I have come over to "the Dark Side" (Switched from Sony to Nikon)

[Hoag]

Congratulations! Great system from all the reviews I've read!

As a fellow Nikon shooter (D850, D500) I am curious about why you shed your Sony gear and moved to Nikon. I know plenty of people who switched the other way around. I have certainly read, heard, and seen nothing but great things about the newest Sony A7rV / A1 cameras.

What was the deciding factor that won you over with the Nikon Z8?

If I may ask, why did you jump from Sony to Nikon? You must have taken quite a hit on your lenses. I recently went from an a7rii to the a7rv. I just couldn't face swapping out all my Sony mount lenses.
Like you, I'm keeping my new rig on dry land.

I honestly can not say anything bad about the Sony A7R3. It is a great camera and to be honest, I really like it. I still plan on keeping my A6000 as my underwater camera.

As to what prompted me to make the switch to the Z8 from the A7R3, well there were a few things. First, I attended a Landscape and Astro Photography workshop last year and there were 3 of us shooting Sonys. I had my A7R3, and the other 2 had A1s. The rest of the people had Nikons and most of those were Z9s. I was amazed at how much easier it was for them to do so many of the things that we were all doing. The size and cost of the Z9, however ruled it out for me (especially in Canadian $).

Then, Nikon announced the Z8 which has been described at a Z9 in a D850's body, and it had my attention. When I read more about it, it was as if Nikon had said "Hoag if you were to design the perfect camera, what would it have?" and then they rolled those features into the Z8.

For Birds in Flight and Aviation, it has:
- 20 FPS in RAW (Up to 120 FPS in Jpeg)
- Bird Eye Auto Focus and Airplane Auto Focus
- a 45MP sensor which will allow me to crop significantly and still give an image with good resolution & detail

For Landscape, it has:
- the 45MP sensor
- a "native" ISO down to 64
- in camera focus stacking

For Astro, it has:
- a dual channel sensor (noise climbs slowly and then at 400 ISO, it drops a lot and slowly builds again). I can shoot at 1000 ISO with less noise than at 400
- "Starlight Mode" which will optimize the Auto Focus to low light conditions and will allow it to focus on a single star. (The guys on the workshop were doing this on their Z9s, and I was shocked by how well it worked!)
- the capability to illuminate the camera's controls
- the ability to switch the menus to red so that accessing the camera's menus does not affect my night vision

Individually, none of those features would be enough to make me switch, but together, it seems as though the Z8 was made for my needs. I am not naive. The Z8 absolutely will not make me a better photographer. It will, however, make getting certain shots a lot easier. (Manually focusing on stars in virtually total darkness can be "challenging" as an example, but if auto focus can lock on to a star, then a lot of that challenge simply goes away and focusing on the Milky Way is exponentially easier.)

 

[Hoag]

Oh, @scrane to address the other part of your comment, I agree whole-heartedly! There were a couple lenses that were very hard to part with. At, or near the top of that list would be my two "G Master" or "GM" lenses.

The 2 GM lenses that I had were the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM (Nikon has an "S Series" lens that is a direct counterpart to that, so I am OK with that one.) and my 14mm f/1.8 GM. (For which Nikon does not have a direct counterpart. The closest that they have would be the 20mm f/1.8 S.) The 14mm f/1.8 GM was (if you will pardon the pun) an absolute star when it came to Astro Photography.

I was also incredibly fond of my Sigma 14-24mm f/2.8 Art Series lens and my work horse, the 24-105mm f/4. I had a few other lenses, but those are the ones that I bought because I needed to fill a void.

 

[cetacean]

Both the A7iii and the A7RIV were still too slow with the 90mm lens for macro (u/w) in several situations. The A7RV with the 90mm still lacks the speed of either the D850 or D500 (w/60mm lens) for blackwater shooting.

I know it's an edge case, but my daughter is considering moving to an older D500 specifically because there are several macro scenarios that the Sony combination still doesn't meet/exceed the Nikon DSLR threshold.

The A7RV is awesome for w/a (easily better than either Nikon), but the 90mm lens desperately needs an upgrade (others are suggesting trying the 50mm lens, we will see).

 

[Gene]

I've posted some of this before elsewhere, but I'm a long-time (since the 70s as a kid using my dad's Nikons), Nikon user, and I've shot professionally since the 80s. Mostly above water on film and television productions, and as a photojournalist, but also underwater since the late 80s.
Congrats on moving to Nikon.
The day they announced the Z7, I was planning on calling B and H to order a Sony due to its silent mode. A very important feature for those of us who shoot on sets and need to be pin drop quiet. After hearing about the Z7, I called NPS, got some info, and they said I'd have it within two weeks, which I did. (And I took it right on to a dark Walking Dead set full of action in low-light, and started loving it that very day and still do!) Of course I respect Sony and Canon, but I wanted to use all my old Nikkor glass, plus being a Nikon guy for decades.
I still use my D800 underwater in an Aquatica housing, but will update that, and I still happily use my Z7, but will update that too with the II, and I'll take that underwater with a new housing.
I've taught photo classes for years at the college level, and currently as a volunteer at a local Veteran's center. As I tell my students, photography is a unique combination of God-given (and learned/natural) talent, along with enough technical knowledge to capture the creative images you come up with. Otherwise, they just stay in your mind.

Gene
www.pagephotography.smugmug.com
@genepagephotography