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.