Thanks to all who commented favorably. Agreed there is nothing better than grandkids!

Thx, but all of those pics were pre-z. D850 for all of them.

You make my point better than I could ever. Get a life.

ENOUGH! To those bitching about my accidentally posting to main section rather than to gallery (which is where I indeed intended to post it), get a life. In fact get over yourselves. This self righteous BS is ignorant. I f’d up, ok? Find something else to nitpick. Your act is wearing thin.

Some pics of my now 5 yr old granddaughter who I am occasionally fortunate enough to catch at the right moment.

Not in chronological order.

The 850 manual was written many years before CFE cards were invented.

😎

White Sands, NM

[quote=JohnSwanda]That's fine if you never shoot in low light, or situations where you need a lot of DOF.[/quot
Uh - all other things equal, your 50mm @1.4 will have LESS dof than at f8.

I disagree with the suggestions to buy Nikon 800, 900 or 5000 series. I am a true Nikon guy (50+ yrs) and have owned and used every Nikon speed light since the SB20. They are all superb, but wildly overpriced now that there is competition. 10 yrs ago, I would have told you to buy Nikon. But with Godox , Yongnue, Nissan and a whole of other Asian 3rd party units now available and fully compatible with the major camera brands, I would never again buy a Nikon unit. I’ve shot with the 3 I mentioned above (including the Adorama rebrand of Godox called Flashpoint) and they work as well as the OEM. They may not be as rugged as the Nikon units, but they are a fraction of the cost. Personal preference brand now is Godox. I’ve heard its customer service sucks, but in all my years of shooting, I have never had a service issue. If a Godox fails, just toss it and buy a new one. Nikon has seen the light (pun intended) and stopped trying to compete with the excellent and way less costly Asians.

As for melting flash tubes, overheating problems, etc - I ran into a problem only with the SB900 when it first came out. Nikon set the internal thermal protection circuit too low and it shut down prematurely. Happened to me the week after I got mine. Nikon “fixed” that issue with the new SB 910 by simply setting the cut off temperature higher. NPS told me to just turn off the overheat “protection “ on my SB 900, I did and never had a problem.

Of course I wouldn’t machine gun any unit, especially when attached to a Quantum battery pack, but I have actually done so for some short bursts and never had a problem.

And one last thing to add. I use my flash outdoors just as much as I do shooting indoors. Invaluable for controlling shadows.

I give up. Your reply makes no sense, neither in general nor how it might pertain to my observation on flash photography with Z8. What does the desire of the subject have to with anything discussed above? You shoot hi iso, no flash unless the subject wants to be photographed? Seriously?

Embarrassed? I still have no idea what you said either try means.

Huh? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Huh? Ever see a professional event photographer NOT use flash indoors in a poorly lit room?

For the record, I have been shooting Nikon digital for more than 20 years (D2h in August 2003) and I am quite familiar with digital cameras. Second, my comment in the original post stated "....As I described, it is similar to the old "depth of field preview" button on early slr's/dslr's with optical viewfinders." I never said that exposure simulation was same as depth of field preview. I was simply explaining that if you leave your Z8 in it's default setting under d8 menu, the view you get looking through the EVF is similar to the effect of stopping down to the aperture selected. (You know like when the old dof button (in both slrs and dslrs) stopped the aperture down so the image in the viewfinder often darkened to the point when you could barely make out the scene?) What I saw with the Z8 in default was similarly too dark. It was nearly impossible to see the scene through the EVF and, in fact the reason is because the EVF is designed to show you wysiwyg as you stated. The problem is that in M mode with a 1/250 sec ss at f8 in a dark room, of course the wysiwyg view is going to be dark. It's not dark because the lens was stopping down. It shows dark because it cannot detect the effect the flash will have when shutter fires. That dark scene was warning me that the settings were WAY underexposed. Duh - I knew it was underexposed without the application of flash. That's why I mounted the flash. I shot the entire party barely able to compose the shots. Sucked. Only when I got home to do some research did I discover that menu d8 cures the issue.

I have no idea what the Z7 does, but when you actually get your Z8 and you want to shoot with a flash, I suggest that you remember to go to menu d8 and toggle the choice to optimize the view through the finder for ease of viewing.