It's my reliable travel companion throughout the summer

It's my reliable travel companion throughout the summer

Summer is the best time of year for leisure travel. The forests and seashores in the south are both suitable destinations for slow-paced travel and photography. As a non-professional photographer, I don't like to pre-set too many plans when I travel on my holiday, and I hope to capture the beautiful moments that happen unexpectedly at any time during the trip. In the past few months, Nikon Z 9, the flagship mirrorless camera, has been by my side during my travels. With its powerful performance and rich lens group, it has become a powerful partner for my record creation. When traveling with my girlfriend for portrait photography, I chose two F-mount SLR lenses, 58mm F1.4G and 105mm F1.4E ED. These two large-aperture fixed focal lengths are specially optimized for the performance of out-of-focus spots. Get a dreamy atmosphere when shooting portraits and small scenes. Different from the previous experience with the SLR body, the Z 9's stable face/eye tracking and high-speed continuous shooting functions with full electronic shutter make me feel that these two lenses have been reborn in the micro-single era. At sunset in Shuangyue Bay, Huizhou, the waves will be lit up into gold by the side light of the setting sun, which will complement the azure blue sea. In order to capture the most beautiful form of the spray, I turned on the Z 9's high-speed burst shooting of 20 frames per second. The Z 9 radically removes the mechanical shutter. I use the full electronic shutter with a high-speed stack sensor, which won’t produce any vibration, viewfinder freezes, and black screen during high-speed continuous shooting, and I don’t have to worry about the life of the mechanical shutter. I can shoot as much as I like on the scene, and choose pictures calmly in the later stage. Cool waterfalls are also an indispensable theme in summer travel records. Before I wanted to shoot such a slow-moving water, a combination of a tripod and an ND filter was essential, and additional equipment would become a burden during travel. However, the Z 9 has a reliable five-axis image stabilization in the camera. Even with a SLR lens without optical image stabilization, you can shoot handheld with a slower shutter speed of 1/10 of a second to get silky water flow, and the body-integrated camera The vertical grip also gives me more stability. In addition, the Z 9's ultra-low native ISO 64 allows me to extend my exposure time without the need for an ND filter, and I don't have to close the aperture too far to affect the quality of the image. So we keep joking that although the Z 9 is a lot heavier than the previous micros, it can save a lot of weight in our backpacks. In addition to photographing travel portraits, we also like to record the little creatures on the natural journey in summer - flowers, insects, birds, beasts... For ecological themes, the two lenses I chose are NIKKOR Z Micro 105mm f/2.8 VR S and AF-S Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR. The former is my favorite macro lens, while the latter is an ultra-lightweight telephoto with a built-in Fresnel lens. Both lenses can be easily packed into a travel backpack and used with the Z 9 to capture animals and plants from far to near. I've used quite a few auto and manual macro lenses, and the Nikkor Z Macro 105mm f/2.8 VR S is my daily favorite. The lens has a linear motor and a multi-focus system, and the continuous focusing at short distances is very light and accurate. When shooting macro, I set the Z 9 focus mode to 3D focus + AFC, so that after placing the initial focus point on the subject and pressing the AF-on button, the focus can accurately bite the flowers swaying in the wind and Fluttering insects can also compensate for changes in focus caused by slight hand tremors. It is rainy in the south in summer, especially during the "Dragon Boat Water" period in June, when it rains frequently. I saw this little snail "snorkeling" in the shower, so I put the camera in a low position and used the four-axis flip screen. Framing the scene, I captured the reflection of the snail moving forward. Shooting in heavy rain, the camera and lens were splashed with water droplets, but the Z 9 body achieved the same weather resistance as the flagship DSLR D6, while the Nikkor Z Macro 105mm f/2.8 VR S has IPX2-level water resistance and easy cleaning fluorine coating. The whole system performed reliably and there were no shooting problems. When photographing birds flying through the air, the Z 9's animal-recognition and focus capabilities are even more of a draw. After setting the AF subject recognition to "Animal", most of the animals and birds encountered in the wild can stimulate the focus recognition frame of the Z 9, whether it is squirrels, horse musk deer, raptors, and songbirds, and can shoot continuously at 20fps at high speed. Keep focus point tracking accurate. In addition, the Z 9 will not reduce the focus tracking ability after the telephoto lens is combined with the teleconverter. When shooting the black kite in the picture above, I used an AF-S NIKKOR 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR with a 1.4x teleconverter, and the camera still maintained high-speed and accurate focus tracking, helping me to capture clear black kite flying photos. Not all animals you meet during your trip are necessarily at the right distance. In Angsai Township, Yushu, Qinghai, the white-lipped deer, a national first-class protected animal and endemic to China, seems to be far away. Even in the summer alpine pastures at 4,700 meters above sea level, the highest point within the reach of a car, the white-lipped deer still look down on us as kings from the cliffs a few hundred meters away. The Z 9's high pixels came in handy when we waited down the hill until the sun slanted west, and finally a beam of light brushed against the rock wall illuminating a deer's face, separating the gray deer from the gray rock. The 45.7-megapixel is more than twice that of the previous Nikon flagship high-speed camera, and it can expand the equivalent focal length through a large crop. With a telephoto lens, a teleconverter and in-camera cropping, I used an equivalent focal length of more than 1000mm to photograph these elves on the plateau. Dark night environment photography Fireflies are flying in the summer night in the south. In Tianluokeng, Zhangzhou, Fujian, we waited for the arrival of fireflies by the mountain stream. In the darkness where I can’t see my fingers, the Z 9’s luminous buttons inherited from the D850 allow me to adjust parameters in the dark night. I used the interval shooting function to record the flight of the fireflies for a period of time, and superimposed them later to complete the work. The thermal noise of the sensor is also well controlled during continuous long-exposure shots on summer nights, avoiding red-green highlights in the finished film. The summer has passed in a hurry, and the sun and temperature have gradually subsided. Fortunately, the Z 9, a body beyond imagination, helped me record the good memories of summer. Taking photos and recording videos on the go with the Z 9, my biggest takeaway is that it can do almost anything. Whether the subject of shooting is landscape, portrait or animal, if you want to shoot high-pixel photos or record high-frame-rate videos for a long time, you can find the settings that meet your needs in the rich function settings of the Z 9. While the Z 9 is bigger and heavier than the mirrorless cameras I'm used to, it's a powerful replacement for scenes I've struggled with with multiple cameras before. It was my reliable travel companion all summer long.

(Responsible editor：Photography art)