experiences with the Nikon ZF as well as showing you some of the photographs I have taken with it.
We will be covering Auto Focus, Image quality, high ISO performance, Size, Weight, Dynamic Range, its Video Uses and my Positives and Negatives too of course.
I run you through its main features and more importantly my thoughts on the Nikon ZF and if I would happily have it in my camera bag or not?
You can watch my full Nikon ZF video review below or keep on reading if you prefer.
So, let’s have a look at one of the more important aspects of any camera next and that’s its price.
Nikon ZF Price and is it Value for money?
The price of the Nikon ZF at the time of writing this Nikon ZF review was $2,399.- or €2,299.-.
For this price you are getting not only a camera with beauty and character but brains also so from a value for money perspective I would see it as being very good value for money especially considering it’s feature list which we will get into next.
You can check the latest price and offers on Amazon for your region by clicking on the image here…
Before we go any further I should mention that this Nikon ZF review is not sponsored by Nikon but they did send the Nikon ZF out to me for this review, but I haven’t been paid for this review and it went back to Nikon again after I was finished with it.
So this is my unbiased review of the Nikon ZF, I picked the ZF for review as it has been on my should I buy it list now for quite a while anyway enough talking let’s look at its main features now.
Also any Amazon links on here are probably affiliate links and while it doesn’t cost you anything to use them I might get a slight commission so thank you for supporting this channel and my websites.
Nikon ZF Features…
- We have a 24mp full frame sensor, which has more than enough resolution for most photography genres and work.
- Great Low light performance with an ISO range of 100-64,000 ISO or in the extended ranges it goes down to ISO 50 and up as far as ISO 204,800.
- The simply gorgeous design then. Just look at it, it’s a thing of beauty. but did you know Nikon have hidden a secret detail into this camera? More about that in a minute….
- Fully articulating 3.2” screen, I have been waiting for this for a long time in a serious hybrid camera from Nikon, that’s great for vlogging… and I am loving it so far.
- 8 stops of VR> built in, now when you consider the Z8 and Z9 only have 6 stops… just Wow.
- 14.5 stops of Dynamic range which again is exceptional.
- Crazy good Auto focus performance. With AF dectection working down to -10EV.
- Eye Dectection AF for photos and videos of course.
- Animal, Car, Plane and People of course AF dectection modes included as standard.
- Then you have Pre-Release capture up to 30 FPS in JPEG.
- 30fps burst mode in Jpeg and 14fps in Raw.
- Dual card slots with an SD and Micro Sd slot, Micro SD is not really an issue in case you thought it was, more about that later….
- Pixel Shift technology giving you image up to 96mp in size…
- 10 bit internal H265 Nlog video recording, which for the price of this camera is just crazy.
- Voice memo feature, which is handy for taking down names or notes for each photograph during events.
- Great skin tones and colouring out of the box as you would expect from a Nikon camera.
- Monochrome mode, but don’t diss it just yet as this is a nice little feature to have…
Camera Design.
So that’s the very rough run through of the main feature but before we get into the serious review I just want to talk about the camera body itself and just look at this beautiful design, doesn’t that take you back to the days when photography was so much simpler…
Just look at those dials and doesn’t that look gorgeous now and don’t be fooled by its gorgeous looks as this camera is packed with tons of features and more importantly it has the brains to back it up.
The Nikon ZF Secret.
I mentioned earlier that this camera has a little secret that you might not know and that is that the Nikon ZF dials are made of Brass… apparently part of the thinking here is with a lot of wear over the years that brass is going to start to slowly seep through as the black coating will no doubt start to wear away which is going to give you this beautiful patina effect.
This is something I wasn’t aware of until I watch Ricci’s video on the Nikon ZF a few months ago.
Ricci simulated what these controls would look like after some serious wear and tear by sanding them down a bit, yes, he actually sanded them down 🙂
I highly recommend you check out his Nikon ZF video here and subscribe to his channel as he has loads of great Nikon content on there.
Just look at how nice that looks now, you can see how this camera will actually age with you and develop it’s own character or style so to speak over time…
Speaking of style you can get the ZF in a total of 7 different colours so you can match it even more to your charachter or style. Personally, I like the black version most as it stands out a little less but that’s just me. What do you think have you a preference?
Build Quality
Looking at build quality now and the Nikon ZF just oozes quality in every aspect of its build, the camera body feels strong and very very solid which is so nice now when are living in a world full of plasticy flimsy camera bodies.
I think if you travelled back in time to the 1980’s this camera would fit right in. The only things that would give you away is the large crisp bright 3.2” display on the back of the camera and the EVF too of course.
