I found the best Nikon Z focus mode.

This mode is on the Z6ii? Do I need to do a firmware update?

Wow I loved your song all I want is you now

I do sort of the opposite. I stay in 3D most of the time and have a back button programmed to turn off subject detect when I want it to ignore people etc. I then have one of the front custom buttons set to use a custom size focus box (1x1 for me) for those moments I want more control with a single point but still have subject detection enabled. The Z8 has me nailing so many more shots than I could with my Z6II. I’m gonna try that 1x3 custom box if I ever shoot an event. Great tips Omar!

Or go to Canon 😉

Ok? But you didn’t explain how to go into the camera and create that custom box… 🤔

How do I access the option to resize the focus box? My menu seems different and the firmware is up to date I believ.

Great tips!!!

Great tips as usual... love the way you explain things... thanks so much

Peter Parker-ish. 😅

Thanks, Omar. I'm just getting comfortable with my z6II. Your videos are awesome and a great help to your viewers.👍🏾

Omar can you make a video on how to make a custom focus strip ?

This video and all the sample photos have awesome white balance, I am watching on my el chepo iPad 9, and everything looks amazing. That image of a young lady holding a pillow has perfect color, Omar mentioned once that he doesn’t edit, that he sends off his images to a retoucher, whoever that is, he doesn’t a magnificent job, if there is one thing about Omar images, are the skin color, the reds and the blues, I just can’t find anything that looks like what I see here anywhere else, kudos to you Omar! Que viva el Merengue…

I use a combo of of the Z8 and my new back up camera is the ZF, which replaces my Z6ii. What a fun combo.

Ciao Omar ma quante macchine ai .

Such a helpful video. Thanks for sharing these tips

Hey, I actually asked you the same following question as a comment to anther Video ( Nikon ZF) of yours, a few minutes ago. But now I saw this video regarding focus modes. May be the question fits better or ate least "also" here. ( I can imagine, that it will take some testing to give a final opinion):
The ZF is the first Nikon camera with touch drag autofocus. (You can move the focus point by looking through the viewfinder and wiping your thumb along the display at the same time) I could imagine that you could possibly make very good use of this. So far I can't find anything about this in any review. (Has nobody discovered this yet?) I would be interested to know whether this feature is useful for you. (I was only able to try it out very briefly on a Canon camera. I found that you can move the focus point much faster than with the joystick, so I thought it was really cool. - But I don't have a Canon myself, I have everything from Nikon).

Hi Omar.Thanks for your explanation. Do you know if it is possible to customize this stripp af area on the z6II? Thanks.

Good info Omar! I'm pretty much the same when it came to the AF on my old Z6 ii, single point AF and recompose. To be honest, the other modes I only used for videos and it failed me enough doing talking head videos that I went over to Sony. The thing a lot of younger folks and video shooters like is that you really don't need to select a mode and the camera works fairly well. I will say though, I tried shooting fast moving jets and my old A7R V had some trouble tracking in the standard mode which made me try out others. I will admit that even today, on my Z8, I will fall back to single point for photos and if I am filming in less than ideal light, I activate the box to help the camera do it's thing. I had issues doing a vlog with the Z8 (yep, I vlogged on the street with my Z8) while using adapted Sony lens. I purchased the Nikon 24-120 f4 S and haven't experienced any issues since. I recently updated the firmware on my adapter, I guess a new test is warranted now.

Not me trying this on my Z6 II. 😅

Thanks for the info. It can be even simpler on the Z8. I use a custom box similar to what you are doing with eye tracking and set the back button AF to 3D tracking. Let the camera find the eye, then press the AF button, and 3D picks it up and tracks it. F2 is single point in case I get in trouble, but this is rare.
PS, love your channel and humor.

Full review on nikon z 135 plena lens

It’s all great, but that’s the sweet spot right there, Omar and Nikon content 😁.

Hi Omar, you can combine your strip with 3d tracking by assisting 3d tracking to the AF button, you you can use your strip to aquire the subject and then hand it over to 3d tracking

Coming from Fujifilm this is a foreign language to me. I would never trust anything that's not focus recompose, single focus box. I'd love to have faith in my camera to utilise some of these smart/dynamic UX features. 😂

Time to move up to the Zf maybe.

Not a single Nikon camera in my house. Nevertheless I love watching every video of you.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you can't assisgn auto iso to a button, to enable changing minimum shutter on the fly. I have not been able to do it my Z7ii. either. The only work around is to shoot in manual mode with auto iso turned on. The in camera crop mode is also a problem on Nikon. eg. If you choose to shoot in square format, on the computer you do not get
the full sensor read out , just the crop you shot in.Errr.

Can this be done on fujifilm?

Oh Omar, you begin the channel with a wee X-T20, and then end up flexing on us with GFX 100s and Nikon Z8, and somehow, despite having an A7r V with its magic AF and laughing at your AF problems, I still end up envying you! Are you satisfied now? :))

Since I have the Z8 i use CF with Backbutton focus. Because it shows green light when in focus! Absolute gamechanger for me!

Am I the only one that doesn't see how he set this up? Like do we need to enable this custom option first?

Nice video Omar - educational and as always you are very entertaining as well. Thank you for this idea - I will have to try it!
-PD

Great channel, thank you.

Thanks, for me this is a different way to think about auto focus. And very well explained. Will be trying these tips out. Thanks - Tim

Now that is a brilliant suggestion, Omar! I appreciate your posting. Keep Z content going.

