Nikon Z9 | 35 Tips and Tricks

[@michaelkawano1951]

I’m a longtime Nikon shooter and professional photographer and educator for over a decade. Even for me, this was a very, very useful video! So many items I hadn’t yet discovered in the Z9! Thank you!!

[@mathphotographer]

Many thanks, Michael, for your kind words, much appreciated.

[@billboswell4509]

One of the best Z9 videos I have seen. I’ve had mine since December and still learned a lot about customizing my camera from your video. Well done.

[@mathphotographer]

Great you liked it, many thanks Bill.

[@Fortespyproductions]

Thank you so much for this vidoe... 3 day old user of the Nikon Z9.. I've learnt so much

[@rawwildstories]

I have been a Nikon user for almost 2 decades, but I haven't gone through some of these hidden details. Thanks a lot

[@alfabravofilm]

It was very helpful to receive further clarification. Clear and well done explanations. Many thanks for sharing. 🙏🙏🙏

[@adamkrauss303]

Great video! Concise with practical and visual examples. Counting the days until my Z9 arrives…

[@EugeneMaynard]

I am still waiting on my preordered Z9 to arrive but this provides excellent preparation for hitting the ground running for the day I finally get it into my hands!👏🏾👍🏾🙏🏾

[@mathphotographer]

Cross fingers for you that you finally get it. Nikon is still short in supply.

[@michael-4k4000]

Who do u think u are Tony Northrup? I received mine 3 weeks ago, and I ordered my on the launch day, am a NON NPS member 🙃

[@canphoto]

You always provide great information and in such details with no extra bullshit added. Straight to the point and then on to the next one. I appreciate you and all work you put in to these videos! THANK YOU!! =D

[@mathphotographer]

You are making my day, Daniel. Many thanks!

[@tvfun32]

Thank You for this informative video. I got the Z9 this week and your video is helpful.

[@hilarydavis4959]

Great video thank very helpful indeed much appreciated!

[@iconicon3108]

Thank you for sharing. This video is major league.

[@mathphotographer]

Thanks for the kind feedback!

[@howeryuen]

excellent information, thank you for sharing.

[@mathphotographer]

Thx!

[@sgodakandaarachchi]

A very smart and comprehensive piece of information which is very valuable! Thank you so much for your time and effort.

[@mathphotographer]

Thank you very much for your kind feedback!

[@LEXPIX]

Great comprehensive overview of the menu options.

[@musiqueetmontagne]

Thanks for the upload, some good info on settings I glossed over. Nikon's have always clipped the red channel most easily... Watch that one..

[@Cariboukid]

That was very helpful and very well done. Thank you!

[@RealChrisinAZ]

These are very helpful and great tips, Thank you for sharing!

[@mathphotographer]

Glad it helped :)

[@FlyinRyanProductions406]

Ordered my z9 yesterday. I have NPS priority so I hope it don’t take too long to get. 🤞🏻

[@mathphotographer]

Crossing fingers for you!

[@michaelsullivan1052]

Great information. Thank you.

[@johnmccaffery5186]

This will really help me with my new Z8,thanks.

[@minusinfinity6974]

Well done, excellent and informative video. Missed a few of these settings on my own set-up.

[@mathphotographer]

Glad I found some tips & tricks people appreciate, many thanks!

[@michaell5038]

Excellent video, perfect information, thanks 😊

[@CincyKid]

Wowa, fantastic set of tips! So well-prepared and visualized, and fast!

[@mathphotographer]

Thanks for the kind feedback.

[@mathphotographer]

Cool, thanks Fred!

[@thedave70]

Thank you Math, it was really productive and usefull. David

[@christinetanner4631]

Thank you for a great video and explanation of some features I had always wondered about. Very clear and concise, My gratitude.

[@mathphotographer]

Great if the video is useful, many thanks Christine.

