Clovishound
Senior Member
I've been meaning to try this out of curiosity for a while. I finally decided to go out back and see how well it might work. With my Z5 and Z7ii, AF was a real no go for macro work IME. I was hoping that perhaps the improved AF might actually allow me to use AF. I can manage with MF, but get a lot of out of focus shots hand held, and it can be quite frustrating keeping the subject in focus while rocking back and forth when up very close. The Z8 gave me mixed results. It was definitely much better than what I got with previous cameras. A lot of them looked good, but upon closer inspection, the eyes weren't quite sharp. I may play around with some different AF modes to see if there might be conditions that lend themselves to the use of AF with macro.
I did find that it worked quite well for the little anole. This was a juvenile, and fairly small, but the AF locked on the eye and tracked it quite well.
The bad news for using the Z8 for this is that I have been planning on using my Z7ii as a dedicated macro camera, and just leave the 105 micro lens on it. There are definitely times when I wish for an easier focusing solution when shooting close up.
Both these were taken with the Z8 in AF mode using 3D and the combo subject detection in continuous mode. Enlarging the image of the lizard shows the eye to be dead on sharp.
This one was the only one of several I shot that had the eye sharp. Close inspection shows the eye to be sharp enough to see the individual compound eyes, but not what I would call dead sharp.
I did find that it worked quite well for the little anole. This was a juvenile, and fairly small, but the AF locked on the eye and tracked it quite well.
The bad news for using the Z8 for this is that I have been planning on using my Z7ii as a dedicated macro camera, and just leave the 105 micro lens on it. There are definitely times when I wish for an easier focusing solution when shooting close up.
Both these were taken with the Z8 in AF mode using 3D and the combo subject detection in continuous mode. Enlarging the image of the lizard shows the eye to be dead on sharp.
This one was the only one of several I shot that had the eye sharp. Close inspection shows the eye to be sharp enough to see the individual compound eyes, but not what I would call dead sharp.