On my Z-series cameras, I have found that the best option by far is "Auto-Area AF" and "AF-C." There is a hidden secret, though: for this to work properly with your rear "AF-On" button, you MUST program "fn1" (the top button next to the lens mount) to "subject tracking." Once I tried this (a Nikon employee showed me how), I found that it completely transformed my OG Nikon Z6 from one of the most frustrating autofocus experiences I had ever used to bar-none the best autofocus camera I have ever used. Since the Z6, Nikon has implemented this tracing system into every one of its mirrorless Z cameras right down to the Z30. It is, unfortunately, missing from the Nikon D780 (or rather, is implemented far more clumsily, since you cannot program "subject tracking" to the D780's fn buttons).

Even my Z5 gives me a near-100% keeper rate, even on dance-floors in low light. The Z5 does require a bit of hand-holding (it's a bit jumpy in low light, but the images are still in focus). The Z7 II is just as good and requires far fewer reacquisitions. There is only one caveat--I employ f/1.8 and f/1.2 prime lenses (including a Sigma 35mm f/1.2 adapted from e-mount). Were I to use f/4 zoom lenses, I suspect I would have much more trouble autofocusing in lower light.

Great tips, now I only need one of the newer Nikons. Really waiting for a Z6III.

You're pretty cool.

I used 3d tracking on 90% case but i wil love to nikom give us a smaller cube to set like on dslr

Great info 👍 I haven't used the latest more advanced Nikon cameras so it's cool to see how customizable they are in regard to focus modes.

Thank you Omar.

Does the strip box work with the Z6i?

I find my Zf even in the small box area-AF modes will often display severe pareidolia, finding faces that don't exist that are well outside of the box. Once it finds a false face, it simply won't let go even when I try resetting the focus point to the center. This is very frustrating when a face is not in the scene. If a face is indeed in the scene, it has no problem getting distracted with anything other than the real face, so when not shooting people, I need to find a way to turn it off/on at will. I guess that means putting subject detection as the first item in My Menu and dedicating one of the Zf's few custom function buttons to that.

Interesting, I wonder why Jared Polin never mention this when doing Nikon contents lmao 😂

Thank you for the tips as always Omar! I set up the 3D tracking on the C3 button. I switch it on/off with my pinky and I find it much faster than going through a menu and I also only use back button focus so I can easily switch between modes. And I set up C2 as my playback button so when I'm looking through the viewfinder, I can immediately see the picture with histogram levels and continues shooting.

I wonder what gear would Peter Parker use to attach his Nikon Zf to building walls or lanppsts? Flexible mini tripods? What about the remote shooting app? What camera system/camera app would work best for him? Did the Fujifilm app improve??? What would you recommend?

Nice, Omar, Someone at Fedex had stolen my Zf and lens out of the box when it was delivered to my home. B&H took care of me and filed a claim but I went to the store in midtown yesterday and no ore in stock so I watched this video through teary eyes 😢. I did pick up the Fujifilm 33mm wonder though so not a bad lens to walk around NJ/NY this weekend!

Awesome vid, Glad to see you can set the Display mode as secondary focus button! Doesn't seem like I can do that on my Z6 I but I don't think I actually need to though lol.

Omar,

Thank you for explaining tour focus point setup for different photo situations. I am glad you are continuing to make helpful videos. Fr. Dan

Great video, Omar. You illustrate one of my pet peeves with Nikon's user/reference guides. I have been "vocal" ("commental" is a better word here) about that, on and off, for years. A simple example that clarifies the point is how their user guide "explains" the "off/on" switch. Everybody knows and understands this switch, so my point must be clear to everyone too, in the example below.
The user guide depicts the switch and in the legend calls it "on/off switch" (or so) then in the text with that "this is the on/off switch".
"We" don't need more in this case. But most buttons, switches and (menu) functions are more complex and need more "explanation".
Needed would be something like:
"if you want to use the camera, it needs a charged battery and you need to set this switch to 'on'. Note that the camera uses a bit of electrical power from the battery even when switched off. There's a clock with calendar in the camera that keeps ticking, for example, and uses electricity. When you switch the camera 'on' it switches the electronic viewfinder on, or the rear display, showing the view through the lens. As these electronic views raise the energy consumption from the battery, these views are paused when you do not interact with the camera for a set time (you can alter that time). When the view goes dark, the camera enters 'sleep mode'. The difference in energy consumption between sleep mode and 'off' is very small. Yet it is recommended to switch the camera off when you do not use it for longer time."
An explanation like this goes beyond the "a pear is a pear" tautologies of what we are given as a normal practice. We need "modalities" with "use cases" to frame required camera settings and their dependencies.
Nikon actually picked up on this type of feedback in releasing, some years ago, a manual for portrait and wedding photographers.
The manager who ordered for that manual to be created should have been promoted. The problem with the resulting manual is that it is an insult to portrait and wedding photographers. So the collective needed to be fired of managers who wrote the requirements for this manual, the ones who set the budget, the ones who accepted it for "go to market", and the document's writers for being so stupid as to even think for a second that this could be good enough.

Omar, if you read the whole write-up above, what you did in this video is so important that you could do a more elaborate version of this. You touch on the photographically important point of recomposing, 3D tracking, etc., and how to play with buttons. Make a video of e.g. 20 minutes that is just this version on steroids - injected with a couple takes of deeper illustration and explanation. And, Z 9, Z 8, and Z f have the same processor, but differ in their mainboard designs and layout, and chipsets no doubt, plus they have different capabilities that may only be based on "license fee included in the purchasing price". Relative to the firmware in the Z 6(ii) and Z 7(ii) there are different ways to deal with 3D tracking. It would be interesting to see how you try to emulate the Z 8 experience or learnings in the Z 6(ii).

Will this focus system work on Z7?