The controls, buttons, card slots, dials and switches are all as you would expect from Nikon very well made and they feel very positive and robust.
The articulating screen doesn’t feel toyish and the overall finish to the camera body is top notch. I love using quality products and the Nikon ZF from the first moment I picked it up inspired confidence.
So, from a build quality perspective the ZF is top drawer and Nikon has built a thing of beauty here the only point to note here is…. as this is a solid camera it’s not light… so let’s have a look at weight next.
Nikon ZF weight
The Nikon ZF weighs 710 grams and while that’s not heavy it’s not really light either but again anything that’s built to this standard is going to weigh a small bit. The weight is not a deal breaker in anyway but it’s just important to know it.
Personally, I have found this weight to be fairly normal and it compares well with my Z8 or Z7ii, I have always liked a slightly heavier camera to help balance the setup better when using longer or heavier lenses.
So it doesn’t feel like a plastic toy at the end of the 70-200 F2.8 S or 24-70 F2.8 S lens for example.
Nikon ZF Performance
Looking at performance and image quality now, the heart of the camera is the very same 24mp sensor that the Nikon Z6ii has which is a great sensor and I for one always liked the images it created for me in the years of owning one.
It also has the same shutter as the Z6ii but that’s where the similarities end between these two cameras ends.
Now speaking of shutter can I just say that using this camera and getting the same AF performance of my Nikon Z8 while still keeping that solid shutter sound is a pure joy to use.
The Nikon ZF is an incredibly capable all round camera that excels at landscapes, still life, macro and portrait photography heck it even does a really good job at wildlife and sports photography too.
The photograph above was captured during a street carnival in Ireland and I used the Nikon Z 50mm F1.2 (video review here) on the ZF to capture this image.
It was shot at F1.2 as I wanted to dissolve the background and the camera was set to Auto ISO, even though it was very dark and I was three rows back in the crowd and holding the camera over my head the camera focused on the fast moving subject so easily it was a joy to use.
Shooting in very difficult situations like this was a breeze to the ZF and the results kind of blew me away.
You can see more photographs in the video further up the page and I also talk you through them in a bit more detail.
Dynamic Range.
The Nikon ZF has 14.5 stops of dynamic range which is again is incredible for those high contrast scenes you might be trying to capture. Like shooting portraits where the model is backlit by the sun or shooting landscape and your foreground is in the shade.
The 14.5 stops of range here is going to really help you recover that shadow detail then.
Incidentally the Nikon Z8 has 14.2 stops of dynamic range and the Z7ii has 14.7 so the Zf is no slouch here and can keep up with the best of them.
ISO performance
The Nikon ZF has a dual base ISO with it’s first base ISO being ISO 100 and its second being ISO 800 for photography. So when I go to slightly darker scenes I automatically boost my ISO up to 800 even if 400 would do.
The high ISO performance is also really good, let’s have a look at some raw sample shots here now with no noise reduction applied.
Looking at High ISO performance now and I personally found this camera to be excellent up to ISO 3,200 and even ISO 6,400, now I should mention here I am very fussy about noise as are my clients so you could very well find you are happy at ISO 12,800 and higher.
I also know photographers that say ISO 25,600 is very good, so as you can see we all have different tolerances to noise.
It’s two native ISO points for Video in Nlog are ISO 800 and ISO 6,400.
Auto Focus
It has the same Auto Focus performance and modes as the Nikon Z8 and Z9, which makes it a great option in lowlight settings and fast moving scenes as the the subject detection modes do an amazing job, we all know how well the AF works in the Z8 and Z9 and the ZF is exactly the same.
On all the shoots I have used the ZF on it just worked perfectly and locked on and there was little to no focus hunting, the Eye AF also worked really well on all my tests which is no surprise as it has the same Expeed 7 processor as the Z8, meaning its super quick and can handle nearly anything you throw at it and trust me I tried it in some very challenging situations.
Nikon ZF card slots.
The ZF has Dual card slots but unusually Nikon have gone for one SD and one Micro SD slot here, Now if you are thinking oh no that’s a deal breaker as Micro SD is useless then you can watch my video further up the page where I show you how well the ZF does in burst mode.
Burst mode test and details.
I set the camera to Lossless Raw and set it to 14fps burst mode. Holding the shutter down for just over 7 seconds until the buffer filled which means the camera could record nearly 100 photographs before the slowest card slowed down the camera.
Again it’s probably best to watch the video to see this in action. I then waited for about 20 seconds for the camera to clear the buffer, in other words it took twenty seconds to write all the images to the card, as I was using a fast SD card with 300mb/s data transfer it was the Micro SD card that slowed the camera down here.
