In my last article, I talked about using the new Nikon Z f for portrait photography. But a large part of my job involves covering action-filled events like the X Games or Red Bull events. So I am expected to have gear that can keep up with the dynamic moments of the amazing athletes. So with that in mind, I wanted to see just how well the Nikon Z f would work as an action sports camera. 

First off, thanks to the implementation of the Expeed 7 processor, the Nikon Z f has the same autofocus abilities as the Nikon Z 9. It can shoot at 14 fps in RAW and 30 fps in JPEG. It also supports filming at 120p. On paper, these features make the Nikon Z f a great action sports camera for any growing amateur and even professionals. The full-framed sensor of the camera also helps, even though it is only a 24.5MP sensor. 

To see how all these features work in the real world, I invited my parkour friend Corky out for a quick session. We went to a couple of well-known spots at the base of TOKYO SKYTREE. It was a great shoot, and here’s what we did and how I felt trying out various aspects of the Nikon Z f.

Autofocus: Portraits vs Action 

The first aspect of the Nikon Z f I tested was the autofocus capabilities the Expeed 7 processor provides. I did a few portraits to start the shoot. Just like in the previous test shoot, the auto eye detection of the Nikon Z f was bang on. There were no problems at all. 

But when it came to capturing the action, we faced a few challenges. At our first spot, I set the autofocus to “all-area” to see how well it would pick up and track Corky. The camera picked him up well, but when he was running up to do his backflip off some stairs, the camera seemed to get confused between his shirt and the trees behind him. It’s no big issue if you anticipate it, but it’s less than ideal. Once I realized that the camera was getting confused, I just let go of the shutter and refocused. After I did that, the camera picked him up right away, and we got a cool shot.

What I found most interesting was that, compared to the all-area focus when taking stills, the constant auto-focus tracking worked perfectly on both times I shot video.

Even with my Nikon Z 9, I almost never shoot action using the all-area autofocus. I prefer to shoot with a smaller focus box that I can move around the display depending on the composition I want. So that is how I set the camera when shooting action at the next couple of spots. Then I had no problem keeping the focus throughout Corky’s quick moments. 

Shooting RAW or JPEG

When taking photos of quick action, many people like to use a camera’s burst mode to capture the trick with perfect timing. The Nikon Z f’s 14 fps RAW is slower than the Nikon Z 9, but it was fine for most of what we were doing. A couple of times, though, I did feel it was a little slow for capturing the timing of some of the really quick movements. But the 30 fps JPEG worked great at these moments. 

In my professional work, I always shoot RAW photos, so I’m not sure how much I would use the 30 fps in JPEG. But it might be useful for beginners and semi-pros who are shooting an action sport they may not be used to. And actually, I am quite happy with the quality of the JPEGs I captured with the Nikon Z f.

Video Quality

On the video side of the Nikon Z f, shooting on 120p at 1080 resolution looks great, and the slow motion is amazing. Of course, having 120p at 4k or something else a little bigger than 1080 would be better. But this camera is probably not geared toward people who would want that anyway. And for its price and size, there have to be compromises along the way. The majority of the videos I produce are at 1080 resolution, so it’s fine for my needs. It’s a feature I would definitely make use of if I decide to buy this camera.

If you want 4k at 60p, that’s also pretty decent for some minor slow motion. But as I mentioned in my previous article, the video will be at a DX crop. It’s not a deal-breaker, and it still holds up well in my opinion, but it doesn’t quite match the level of video quality I can get with my Nikon Z 9.

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The Verdict

So, would this replace my Nikon Z 9 as my go-to action sports camera? No, not for action sports and event shootings. But would it be a great second camera to have alongside my Nikon Z 9? Absolutely, for sure! I also believe it would be an excellent entry-level camera for amateur photographers. The price point is reasonable for what it offers. Also, Nikon has an impressive lineup of both F-mount and Z-mount lenses that can be paired with the Nikon Z f for amazing results.

In the end, I am looking forward to picking up this camera to complement my Z 9 for work. I also see it as a more compact option when out in the street or just doing fun shoots with my friends.

The Nikon Z f was provided by Nikon for the test shoot.

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Author: Jason Halayko

Jason Halayko is a professional photographer specializing in action sports and portrait photography. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram.

* Lhapa Dondrup is perhaps the shortest photographer in China’s Xizang.

* Standing less than 1 meter tall, the wheelchair-bound Tibetan has brittle bone disease.

* His physical disability has not stopped him from chasing his photographer’s dream.

* For him, photography is more than just a way to make a living.

by Xinhua writers Huang Yaoman, Jiang Fan and Lyu Qiuping

LHASA, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) — Lhapa Dondrup is perhaps the shortest photographer in southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region.

Standing less than 1 meter tall, the wheelchair-bound Tibetan has brittle bone disease, which leads to frequent fractures. He is now 22 years old, despite doctors once predicting that he would never live beyond 20.

However, his physical disability has not stopped him from chasing his dream of becoming a photographer.