[@guyyowell8547]

Thanks for another video with great content. One comment I wanted to make: some third-party software does NOT recognize “High Efficiency *”, for example DxO DeepPrime 2 denoise software. Therefore, you have to use a different program, such as Topaz Denoise AI, if you would like to remove noise from your images in post-processing.

[@mathphotographer]

Great comment, I was not aware. Thanks for pointing out!

[@guyyowell8547]

@@mathphotographer Another problem with the DxO software is that it’s specific for camera/lens combinations, and some of the Z-mount lenses are not currently included. Specifically, the Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S is not recognized by the software.

[@SwanSycorax]

@@mathphotographer I use Capture One for all my RAW processing - significantly better than Lightroom which I had used for a number of years. Capture One works perfectly with the large Lossless Compression files, but cannot read the High Efficiency formats which is very frustrating.

[@AndrewCZ47]

@@SwanSycorax DNG converter from Adobe seems like a reasonable workaround for now.

[@derrickdu]

Math, this is a nice video for those who have the Z9. Z9 is a DON’T NEED, but WANT ONE camera for me. I think you have a secret mission to make me and others poorer. Every time I watched one of your videos, I contemplate if I should buy it. :

[@mathphotographer]

Lol - my mission is not to make you guys poorer but happier :) The Z9 is a beast - if you get it you won't regret it Derrick :)

[@FLORAMORAITINI]

Thank you very very much for the perfect explanation. Best I have found as Z9 is my 1st mirrorless after my D850. My question please is, where is the Split screen display zoom option. Actually my numbering is not exactly the same with your. It is mostly 1 more.....but the split screen is all together missing. And I also would like to know how I can choose the mode in the i menu......It is nowhere written. Can you please advise me. Thank you very much

[@leetwigg]

Great informative video, I've been a photographer for 6 months and didn't know much of this stuff which you explained well, keep up the good work and thank you.... PS - Ignore the haters, some people are just trolls without a Chanel.

[@mathphotographer]

Glad it was helpful! And yes, sometimes some comments are just over the edge but I always assume then the one who wrote it had a bad day and I wish this person luck :)

[@leetwigg]

@@mathphotographer yeah that comes with age mate, good attitude and best wishes with rest of life 👍

[@cecstgeorge8469]

Great help

[@mathphotographer]

Glad it helped.

[@Nancy-V]

Best tip review I have seen!

[@johnhjic2]

Hello There are some really good tip here and was well worth viewing this video. So thank you I know I will be trying some of them out. Keep well, keep safe and enjoy taking your images.

[@mathphotographer]

Thank you John, much appreciated feedback. Stay safe and healthy too.

[@jordiventuraplans6158]

Thanks a lot for sharing this information, as always great and helpfull video.

[@ronaldpollard8990]

Extremely Well Done Sir💯💯💯 Thank You

[@tomd9275]

Outstanding presentation!! Thank You

[@Interbeing_CDN]

Very well done, lots of great tips! Thanks!

[@mathphotographer]

Thanks!

[@chocloditelensman]

Awesome tutorial.

[@derrickdu]

Wow, first, I think Nikon should pay you for this video. Lol. I am a long time Nikon user, I didn’t realize they made so many “add-on” features in their menu system. I am impressed that they put a lot of though into the camera. Thank you. A note on some of your tips: tips that change the photos only applies to JPG, not RAW.

[@mathphotographer]

Thanks Derrick, unfortunately they do not pay me 😉 They really put a lot of stuff into this new Z9. And thanks for your hint, spot on: Picture Control etc changes JPGs, not RAWs.

[@captinktm]

Fantastic! Thank you.

[@richarddenise3886]

Many thanks for your effort.

[@mathphotographer]

Pleasure :)

[@phichaklimprasutr8230]

Great help for new user like mine. Thank you so much.

[@mathphotographer]

Glad it helped, thanks!

[@Hrishi1970]

Excellent set of tips!!

[@freddyacosta2358]

Very helpful thank you.

