A couple of months ago, I started shooting some of my kids soccer games on my Nikon D700 with a 300mm Nikon ED AF 1:4 lens. Maybe just over 10 years ago, I had originally bought the D700 and I was into photography for a while, partially due to my gear acquisition syndrome. When I started shooting with it again, I started to get an itch to upgrade to mirrorless and a zoom lens that would give me a little more flexibility with shooting.
Long story short, I recently purchased a used Nikon Z8 with a Nikon 180-600mm 5.6-6.3 lens. The lens was a little bigger than I had imagined. The first thing I enjoyed about the camera was that I could plug it in to charge without taking out the battery. The CF express B card is a lot faster than the old CF cards.
The processing workflow changed as well–I started using darktable. I have an older Windows gaming computer that had lightroom 4.x on it before they did the cloud/subscription stuff, but I would have needed a newer version to process images from the Z8. It took a while to get familiar with it, and I’m still on the edge as to whether I’ll stick with it. I feel like it would give me a faster workflow because culling was a little quicker in it, and I would also like to try some of the newer AI masking features. It takes me a little longer to get what I want done in Darktable, but it is a pretty good piece of free software. I have to thank AI agents for all their help answering all the questions I had. It’s also amazing the amount of stuff you can find on youtube also.
Overall, as far as the camera is concerned, I sort of miss the optical viewfinder. While I guess the EVF should technically be better, it feels like there are a bunch of compromises for the sake of battery life. I think there is some nostalgia for the real image with some digital numbers under it.
The 180-600mm is an interesting lens. It has a good range for shooting kids soccer, but I feel like I still haven’t figured it out yet. I shot two matches with sport VR, but I think the next one I want to try without VR. I am seeing some artifacts in the bokeh that I’m not a fan of. Especially when shooting with a chain link fence in the background. There are some photos that aren’t sharp, and I don’t know if it’s the VR or something else. I’ve been shooting at 1/2000 or faster, which should be fast enough, but it’s possible I was panning the camera without realizing it.