Today in photography, besides deciding what brand of camera maker you will follow, the question has been, DSLR or Mirrorless. My brand of choice has always been Nikon. I have been a Nikon fanboy since my high school days, over forty years ago. It’s not that Canon or Sony and the other camera brands are bad cameras they all take wonderful photos.
I believe the reason for me to use Nikon my entire life was from visiting a photography studio as a teenager. This commercial studio was a Nikon and Hasselblad house with large format cameras mixed in.
This place was a dream for me. Their name was Guild Photographers, a working studio out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During my first two years in college, I started as a part-time intern the first year and hired as a photographer the next year. My intern pay was zip, not heard of these days, and minimum wage the second year. I learned a lot from that group of photographers.
Now, let’s step to the future and photographic technology has changed to a reliable digital camera system based on the DSLR camera model. For me, the camera choice was the D850 series, nice but heavy.
I used it for architecture photography, still life, landscape, and just about any subject I could think of. With Nikon, you can still use any of the lenses that you purchased over the years. I had maybe a dozen lenses, nothing longer than 200mm. I wasn’t shooting sports or even thinking of photographing animals since my high school days.
Today, depending on your opinion and taste, digital is great. Digital photography has advanced to where you’re combining computer techniques to enhance your image that you could never do with just analog photography. It has reached more people and turned them into photographic artists.
So, I sold my old lenses and camera bodies and purchased the Z 7ii camera body to go with the Z 6 body that I had already for a backup. I’m keeping the lenses that will continue to work with my Z camera bodies from my collection.
One issue I have so far is that the accessories that work with my DSLRs’ will not work with my Zs’. Cable releases won’t attach to my new bodies. My Nikon 10mm shaved lens I was using to photograph spherical images won’t work with Nikon’s FTZ adapter as normal.
I had to research and then purchased a Chinese-made lens adapter that permitted Nikon G-type F mount lenses to mount to a Z mount camera body. This is the closest I can get to full functionality with the lens: I’m losing auto aperture camera control and can only operate the aperture manually from the lens.
So, has this been the right choice? Will Nikon continue to support the DSLR camera systems? What changes to my photography procedures do I have to do?
As I explore the changes between the two systems, I will update you on what I find.
Nikon Z 7ii mirrorless camera with 24 to 70 F/4 lense