“尼康Z8可能是我用过的最好的相机”

摄影师Richard Butler的评测结果：尼康D850的超级继任者。

评测结果

The Z8 is the best mirrorless camera Nikon yet made, and arguably the best camera it’s ever produced. It’s big, it’s heavy and it’s expensive, but it also includes everything that makes the Z9 one of the world’s best pro cameras and delivers it, undiluted, to a broader audience.
It’s true that with most modern cameras, the limitations are almost always located in the fleshy accessory immediately behind the viewfinder and that you should be able to get the shot with most cameras in most situations. But the best cameras still make things easier (and, who knows, perhaps more fun). And the Z8 makes absolutely clear that it’ll support you to the hilt in most things you ask of it.
Very few of us get to spend a lot of time shooting with pro-level cameras, and the Z8 puts the power of one of the simplest pro-level models on the market into a more affordable body. We’ve seen widespread discussion that the bird detection feature built into animal detection AF isn’t as effective for birding as you might hope: something Nikon says it will address in a firmware update in 2024. But for all the types of shooting we’ve tried, the Z8 has been utterly confidence-inspiring.
The viewfinder is a comparatively low resolution when viewed alongside its peers, but it also has some of the least lag we’ve seen, which you’ll appreciate the moment you try to shoot action with it. Obviously, it’d be nice to have both high resolution and low lag but, for now, that’s the trade-off you need to assess your preference around.
The Z8 is also an unexpectedly capable video camera. The high-speed stills shooting and autofocus performance would be enough to justify the use (and cost) of a Stacked CMOS sensor but Nikon has clearly spent its time making sure its capabilities are available to videographers too. 8K/60, for the rare occasions you need ultra-high res slow-mo footage, is only available in the proprietary N-Raw format but beyond that, you get a range of codecs, resolutions and frame rates that should give you options that work well, whatever your workflow. The provision of waveforms and decently reliable autofocus just make it that bit easier to work with. There’s no fan to provide the dependability required for commercial shoots and the camera’s bulk counts against it for gimbal work, but overall it’s a hugely able and usable videography tool.
On a personal level, the Nikon Z8 is probably the best camera I’ve ever used. It goes toe-to-toe with Canon’s excellent EOS R5 and, for me, comes out on top, thanks to its faster shooting with less rolling shutter, and its more advanced video feature set (waveform displays, oversampled 4K/60, 8K/60 option). The Z8 is big though, in a way that the likes of Sony’s a1s aren’t. Yes, modern full-frame lenses can often be vast and heavy, reducing the importance of small weight and size differences in camera bodies, but the Z8 is still appreciably larger and heavier than its peers.
Ultimately that’s the trade-off: the Nikon Z8 is a camera that excels at almost everything it does (with the promise of improvements in those areas it doesn’t), but it’s a commitment to carry all that capability with you, and it wouldn’t be our first choice for travel, for instance.
D850 owners are already used to the weight and are likely to be stunned by the performance: there’s no real improvement in image quality but there will be an improvement in keeper rate, thanks to stabilization and more advanced AF. If you can live with the bulk, it’s hard to imagine what a better camera would have to offer.