Questions about Nikon Z50

Don't laugh but I'm asking some questions to help a friend. He currently has a D7200 and wants to start a professional food photography business when he retires. He is considering the Z50 with adapter to use with his DX lenses. I haven't asked if money is tight but that could be possible since he has not talked about the Z7 or Z9.

Personally, I think he is taking a step backwards in camera quality since the Z50 is considered one step up from an entry level camera. I recommended the Zfc to him based on the research I did into the Z50.

Since everyone here is much more acquainted with this line would you please tell me what you think? Would the Z50 give him the quality he needs to sell his photos professionally? He has the talent; his photos are gourmet magazine quality in style and composition.

Thank you for any help you can offer. I look forward to your responses.

Z 50and Z fc have the same IQ, which is really good.
IMO, their main advantage is size and weight when combined with DX Z lenses.

The camera really won't be an improvement, the D7200 will serve him well. The only advantage the Zfc will have is built-in focus shifting, but since the D7200 can interface with qDSLRDashBoard on a phone, that's cheaper than spending money on a new camera for one feature.

Technically, the Z50 is closer to the D7200 than the Zfc is. I would say that he wouldn't be taking a step forward in quality buying either.

20mp DX on a Z50 is absolutely capable of professional results. For most uses, the quality bar is actually quite low (12mp, well handled, is enough for editorial work, more than enough for Web work).

However, I'm going to go a different direction here: the real standard now tends to get defined by lenses, and to a lesser degree, things like Focus Shift Shooting. I'd be concerned about using the F-mount lenses for a couple of reasons. One is simply size/bulk. The reason to move to a Z50 from a D7200 is saving space/weight. Adding an FTZ with F-mount lenses tends to be the antithesis of that, so given that you're not gaining anything in image quality, what's the purpose of moving to a Z50?

On the other hand, if you told me that he was buying a 50mm f/2.8 MC with a Z30/Z50/Zfc, I start leaning towards making the change, particularly because you're now saving space/weight AND can run Focus Shift Shooting on close in subjects (e.g. food).

Sometimes it isn't the camera, per se, that's the trigger to making a change.

Could you elaborate?
I see that Z 50 is ergonomically closer to D7200, but I do not see any technical difference between Z 50 and Z fc. Z fc has a couple more features, though.

Thank you, SrMi,

I will pass this on to him

Thank you yslee,

I will share this information with him.

Thank you, Thom

I will share this with him so he has more info for making his decision.

"Technically" has multiple definitions. I'm not referring to the specifications pages, I'm referring to "a strict or literal interpretation of something." The Zfc is a very different UX than a Z50/D7200, which are much more similar.

One reason to use a DX body over an FX body is increased depth of field. One professional photographer wrote that he once used a micro four thirds body for a product shoot because he wasn’t able to get the depth of field needed from a full frame body in the tight space he was forced to work in.

There are some advantages to using mirrorless bodies - such as on-sensor AF, focus peaking to aid manual focusing, and zebra stripes for making blown-out highlights easier to spot. But one can get on-sensor AF from the D7200 by using Live View mode if the camera’s regular off-sensor PDAF is uncalibrated or inconsistent.

FWIW, I don’t think getting a Z50 or other Nikon DX mirrorless camera will yield significantly-better images than the D7200. The D7200 has a very good sensor and imaging processor and should be capable of producing good photos for years to come.

Your friend might want to consider whether the lenses they use are good enough for professional work, and upgrade there if necessary.

Any DOF you can get with a DX or m43 body is also possible with an FX body. IMO, the main advantage of Nikon's DX is the size and weight when used with lightweight APS-C lenses.

Thank you, cyuill2023!!

I am passing the information to my friend and I know he will appreciate your insight.

This circumstance was such that shooting space was very tight, and the desired depth of field with full-frame bodies was not achievable in this given circumstance. Stopping down either did not produce the desired depth of field, or led to reduced image quality due to diffraction effects. The solution this photographer came up with was to use a smaller sensor body with a lens producing an equivalent field of view and the desired depth of field. In the end he got the photo he needed from the camera with the smaller sensor.

Different formats yield different depths of field at equivalent fields of view. Full-frame advocates used to brag ad nauseum about how smaller formats couldn’t achieve the razor-thin depth of field that full frame could - often bringing up that it was impossible to achieve aperture “equivalence” with crop sensors.

My rule of thumb is use larger formats for narrow depth of field, and use smaller formats for wide depth of field. It works.

Couldn't agree more. Full Frame lenses and cameras cost more and require more work to get the depth of field you may want in an image. On the other hand, bokeh is king these days and full frame delivers. I do find myself enjoying photos taken with my iphone which delivers very sharp images with incredible depth of field even if they are over sharpened and not terribly interesting.

I don't really understand why camera manufacturers have been slow to bring out new Super 35 / APS-C cameras. The z50 is ok, but imagine a Z9 APS-C equivalent. It would be high on my buy list because, it would be smaller, lighter, deliver greater depth of field for stills and video and would need less light to get a nice sharp image across the frame. In case you haven't guessed, I have soured on Full Frame sensors.

I have both D750 and D7200, that are almost identical except for the sensor size and the absence of an AA filter on the D7200.

To get the same DoF between the cameras (same Field Of View) you'll have to close the aperture of the D750 one stop more. Thus, the diffraction for a given DoF between the cameras is the same. Only if you accept an image-wrecking amount of diffraction I could envision a smaller format would give you an advantage in deep-DoF, assuming the possible apertures on the lenses would be the same, like f/22 or f/32 on both. He would be better advised to use focus stacking.

To the OP; I doubt that there would be any advantage to change his camera for food photography, especially if he thinks of using flash, where the Z cameras seem to have a disadvantage. Better keep the money in the pocket or spent it on something like Helicon Focus, which is the best app for focus stacking IMO.

Well, you can enjoy them, but it doesn't make them good either. I know that's true for a lot of people, myself included. A lot of my pictures aren't "good", but I still enjoy them.

Wide landscapes are pretty much the only thing you always want higher depth of field for consistently. But using a wide angle on your camera and focusing properly will still give you better quality results, especially as sensor sizes increase.

Nikon is, but they don't have the resources to chase an every shrinking portion of the market when there's not high margins in it (and they're behind on other releases).

That said, I'm not sure what nikon has in crop is bad at all, for most users, and you can adapt all the lenses in the world

As for souring on ff, that's a personal choice. The z5 is excellent value if you want to get into ff on a relative budget.

I do find it strange you think crop has more dof naturally somehow. Once you get into equivalence, you pay for it in noise in the images.

Or diffraction, if you have enough light but need deep DoF.

If you get diffraction at f/8 in FF, you'll get diffraction at f/4 with m43.
I use m43 and FF cameras, and every DOF I can set on my m43 is possible with FF as well (same diffraction). Do you have a link where the photographer mentioned above describes his experience?
For me, the small size and weight is the main advantage of my m43 system over my FF system, though my Nikon DX system is close in size and weight.

Edit:

The reference document for equivalence is here:
www.josephjamesphotography.com/equivalence

A relevant quote from the document:
"all systems suffer the same amount of diffraction softening equally at the same DOF"