VIP I have to say the Micro SD card I used here was the 128gb Sandisk Pro and that was a slight mistake as that has a 90mb/s data transfer rate where as the 256gb and higher capacity cards has a data transfer rate of 140mb/s which means the card can transfer data 50% faster to it.
I picked the SanDisk Extreme Pro card as I use them in my drone and other smaller vlogging cameras and have always found them to be extremely good and they are also very reasonably priced considering their high specs.
So you get 100 photos in 7 seconds and that is a serious amount of images, if you need to sit on the shutter button for longer then that you need either the Z8 or better still the Z9. For the vast majority of people Micro SD is more than suitable.
Now a little trick here is to leave the micro SD card in the camera as it’s a slight pain to take it out and when you back up the images on the SD card you can reformat the micro SD card then.
I am presuming Nikon choose Micro SD due to the limited size available, but as you can see it still does a really good job.
VR and how good is it?
The in camera body image stabalisation in the ZF is really good and I do mean really good in fact its better than the Z8 and Z9 as they have 6 stops of VR where as the Nikon Zf has 8 stop of VR builtin.
That’s a huge difference and stupidly when I started doing this review I didn’t even realise it was better than my Z8 until I tried it and for a few hours I thought crazily thought it was because it was lighter that it just seemed to work better 🙂
Yes that was stupid, then I read the specs and then I knew why it was better. This means I was able to hand hold the camera and shoot images at half a second exposures at 14mm and get very good results which is completely nuts.
Pixel Shift Technology
Pixel Shift technology then means you can capture very high resolution shots up to 96mp files from this super compact body. Now to use this you need a still subject and a tripod of course, for 96mp file sizes you need the camera to shoot a 32 image burst and once they are combined in post processing via the Nikon software the results are staggering.
Monochrome mode with 3 monochrome profiles to choose from… Monochrome, Flat Tone Monochrome and Deep tone monochrome.
This is something I haven’t used a lot but if you shoot a lot of black and white images this could be a seriously nice for you as the results are very impressive and having that on a separate switch is a nice effect also.
Nikon ZF Videography
For video shooters then we have 10 bit internal H.265 NLOG recording which is a huge advantage to have over the likes of the Z6ii or Z7ii for example, as they need an external recorder as default.
Flip out selfie screen for vloggers and then we also have the 4k60P recording mode.
Now, a point to note here is that there is a some rolling shutter at 4k 60P in fast moving scenes which improves at 4k30P and at Full HD resolution it’s gone. The sensor in the ZF is obviously not as fast as the likes of the Z8 and Z9 hence we are getting that effect.
Nikon ZF Review Conclusion : Its Positives and Negatives
Positives
The things I love about the ZF have to be its size, awesome Auto focus, amazing build quality, finally a flip out screen for us vloggers, the high ISO performance and the quality of the video this camera produces. In short there is an awful lot to love about the Nikon ZF but for me these are the highlights.
Negatives
There are also a few things I don’t like about it and the first one has to be the grip, it’s just not there and I found it very difficult to hold it with heavier lenses attached. The solution here though is simple, you can buy this Neewer Grip or you can also get the smallrig version, personally I went for the neewer one here as it was cheaper, it has a vertical mounting point which the smallrig doesn’t have and it also had the brass button attachment included. So that’s not a serious disadvantage for the ZF and easily solved.
The second is the lack of a sensor shield, I would have loved to see a shield in place here to cover the sensor while we are out and about changing lenses, I can’t understand why there isn’t a shield in all mirrorless bodies now and yes, I know it’s easier to fit one in the Z8 as there is no shutter.
The one massive problem I have with the Nikon ZF though is… that I really want one now. I would use this camera for traveling around with and just being out and about with my family as well as being a back up camera for my Z7ii or Z8.
In short, I hate you Nikon, you need to stop producing amazing cameras, it’s becoming completely ridiculous now, every model is just so stupidly good.
I am saying that and I still haven’t gotten my hands on the Nikon Z6iii for review to put it through its paces.
So, thanks Nikon and also thank you for reading this review or watching my review video.
I have several other videos on the Nikon ZF here…
15 settings I changed on the Nikon ZF
You can also read the following reviews here on my website…
With a few more interesting Nikon Products so make sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell.
See you out there,
Kieran.
Nikon ZF Review : Love it or Hate it?
In my full Nikon ZF review we will be looking at Focus, Image Quality, High ISO performance, Dynamic Range, Video capabilities and loads more...
4.8
Pros
- Great Focusing system
- Fast
- Beautiful Design
- Fantastic Image Quality
Cons
- Price
- Grip
- Weight