As part of completing our Nikon Zf review, we’ve run the camera through our standard test scene, to see how it performs.
As usual, this means it can now be selected from within other reviews, so you can compare it to the cameras of your choosing.
The Zf is based around a 24MP full-frame BSI CMOS sensor which has to crop in to a 1.5x crop to deliver its highest-speed 4K/60p video footage. Those are very familiar specs, shared with the existing Z6 II and the likes of Panasonic’s S5 models, so it probably shouldn’t come as unexpected that the Zf’s image quality holds no great surprises.
It captures a good amount of detail and, with its dual conversion gain sensor, the performance both at moderately high and very high ISO is very good.
Nikon’s default JPEG sharpening is very large radius, so it appears to be capturing less detail than its peers (even though we know from the Raws that this isn’t the case). Color exhibits standard Nikon response with lots of punch and saturation. Yellows are vibrant with no green or orange tint but the pink closest to a generic caucasian skintone is notably brighter and more pink than either the Sony or Canon renderings.
The Zf’s noise reduction at high ISO smooths away noise pretty well but takes a lot of the fine detail with it. Up against the likes of Sony, which applies context-sensitive noise reduction, the Nikon’s output can seem a little soft in low light.
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