[@raphaelmimoun9571]

Hello 👋, I now shoot Leica M10-R (which I love) and Nikon Z6ii (which i don’t)… I want to get rid of the Z6ii, all around camera : Z9 or SL2 As always very helpful content 👌Thank you 🙏

[@mathphotographer]

Thank you Raphael. Good taste and choice, keep your M10-R - it is a great camera. And on your second camera, both are great, the SL2 as well as the Z9. With the SL2 you get a "Leica beast" which you will surely love, with the Z9 you get the perfect workhorse, built for the elements and capable of anything a photographer would ever want to shoot.

[@raphaelmimoun9571]

@@mathphotographer thank you 🙏

[@JPNVideos]

Thanks for doing this and most of the settings apply to the z8, which is the camera i have

[@strycinek]

Great video Math

[@bobalobajob]

Excellent thank you

[@NikCan66]

another great video.i got my Z9 and friend loaned me his FTZ mark 1 adapter to try my F mount glass and very impressed. waiting for the Z mount 400mm f2.8 lens and the z70-200mm lens

[@mathphotographer]

Congrats NikCan, glad to hear you finally got your Z9!

[@NikCan66]

@@mathphotographer No adapter to buy as all out of stock 😢

[@Photomeike]

Amazing video! Great information here!

[@migueltrujillo5932]

Thank you very helpful, it seem this camera as like the D850 would be relevant for long time.

[@mathphotographer]

Indeed, Miguel. I believe we will see a more compact (Z7II-type) camera in 2023 which has ALMOST the same functions as the Z9 but in a more compact body.

[@matrishva]

Can you also please explain what is Dual Format recording PB slot in Playback menu ?

[@johnclay7644]

Great content.

[@frankberlin8084]

Danke für die Inspiration 👍👍👍😁 Grüße aus Berlin

[@mathphotographer]

Merci - herzliche Grüsse zurück in die Hauptstadt 🖖

[@gurugamer8632]

When when do you think the Fuji x100vi will be released?

[@JonErik22]

Great video and tips. Do you know if there is a way to make a shortcut to the starmode? It is d10 in my camera menu (3.0), and I can't figure out a way to do it myself

[@mathphotographer]

I will check when I am back, currently on travel.

[@matrishva]

The menu item a14 is changed in newer 2.1 firmware update. Now it says focus point selection speed. Can you highlight on this.

[@jpdj2715]

Great - and several (most?) are relevant to a Z 7(ii) too (and that would include a 6(ii) as well). As to Highlight-weighted metering, after 40 years of manual exposure, I am inclined to use it with "A" or "S" automatic. The way it works is that the camera looks for the brightest photosite in the sensor and decides that this one is "pure white" - in 14-bits depth that means it becomes 11,111,111,111,111 (when pure black is 00,000,000,000,000). That may be a single photosite caused by a tiny reflective twinkle in the subject. Or there may only be a few photosites at about that level. This now drives exposure down to a point that you mage looks underexposed by a couple EV (~3) as there are no details near this twinkle and other highlights/whites are a couple EV distant from this peaking twinkle. This can be so much that the exposure sliders in Lightroom Classic (LrC) are not enough to deal with it and retain control relatively to correct exposure. This can be solved in the "Tone Curve" panel (in Develop) where the default tone curve is a straight white line that ends in a bubble on either side. X-max/Y-max defines pure white and 0,0 defines pure black. If you look at the histogram in the Tone Curve diagram you may not see any details in the upper few EV and this means you might want to lower the "white point" - that is the 14-bits digital value that LrC needs to treat as pure white. Note that even when the histogram looks empty, there are photosite values but so few that it looks empty. Changing the white point this requires you to inspect if important detail gets blown out. The twinkles in the water surface of a sunlit lake are far enough apart and you do not need detail. A bride in soft light and you want all the detail in the whites to be retained. How do you lower the white point? Grab-drag the bubble in the Tone Curve at X-max/Y-max and horizontally slide it left to the point where the histogram starts to show existing detail to you. This is an "absolute" change relative to the raw image data - in the Develop>Basic>Tone sub-panel you only have relative exposure-tonal shifts. Note, when you raw process with Capture One (C1) that C1 treats the white point as relative and if you change exposure after lowering the white point then the white point shifts along with that (drives me mad). So, "Highlight-weighted" is a photographically very important innovation, but not for the naive. If you shoot JPEG only (i.e. raw processing happens in camera), your images will generally look too dark. I have experimented shooting wide angle landscape directly into the sun and it seemed the highlight-weighted metering ignored the sun.

