When I purchased the Nikon Zf, I did it was a way to replace the hole in my heart that Fujifilm had left with lacking performance updates and retro-camera bodies that felt lackluster. And besides, it’s not like the X Pro 4 is coming any time soon. So I went back into our archives to search for a way to make my camera shoot images that looked like film. A while back, we interviewed photographer and programmer Dmitrij Pirang. And now I’m not only getting full-frame image quality, but I’m also easily able to add looks from Kodak and Fujifilm. Granted, I can also do this with Panasonic cameras and their Real Time LUT feature. We can also do it with Canon cameras with stuff like Thomas Fransson’s styles. But they’re lacking the beautiful retro ergonomics that I craved.
First, you need to understand that you can add Nikon picture profiles to your camera. Head to Dmitrij’s website, pick some profiles, and download them. The website tells you how to add them to your camera. Once you import them, the Nikon Zf will let you name these profiles. Typically, I stick with the Ektachrome one and I almost never change it. My friends who’ve used my Zf love it too. Combined with the Nikon auto white balance setting on slightly warm, I really love the image quality I get, no matter the lens.
So has it replaced Fujifilm for me? Well, in many ways, yes.
- Nikon’s autofocus is much better. And accessing it and the various subsettings even around scene detection are easier
- The menu has a touch interface
- It’s full-frame, and the image quality is really that much better. A friend of mine put my Nikon side by side against her Fujifilm X100VI, and loved my Zf more
- Nikon’s weather resistance is really present throughout this camera.
- Nikon uses actual metal on the outside and has special editions of the camera
- Nikon’s lens selection is quite vast
- The camera has some weight to it, but it’s not intimidating.
And there you have it: the Zf more or less replaces all the needs for Fujifilm’s X series for me. If I were to move up to the GF series, there might be a different story to tell here. But even so, the Nikon Zf has received major firmware updates and the camera is an overall big success.
I’ve been an X Pro series user through and through. And after waiting and waiting for the X Pro 4, I got sick of it. That’s one of the reasons why I went with the Zf on top of issues with the X Pro 3 getting fixed by Fujifilm that are widely reported on the web. The Pro 3 also barely got any quality of life updates. With so many options on the market, why would I spend time with a company that doesn’t seem to value my business? Instead, they’re chasing content creators — which is a market that no camera brand will ever win vs phones and compact cameras.
The Nikon Zf gets out of the way of making nice images. And at a certain point, that’s really all that I’ve wanted. I’m still very baffled as to why Canon hasn’t made a retro-style camera yet.
