I have not been using the Nikon Z6II camera or the 180-600mm lens for very long, but gave it a good test run at the Gold Coast Pacific Air Show last Saturday.
My favourite plane at the show was probably the Yak110 aircraft and it was amazing to see the pilot fly this plane.
The camera focus settings I used were as follows:
- AF-C
- Dynamic area – AF
An air show such as this is great to see some of those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, the pilots are real showmen/showwomen in their magnificent machines and they are wonderful to see.
The first image below is of one of the Royal Australian Air Force planes the F-35, this was captured with the lens at 600mm and I was very impressed at the sharpness with this camera/lens combination. The plane flew over to demonstrate the opening of the bomb bay, fortunately there were no bombs on board. My main interest here was to see the resolution of this camera/lens combination and I was very impressed.
I have included a crop of the bomb bay area from this image. There are lots of detail in this crop, to my mind an excellent result.
At the air show, the United States Navy Seals gave a demonstration of their parachuting skills.
Again this image has been captured at 600mm and I have included a crop of the two guys parachuting down. I was not only impressed by the sharpness of this cropped image, but very impressed by the smile of this guy and his thumbs up action.
What did I learn from photographing this air show, well there are a couple of things which really stood out.
Firstly the Nikon 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 lens is a wonderful sharp lens in its price range. There are other lenses which are maybe better, but their improved image quality is probably very marginal compared to the 180-600mm lens and their prices are far greater.
The second notable thing was the performance of the Nikon Z6II. The focus accuracy and speed of the camera meets all my expectations for situations such as a fast paced air show.
I have been very used to using a DSLR camera for many years and with a DSLR what you see in the viewfinder is instant and has no delay but with the mirrorless Z6II, the viewfinder has a refresh rate of 60Hz and when panning to photograph a fast flying plane on occasions I seemed to fail to keep on track with the plane due to this viewfinder delay and consequently the camera captures the image with the plane plartly out of the frame or completely missing from the frame. The newer Z8 and Z9 cameras have a viewfinder refresh rate of 120Hz which would be a great improvement, also I believe the refresh rate of the new Z6III can be set in the menu to 120Hz. Maybe it is just my reflexes as I age, but I did miss a few images of the fast flying planes probable due to this slower refresh rate.
I have also included a few more images from the air show in the gallery below.
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