[@anthonyjoseph9038]

I am a Leica Shooter though and through I use to shoot Nikon for sports I switch to Sony now I’m back with the. Z9

[@Johnd3s]

some useful tips, thank you

[@JohnLexis]

the circle focus does not work on my Z9 when i set to avg can you help ? thanks for the tips

[@Trevisol16]

The only information that's conflicting is about the USB power delivery. Some people say that the camera doesn't charge while on (just the battery doesn't discharge). Another like you say that the camera charges. Can you confirm that? Nonetheless thanks for all the information!

[@DeanAllman]

Very helpful. Thank you!

[@mathphotographer]

Thx!

[@theslimbin]

Criticise the Nikon user interface as much as you like, but you have to give me one thing they haven’t changed it in over a decade so once you learn it you’ve learnt it for life And that’s fine with it it’s always been so rich with Settings. (granted recently, the video side of the settings has expanded humongously)

[@milmajmaj]

Awesome. Thank You

[@Photojouralist123]

Wow thanks Matt , I got a lot of information from this. I like the starlight mode where you can turn the red color for the lights. Since I have all the same cameras as you it really helps me a lot. Hassy 907x, GFX100S, Leica M10 , Nikon Z9 and Z6

[@mathphotographer]

Thank you so much for your kind comment, John.

[@mathphotographer]

Wow John, what a nice collection of cameras :) The Z9 is outstanding. I will post next days a video on firmware 3.0 which adds another 20 great features to an already great camera.

[@tcwhite0104]

Another great video, have you done a video to customize the display modes such as menu items d18 Custom Monitor shooting display and d19 Custom viewfinder shooting display.

[@mathphotographer]

Thanks Tom - I customized it for my camera but not sure its in a video already, need to check :)

[@KriniLive]

Thanks so much!!

[@mathphotographer]

My pleasure :)

[@Empty-headed]

Hello I have a problem that has been bothering me for ages. how do u change shutter speed on A mode when recording video ? its fixed for 1/50 on my z9 whether i shoot 50p or 100p which really drive me crazy plz help

[@mathphotographer]

Ok - let me look into it over the weekend and get back to you early next week.

[@Empty-headed]

@@mathphotographer tyvm mate

[@fritzlamour8415]

Hi how are I have a nikon d4 and d4s Now I brought nikon Z9 the focus do not want to stay steady after 3 shots is all over the screen please could you help me if I have to pay for your services no problemo!!

[@devswarnakar3740]

Awesome, thanks for your recommendations

[@HHTV60]

I think it's a trait of a good photographer to get the best possible image directly from the camera, in order to minimize post-processing. that's what people who shoot a lot - eg, wedding photographers - tend to do.

[@mathphotographer]

Good point, agree.

[@johnpeterka8355]

Thank you for your video! I am in the process of trading my R5 for either a Sony A1 or Nikon Z9. In your opinion, am I making a mistake? I love the Canon Menu system. The Nikon Z9's menu system looks much more convoluted than the Z7's. I have not looked at the Sony A1's menu. There are a lot of features to like about the Z9, but I do not want to be spending too much time by being lost in the menus. I can navigate our Fujifilm and Canon menus in my sleep. Thank you!

[@mathphotographer]

Thanks John. The Nikon Z9, if you wanna hear my honest opinion, is the camera of the year in 2022. So many great features, nice workflow and fantastic image quality and lens options. And since last night we have Firmware 3.0 which I will explain in another video which again adds to an already feature rich camera.

[@raysanders332]

How did you add the custom picture control?

