In an earlier post (Death of the DSLR), I spoke of when during a black grouse lekking photography tour the noise of my DSLR was such that it would occasionally force the birds to stop and look in the direction of the hide while those that were using mirrorless were merrily snapping away, silently.
Such is the size and weight of my Nikkor 200-400mm f/4 that for some time I have been seriously considering selling it and replace with Nikon's 500mm f/5.6 PF. A number of clients have this lens and while on tours I have been blown away by how small and light it is. I travel quite a lot and although I don't photograph wildlife as often as I used to, the idea of packing a lens half the size and weight of my 200-400mm was becoming increasingly more appealing. At more than 3kg, handholding a 200-400 although possible is not really doable for long periods (at least, not for me) and when working from the car in a spontaneous fashion is clumsy and, at times, pretty painful. The times I have strained my arms and wrists while grabbing the 'beast' from the passenger seat.
There's no doubt that the Nikon D850 is one of the best Nikon cameras out there and with its -4 EV low light sensitivity, with the appropriate lens, can focus in near dark conditions. The D810 on the hand only went to -2 which is an enormous difference especially when you consider that one EV equates to one stop of light. The D6 goes a little further than the 850 to -4.5 and the Z9 to -5 and in Starlight AF mode to -7! Potentially, the Z9 could focus in 2.5 stops less light than the 850. That's crazy!
More examples of when 'slow' lenses might struggle.
Going back to the grouse tour. The birds would often arrive at dawn and as long as I followed the simple rule of keeping a single focusing point in the centre (it's way more accurate than on the edges) my D850/200-400mm combo didn't have any problems snapping into focus. An attendee sharing the same hide and sitting next to me, however, who was also using a D850 and the 500mm f/5.6 PF just couldn't get the lens to lock on. We tried focusing on the edge of the bird where feet meet snow (AF requires good contrast to focus accurately) and even tried Single Shot AF (often more accurate than Continuous AF) but it just wasn't having it. In the end, she was having to resort to manual focus until such a time that light levels would permit AF. Going by the low light performance of the Z9 I doubt very much that she would have had an issue since, in theory, it would have been like her f/5.6 lens being an f/4 or in Starlight AF mode, f/2-2.8!
In a matter of days, I had come to two conclusions: The days of using a DSLR for wildlife photography are well and truly numbered, and other than the fact that a fast lens produces a more pleasing bokeh, owning such a huge piece of glass is no longer a pre-requisite of the wildlife photographer. On paper, the Z9 and 500mm f5.6 PF seems the perfect marriage; that is if you have the finances at your disposal!
