Nikon Z8 Review: Succeeding D850 With Z9 Performance At A Lower Price – SlashGear

The Z8 has no mechanical shutter and is fully electronic. It can operate in near total silence without compromises, and problems associated with a lack of a shutter are practically nonexistent. The 45.7 MP full-frame sensor in the Z8 produces incredibly detailed images with accurate, vibrant colors. The high resolution allows you to crop in significantly and still be able to produce sharp images and large prints. When shooting in RAW, the camera is capable of capturing an enormous dynamic range, allowing you to rescue detail from blown-out highlights or crushed shadows. Low light performance is also excellent within the native ISO range of 64-25600, and if you need extra flexibility this can be boosted to a greater range of ISO 32-102400.

While the Z8 can function perfectly as a high-resolution landscape photography camera, it’s also capable of shooting 14-bit RAW images continuously at up to 20fps, or full resolution JPEGs at up to 30fps, 19MP images at 60fps, and 12MP images at 120fps. One extremely useful related feature is pre-release capture, where the camera continuously records and discards images until you press the shutter, whereupon it retains images captured before the shutter was pressed.

The Z8 can also shoot in 10-bit HEIF format, as well as the more traditional 8-bit JPEG and 14-bit RAW formats. HEIF is not available on the Z9 yet and isn’t widely supported by editing software, but it has the potential to be useful in the future.