Z6 low light sports

Scott Ramsey

Senior Member
I am currently shooting night rodeo and most times in poor lighting with a D810. ISOs with a 1/640 shutter speed and an f/2.8 lens are hitting 8,000 plus. I am not happy with the quality, specifically the noise that my D810 creates under these circumstances and am considering a Z6. Does anyone have any low light rodeo or other sports experience with the Z6?
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
The D810 has smaller pixels than the Z6. I traded my Z7 for a Z6 just 2 days ago because I had two high res cameras, D850 and D800 and was interested in smaller files for travel and general photography. The first-night shot I took walking home from the camera store was surprised me, 22,000 ISO and it looked good. The D800 surely would not have looked that good and probably the D850. All three of these cameras have very close to the same DR. In fact all cameras from D800 to D850, Sony and Canon have remarkably similar measured DR to noise plots. When the D800 came out, nothing was within 2 stops of it in DR. But the bigger photosites on the Z6 seemed to have a lot lower noise. With the Expeed 6 Processor jpg straight out of the camera from both the Z6 and 7 are better than the D850 but a full stop better with the Z6
But...the big but, the Z6 does not focus as well in low light as the D850, few cameras can even get close to the D850 focusing capabilities. I find the Z6 to focus a lot better than my D800 and better than the youtube gurus who panned the cameras from the very start, well before anyone had even seen one. I would suggest borrowing or renting one for the next event to see if it can handle focusing in the low light. From my own experience years ago with cutting competition(I had a horse ranch where we bred and trained cutters) my old Canon A1 film camera did pretty well and all these modern cameras hand low light better. If you rent one, be sure to experiment with different focusing modes, some people are having the best luck with Area Focus mode but I have had very good results in dim light with single point.
Can you post a typical photo with settings so we can see just how low of light it is?
 
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Scott Ramsey

Senior Member
Thanks for your comments, I am planning to rent one to see how it performs at my next rodeo. I had read that the larger pixels combined with the new processor would probably produce less noise given the same settings but I was hopeful I could find someone that had some "real life" examples of shots taken at high ISO, which sounds like you did. Attached is a photo, which is pretty representative of the kind of light conditions and settings that I have been using. It was taken at 1/640 shutter speed, f/2.8, and 8,000 ISO with some typical cropping and very little other adjustments, especially none for Detail.
Well I've tried three times to upload a photo but can't get it to work. If you will give me your email I'll be glad to send it there.
thanks

The D810 has smaller pixels than the Z6. I traded my Z7 for a Z6 just 2 days ago because I had two high res cameras, D850 and D800 and was interested in smaller files for travel and general photography. The first-night shot I took walking home from the camera store was surprised me, 22,000 ISO and it looked good. The D800 surely would not have looked that good and probably the D850. All three of these cameras have very close to the same DR. In fact all cameras from D800 to D850, Sony and Canon have remarkably similar measured DR to noise plots. When the D800 came out, nothing was within 2 stops of it in DR. But the bigger photosites on the Z6 seemed to have a lot lower noise. With the Expeed 6 Processor jpg straight out of the camera from both the Z6 and 7 are better than the D850 but a full stop better with the Z6
But...the big but, the Z6 does not focus as well in low light as the D850, few cameras can even get close to the D850 focusing capabilities. I find the Z6 to focus a lot better than my D800 and better than the youtube gurus who panned the cameras from the very start, well before anyone had even seen one. I would suggest borrowing or renting one for the next event to see if it can handle focusing in the low light. From my own experience years ago with cutting competition(I had a horse ranch where we bred and trained cutters) my old Canon A1 film camera did pretty well and all these modern cameras hand low light better. If you rent one, be sure to experiment with different focusing modes, some people are having the best luck with Area Focus mode but I have had very good results in dim light with single point.
Can you post a typical photo with settings so we can see just how low of light it is?
 
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