[@CharleyHarley01]

Thank you!

[@AndrewCZ47]

Highlight weighted metering tends to work great for stage/club lighting.

[@JohnWilliams-fc3xi]

thankyou very much! - one quick note A14 only show if you have a z lens on the camera, it does not show with my 500mm PF lens and the FTZ adapter. Also if you want to use focus peaking for manual focus, you need to have the lens set to manual anyway.

[@dougminihane7711]

Doesn't show up for me at all - have just tried the 85, 35 and 24-70, all S Lens and a14 doesn't show ??

[@mathphotographer]

Thanks for adding that info, much appreciated, John. The Z9 manual says that A14 only works with compatible lenses. @Doug: you do not get it to work for all these lenses? Did you apply the newest firmware for the lenses? You should have newest firmware on camera body as well as on Z-lenses if available at the Nikon website. I will check some other lenses in addition to the one I used in the video.

[@dougminihane7711]

@@mathphotographer All my firmware is up to date (just updated the 24-70 but anything else were current) Camera is on 1.11 so no idea why it's not showing it. I might try to re-install 1.11

[@dougminihane7711]

@@mathphotographer Still nothing. Re-installed firmware by memory card as I had previously done it via Snapbridge and thought that might have been the issue but still not showing :(

[@marcosviniciod1830]

Thankful!!

[@bartdegroot8561]

Dear Matt, I will study your tips and tricks thoroughly Thanks in Advance.... One question with the first quick view is: how do you get this circle in the m idle of the screen? Time table 6.50 from 27.48 best regards Bart

[@AndrewCZ47]

Shows if you set metering to center weighted.

[@bartdegroot8561]

@@AndrewCZ47 Thank you so much. Nice to know. No one before could tell me that. !!!

[@mauriciofernandezhague3571]

Thanks! 📸🙌🏻

[@dominiclester3232]

Great but you didn’t show us how you customised your shutter sound?

[@mathphotographer]

It is really easy though, I have electronic shutter sound on but medium volume. When I then toggle on the "silent" switch, the camera becomes very very silent. I do not use the menu beep, it irritates me. Really only medium volume shutter sound - which is simulated of course because of electronic shutter.

[@Lindelwirt]

Das meiste passt auch auf die Z8

[@horstschoninger1265]

🎯

[@das.gegenmittel]

I seems that you have more cameras than you ve made pictures 😂

[@mathphotographer]

Ha! I have about 50'000 photos on my Macbook Pro (and these are only the photos I kept, I trash a lot of images when I do not like them) - having so many cameras would fill more than a sports hall 😉 Nice comment 😂

[@MarcelloBranca]

😮😂😊😅😊

[@mohanankk2674]

🙏🙏🙏🙏sir

[@jpdj2715]

Tip 25 Non-CPU lens data - Set meta data for your lens that has no electronic coupling. You indicate "non-Nikon" lens - well, it's a bit more nuanced, hence a nuisance, because only focal lengths and apertures ever made by Nikon are in the pick-lists. Really, Nikon-san? What were you thinking?

[@marcushielscher213]

Mach doch mal eine deutsche Tonspur dazu bitte.

[@leonellocamuffo2773]

Spiegazione rilasciata in forma troppo veloce. Il principiante non riesce a seguire immagini e relazione.

[@mathphotographer]

Sorry … was already a long video, had to give it some push on the timeline

[@williaminbody205]

I think the age of the old SLR black blob, button rich, bulky, heavy, ugly camera is pasted. Nikon shoved a mirrorless camera in one and I think it’s doomed to fail for all but those trading their yesteryear DSLR for mirrorless. I predict sales will crash after those few old hangers transition.

[@FlyinRyanProductions406]

Bwhahahahha! Nosterdumbass.

[@dougminihane7711]

Just because you only need a phone to shoot your photos doesn't mean everyone else can do the same.

[@matrishva]

Very helpful. Thank you

[@mathphotographer]

Thanks for the positive feedback.