To be clear, before anyone shows up with like “I shot low light and it was fine” - no you didn’t. I’m talking darkness, lit only by minimal mobile dj lighting, or even low ambient lighting. I was at an elks club last night and… jesus christ.
My settings for events (dance floor) are typically in the range of 1600-3200, 1/125-200 depending on where I want the background, and f1.2. Flash is TTL but if it’s not consistent 1/64-1/32 is usually great. Bouncing with a magsphere. In this case it was the 50 1.2 Z. I’m also in ‘starlight mode’, which increases the LV it’s able to shoot in. Sidenote: Nikon needs to add an option to keep the LCD at normal brightness but enable the extra LV latitude. Or rather, why isn’t that always on?
The z9 just… hunts, a lot. And you can get great photos out of it, I really like the accuracy of TTL here, it almost never misses exposure. Something I never got out of sony. Now the sony, like any mirrorless, had issues in darkness too. But throwing a 1.2 lens on there usually solved that to the point where I could focus reliably. Not so with the z9. Thing just doesn’t find faces, and I found actually the best way is not to just do 3d or center AF point only, but throw it in wide. At which point it finds a face it can actually focus on, and then I just recompose and get the face it picked. It’s not perfect, but it works like… 40% of the time?
A workaround that’s annoying is throwing on the video light on my v1/v860iii and illuminating people to focus. I usually do this for groups because I’d have to shoot at 2.8 or above and there’s no way the z9 is focusing at that f-stop. But I can’t do it all the time because I’d be a beacon and annoy the crowd.
So if anyone has tips, tricks, the secret sauce… please let me know! I’m not the only one having this issue, my boss also has a z9 and is complaining, and I’ve seen complaints on facebook groups too. I’ve been shooting events for almost 20 years and mirrorless for 5ish so it’s not a skill issue.
Should I just bite the bullet and grab a d850 and an F mount 50 1.4? Would my zf do any better? I hear it’s better in low light, but I tried it and the colors weren’t popping as well as the z9. It’s also unbalanced with the 50 1.2, which is a beast, and then add a pro flash and its like… not a great setup to carry.
Yep - its a symptom of mirrorless cameras. The IDK if you were shooting in af-s or af-c, but if you’re using af-s, you can enable the af assist illuminator in the menus. - Custom settings>a12 in firmware 4.1 Also… take off your lens hood. The af assist led can very easily be blocked by it.
The reason for low light af issues is that Nikon cameras and possibly all mirrorless cameras have the focus sensor behind the green filter and as such your red/infrared af-assist lamp on your flash is utterly useless i’m afraid. Its really annoying that even several years after mirrorless cameras appeared, there are no speedlights out there with a green af assist lamp. Grrrrrrr.