Wiseman, Alaska. northern lights
A great thing about the new mirrorless Nikon Z cameras is they get regular updates to improve performance. One aspect many photographers have been interested in seeing with the Z cameras was improved autofocus in low light. With a recent update Nikon added eye auto focus, which automatically keeps the autofocus point on the human eye. But another autofocus update also happened, but got overlooked by eye autofocus. You now have a low light autofocus option on your Nikon Z6/7 camera.
This mode enables the camera to focus in lower EV (i.e. darker) situations. And simply put, it works as advertised. I noticed a significant bump in autofocus performance using this setting. The camera didn’t struggle as much to acquire focus in low light low contrast scenes. To activate this mode, go to your custom menu, autofocus, and choose A11 to turn it on. Remember this mode isn’t increasing speed as much as increasing ability to focus in low light situations. Nikon states autofocus might take more time in this mode…so I only turn it on when I am shooting in low light situations.
Updates continue to happen with the mirrorless cameras, and I can’t wait to see what is next.