How Good is the Nikon Zf Without Editing?
All images in this article are unedited using the Nikon Zf with the Nikkor Z 40mm f2
I’ve spent the past couple months taking lots of images on the Nikon Zf, and I haven’t needed to edit a single one. This got me thinking, how often do we see reviews or content from cameras without editing? There’s quite a lot of people out there looking to take images without needing to edit at all, or at the very least have a great starting point before they sit down in front of a computer.
Uses my 1/4th Mist Filter from Maven
This raises the question, how good are the images we can get from cameras without editing? I personally know that both my Canon R5 and Canon R7 take great images but none of them come out of the camera even close to what I’d like them to look like. The Nikon Zf is different, mainly due to it’s ability to access Nikon recipes. These enable me to take raw images with a preset already applied, and the recipes look fantastic thus far.
The race to great image quality is essentially over in the camera genre. At this point you can take high quality images with any brand and edit them to all look like each other. Without editing, the story is completely different. Up until recently, basically only Fujifilm enabled you to create and capture images that needed nothing more than a setting switch and a shutter click. This obviously depends on your style of shooting or what you want your images to look like. Even with that said, essentially no other brand was putting any emphasis on making images look great in camera. That was until Nikon released flexible color in their imagining recipes.
Nikon Zf + 1/4th Mist Filter
Nikon Zf + 1/4th Mist Filter
Nikon Zf + 1/4th Mist Filter
Flexible Color isn’t brand new, but it has slowly developed over the last year. Flexible color is what allows you to edit a histogram for a Nikon Recipe. By unlocking the histogram as an adjustment, it brought Nikon into the feasible realm of “film like”, or stylized images similar to Fujifilm. No other brand is doing this and at this point I’m a bit perplexed at why. There is a massive market of people getting into photography (film photography as well) that don’t really want to worry about editing their images.
This guide will cover exactly how I personally setup my Nikon Zf including sections on:
Customizing dials and controls to quickly change the most important settings in the field.
i-Menu and My Menu setup to put the camera’s most crucial menu items one step away.
How to create, manage, and use Nikon Imagining Recipes + Film Grain
My guidance on exposure settings, focus modes, and best practices in the field.
Not only will this help you get up and running fast with a streamlined setup, I also explain what many of the settings actually do rather than simply tell you to copy me. That way you have the tools to customize much of this camera to your own preferences as well. I don’t cover every setting in this guide and this is certainly not a replacement for the official user manual (which is 893 pages). I do cover every possible settings I use on this camera, even the obscure ones.
THIS IS A DIGITAL DOWNLOAD and not a physical product. You’ll receive a PDF in both portrait and landscape orientation for viewing however you’d prefer. The file is less than 10MB and should be easy to download on nearly any internet connection.
I’ve spent over 15 years with different cameras in my hands and gotten very adept at knowing exactly what I want my camera setup to be. If for some reason you aren’t satisfied with the guide, shoot me an email. I’d love your feedback and to make it right with you. Buying this guide directly supports me and enables me to keep creating - thank you.
UPDATED for Nikon Zf’s Firmware Version 3.0
Nikon Zf Guide
If you want to learn more about how to create recipes for the Nikon Zf or simply get a more streamlined setup for using your camera - check out my Nikon Zf guide.
I cover every button, dial, and menu I’ve adjusted to streamline my photography with the Nikon Zf. I also explain what many of the settings actually do rather than simply tell you to copy me. That way you have the tools to customize much of this camera to your own preferences as well.
My goal with this guide is to enable you to spend a lot less time fighting with your camera and a lot more time nailing shots.
Save yourself a lot of headache and time by grabbing it today! This is also the absolute best way to directly support me as a creator to keep making content like this!
Even someone like me who has spent over a decade editing and learning all the editing techniques I could want to know yet here I am wishing I didn’t have to spend so much time behind a computer. That’s what unlocked this passion for me. The idea that I get to enjoy my images right on the back of the camera. The Nikon Zf enables me to get the best of both worlds in that regard. I get to create, craft, and experience beautiful images right in the field with the full flexibility of shooting in raw, if for whatever reason I change my mind or decide I want to do something differently later.
Nikon Zf + 1/4th Mist Filter
Nikon Zf + 1/4th Mist Filter
Every image you’ve seen in this article is completely unedited using only Nikon Recipes that you can of course find on my recipe page. I think they speak for themselves in terms of their ascetic variability and how good the images can look without ever touching a computer at all (okay thats not totally true, I did have to load them into the computer).
I hope Nikon continues to develop their recipe systems with more features. This gives a bit of competition to Fujifilm in the space and that’s always good for us as consumers. This is also a feature they are about to add to the Nikon Z8. Kudos to Nikon for adding something like that over 2 years after it’s release. That feels like a great reward for being a Nikon user.
Some images in the above gallery may have very minor tweaks such as a crop or horizon line fix, but no other editing was applied.
Would love to know what you think and if these images are up to your own standards for this type of photography. At the very least maybe they get close? Let me know down below!