“Photography reminds me of the time when I was confined to bed during childhood. Lying in bed, I found that the rays of light through the window were so beautiful,” Lhapa Dondrup recalled, adding that photography is his way of holding onto the beautiful moments in life.

Lhapa Dondrup takes photos during a wheelchair basketball training session in Lhasa, southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region, Nov. 26, 2023. (Xinhua/Jiang Fan)

Sunday marks Human Rights Day.

Lhapa Dondrup was born into a farming family in the rural area of Lhasa, the regional capital. His mother died when he was young, so he was adopted by relatives.

Suffering from frequent fractures, he was diagnosed with brittle bone disease at 5 years old. During second grade in primary school, he had an accident that almost killed him.

“I accidentally fell down, resulting in broken ribs, which pressed hard against my organs,” Lhapa Dondrup recalled.

Concerned about his safety, his adoptive parents asked him to drop out of school. Long periods at home left Lhapa Dondrup feeling depressed, considering himself a burden both to his family and to society.

In 2018, he was offered to study at the Lhasa care center for people with disabilities, a development that gave him renewed hope.

“My family didn’t allow me to go because of their fears concerning my health condition. So I lied to them, promising to return following a brief visit. But I stayed and studied there for three years,” he said with a smile.

At the center, Lhapa Dondrup not only learned Tibetan calligraphy and Mandarin writing but also chose to learn photography and video editing, both of which he enjoys.

In his words, photography is all about light, with a photo capturing the light at a particular moment.

He believes his photographs are unique. “Because of my height, my point of view is lower than that of other people, so I hope to capture a peculiar type of light in life from my own angle,” Lhapa Dondrup said.

In 2021, Lhapa Dondrup met Jole, a disabled entrepreneur who started a business for Tibetan calligraphy training and stationery sales. Of the 42 employees hired by his company, 27 have disabilities.

Lhapa Dondrup (1st, R) takes photos during a wheelchair basketball training session in Lhasa, southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region, Nov. 26, 2023. (Xinhua/Jiang Fan)

Inspired by Jole, Lhapa Dondrup asked to join the company.

Jole said Lhapa Dondrup is full of enthusiasm and ambition. “Most importantly, he didn’t give up on himself, so I hired him,” said Jole.

Jole supports Lhapa Dondrup’s photography dream, giving him company cameras and encouraging him to pursue his dream. Caring people have also donated photographic equipment and taught him about photography.

Lhapa Dondrup is responsible for taking promotional photos for the company, as well as online operations. He earns 2,500 yuan (about 351.5 U.S. dollars) as monthly basic pay, excluding bonus, and receives 600 yuan from the government as a subsidy for people with disabilities.

This aerial photo taken on Dec. 2, 2023 shows Lhapa Dondrup practicing the operation of a drone in Lhasa, southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Jiang Fan)

Last year, Lhapa Dondrup bought new clothes and shoes for his adoptive parents with his own salary to celebrate the Tibetan New Year.

“My parents were so happy, and I felt proud and confident to be supporting myself with my own hands,” he said.

According to a white paper issued last month, a basic multi-tiered social security system has been established in Xizang. The surveyed urban unemployment rate has remained below the national average and the number of families with no one in work has been steadily reduced to zero, the paper said.

For Lhapa Dondrup, photography is more than just a way to make a living. In his spare time, he takes pictures of pet animals and people in Barkhor Street, a famous scenic and shopping area located at the heart of Lhasa. Driving a motor tricycle, he travels as far as possible.

Lhapa Dondrup is pictured in front of Potala Palace in Lhasa, southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region, Dec. 2, 2023. (Xinhua/Jiang Fan)

Next year, he plans to go to Beijing to visit his sister studying there.

“I want to take my camera to Tian’anmen Square and get some photos there,” he said.

(Video reporters: Purbu Tsering, Huang Yaoman, Lodro Gyatso; video editors: Zhang Nan, Wei Yin, Yu Jiaming, Jia Xiaotong, Lin Lin.)■

Helder Matias and James Lai first met while working together at West Camera on Queen St. W. In the last two or so years, the pair started talking about opening their own film lab — and so Memento Film Lab was born.

The store, which opened in June 2023, offers physical and digital film prints, photo development and even has certain cameras for sale.

“A lot of places in North America, the film labs died out. Whereas we still had West Camera and Downtown Camera, all these great labs that managed to go through the slump,” Lai says.

“And we got our photos developed there. We learned through them and that’s how we got here today.”

The store can perhaps best be described as having an open concept kitchen-style. You can see most of the processing equipment and cameras right when you walk in.

One of the rooms is actually a gallery. Each month Matias and Lai develop photos from those in the community around a given theme. 

The film development process itself only takes about 20 minutes from taking the roll out of the camera to getting physical prints.

“We want this place to be the go-to film lab in Toronto,” Matias told blogTO, “And I think we’re working our way towards that, and people can feel that when they come in here.”

