We were allowed to put a card into the Z7 but funny thing, I did not do it although I brought my D850 with me, so I had a XQD card at hand. To be honest my interest in the Z7 is low, it does not solve a single problem I would have with my D850. And if you say "weight", sorry not true. As you need the FTZ adapter and at least one more spare battery than with the D850 the weight difference is below 100 gramms.
But Otto made a very good introduction about this new system and he was honest with pros and cons. One thing I mentioned to him was that taking pictures of golfers can be a challenging task - they do not like machine gun cameras (anyone remembers the Canon 1D Mark II ?). So the silent electronic shutter might be a good thing?
Wrong said Otto, a fast moving subject like a golf club would get twisted due to the rolling shutter effect.
So on a windy day I went in my garden. This little bycicle with wind powered wheels was a good test object.
The front wheel is always turning much faster, therefore you see different bending effects.
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| normal shutter, 1/4000 sec |
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| silent (electronic) shutter 1/4000 sec |
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| silent shutter, 1/320 sec |
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| silent shutter, 1/320 sec |
It is interesting to see, that how much bending occurs depends on the speed of the wheel, the shutter speed does not have an influence to this.
There are certainly situations where mirrorless cameras do have benefits like a wedding in a church. The electronic viewfinder, which is very good on the Z7, would give you a bright picture of the scene, not a dimm one as with an optical viewfinder. The 5 axis on sensor stabilisation would also be helpful (as long as the bride is not running out of the church) and silent shooting is also a good thing.
But if you think about ballet the silent shutter might be not usable at all depending on the movement of the dancers. Thats a reason why in former analog days Leica M cameras were so popular for this task.
