Muriwai is a great place to practice photographing birds in flight. A steady stream of Gannets offers regular subjects and on our visit last weekend a rare Brown Booby added to the potential. For years I have used my Nikon D850 and D500 with these settings for bird photography. For birds in flight the Group Area AF has been excellent, prioritising the nearest subject and tracking it well provided you kept the group of sensors over the bird. The big question for me was how well the Z9 would do as it doesn’t have a similar mode that prioritises nearest subject.
I am still in the testing phase but am pretty confident that the Dynamic Area (Large) setting with eye detection is the closest mode and it works well for birds in flight. It grabs focus fast and locks tenaciously allowing long sequences with good focus. At this stage I would say it locks quicker and holds better than Group Area. Eye detection is useful as when the bird gets closer it will select the head to focus on whereas Group Area would some times shift to the near wing. The image at the head of this post was a Gannet that I tracked in as it approached to land and focus is precisely on the head and eye. This following photo of the Brown Booby was the same with focus sharp on the head and eye in the whole sequence regardless of wing position.
The one drawback I have found is that the Z9 is just not as good at focussing on a bird that is small in frame against a clear sky. The D850/D500 had no difficulty locking on a bird at some distance and tracking it in. Using the Z9 it needs to approach closer before a confident lock is achieved. It is simply a different way of working. I am in the habit of locking at a distance to make sure of focus before triggered a sequence but now can wait until the bird is closer as I can lock focus much more quickly so don’t need to track as far.
I currently have my Nikon Z9 set to have AF-on set for Dynamic Area (large), the Subselector Centre (joystick) for 3D AF and the Fn-1 button set for Single Point AF. This gives instant access to 3 focus modes using my thumb or middle finder. I will write another post with menu settings once I have finalised my thoughts on this.
Nevil
9 Jan 2022Have you tried the z9 with any of your F mount telephotos – if so how do you find the autofocus speed and accruacy with the ftz mount?
tony
9 Jan 2022They work perfectly. No issues at all.
chriskurtonChris Kurton
10 Jan 2022I’d be interested on your final decision regarding autofocus tracking compared to the D500. The Z9 would be a big investment.
tony
10 Jan 2022It is a big investment. Some definite pros and cons. D500 remains an incredibly good camera for birds in flight. I will post more thoughts in the next couple of weeks.
Chris Kurton
11 Jan 2022Tony. I’m also curious as to the exposure details of your bird in flight photos. I think I struggle here in the UK owing to lack of bright light such as you have in NZ!
tony
12 Jan 2022Booby 1/3200 f8 ISO 800, Gannet 1/2500 f8 ISO 400. W
I will push ISO 1600, 3200, 6400 to maintain shutter speed if needed.
Chris Kurton
14 Jan 2022Thank you very much.