Most of the processing equipment required to process film is no longer manufactured, but they were able to get most of it through companies that sell refurbished models, a lab that shut down earlier this year and what they say is a robust film photography community in Toronto.

According to Matias, some of their equipment is among the last in Toronto. 

Their dark room, which they called a work-in-progress, consists of two processors, one for colour and one for black and white. Lai told me that when they first acquired the equipment, neither was working — so they had to cobble together the parts to get the machines in order.

There’s also their wet lab, where they develop colour photography and certain prints.

So far, they say, the reception to Memento has been very positive. While a film photography store in 2023 may seem anachronistic to a lot of people, Matias points out that he worked at West Camera for five years, and during that time he “saw how busy that place got.”

Matias and Lai kept talking about the strong and passionate photography community in Toronto — and through Memento, they’re able to see much more of the city than they would otherwise.

“We can get an idea of the pulse of the city. If it’s Caribana, you can see Caribana. We see the protests a lot right now,” Lai says. “You just feel what’s happening in the city vicariously through the eyes of the photographers.”

Memento Film Lab is at 216 Ossington Ave.

An artist’s atelier (that’s the French word for studio) is a place of creativity and expression, with no one being the same. It is a sacred place to an artist, and one most people are not privy to, but when we do get a chance to peek behind that curtain, it provides an insight into their creative practice, and in turn who they are as an artist. 

Belgium photographer Stephan Vanfleteren does just this in his new book Atelier. It presents 12 years of photography all taken in his photography home studio. A mixture of natural and artificial lighting has helped capture photography that resembles a combination of paintings by Dutch master painters and contemporary photography. The book is a masterclass in natural and artificial lighting, as he captures a wide range of subjects for personal and commercial projects. 

• See our guide for more information on the best photography lighting kit

Not tied down to one particular genre of photography, Atelier’s range of subjects include portraits, self-portraits, still lifes, and documentary – all captured with the same respected treatment and with Vanfleteren’s characteristic style. Much like Irving Penn’s masterful series Small Trades or Richard Avedon’s In the American West, Vanfleteren keeps the backdrop in his studio consistent, with only the subject as the variable. Keeping the same curtained background throughout allows the subject to become the message, highlighting greater importance and demanding more observation of it. ‘Vanfleteren connects to the traditions of old and contemporary masters but remains faithful to his characteristic style.’ 

Vanfleteren’s studio is at his home and enables him to capture both natural sunlit and artificially lit images in the same space. Throughout the book, there is a mixture of lighting techniques, but the style remains the same, often making the source of light undeterminable. Still lifes feature more in this book than any other that Vanfleteren has produced, including work from his new series Nature Morte, currently on exhibition at Galerie Rabouan Moussion in Paris (until December 31, 2023). 

I have been a huge fan of Vanfleteren for many years, collecting his previous publications Surf Tribe and Flandrien, and studying them as a source of photographic education. His portraiture is gripping, connecting the viewer to the subject with unwavering grace, much like statues frozen in time.  

Along with the beautiful images in Atelier, there are texts written by Dutch poet and novelist Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, and by Stephan Vanfleteren himself. The words offer further insight into Vanfleteren’s process, and how he came to create his home atelier. 

Available in several language editions, Atelier by Stephan Vanfleteren is published by Hannibal Books and is available now at the price of €70 (that converts to around $75 / £60). This photography book would make the perfect gift for any portrait photographer.  

You may also be interested in our guides on the best coffee table books, the best photography lighting kit, and the best camera for portraits. 

The New York photographer Elliott Erwitt, who died on 29 November aged 95, was once asked how he got dogs to jump for his pictures. The trick, he suggested, was to speak their language. Bark at a dog, he said, and “sometimes they bark back, sometimes they jump”. Erwitt was a member of the Magnum agency for 70 years and worked on assignments around the world, taking pictures of politicians (famously of Richard Nixon poking Nikita Khrushchev in the chest in 1959) and of celebrities (Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Jack Kerouac); even so, it was his comic affinity for canine subjects for which he was best loved.

The predeliction came as something of a surprise to him. “Most of the time,” he wrote in 1998, “when I am out of the house I carry a small unobtrusive camera and I snap away obsessively at things that interest me… I never set out to take dog pictures but somehow dogs appeared in large numbers on my contact sheets… Obviously, my sympathy for the creatures was deeper than I had imagined.” Those words came in the introduction to his third book of dog photographs, DogDogs (others included Son of Bitch and Woof). He liked the fact that “dogs made easy, uncomplaining targets without the self-conscious hang-ups and objections of humans caught on film”.

A tall man, Erwitt would make certain to get down to the pavement level to get his portraits, his subject’s domain: “I decided to photograph from a dog’s point of view because dogs see more shoes than anybody,” he said. He doubted that any other animal had a dog’s capacity for heart or loyalty. “Some people,” he pointed out, “say elephants come close – but they do not roam the streets in every town and country like dogs do.”