I recently published a post containing a series of photos I took at Welland Steam Fair, some of which that were taken with the Nikon Zf, Monster LA-FZ1 and Nikon 180mm with a new version of the firmware for the adapter. I wanted that post to just be about the photos, but given the success of the experience with the updated adapter and adapted lens, I also definitely wanted to follow up with this post too.
In case you haven’t already seen, I’ve been writing a series of posts about this adapter – you can read them here. The purpose of the adapter is to allow the mounting of Nikon AF and AF-D lenses to Nikon Z mount cameras. These lenses are Nikon’s first series of autofocus lenses from the 80s and 90s so are far from as technologically sophisticated or advanced as modern lenses, but still have merit in their own right when it comes to their optical properties. I really love the character of the various lenses in my collection, which is why I have set out to adapt them to the Zf.
As I have talked about in previous posts, my expectations when mounting these lenses to the Zf with the adapter have never been about perfect autofocus performance. I’m getting used to just how good modern autofocus lenses are on the Nikon Zf at the same time as going through the process of long-term reviewing this adapter, and it’s been very much apparent that it doesn’t matter how good the adapter is, it’s never going to elevate these older lenses to the point of modern AF capabilities. The technology in the lens itself will always be the bottleneck. The hope I have had is simply that it can get them to the point of being nearly as capable as they are on a camera they were designed to work with.
Of course, they were initially designed to work cameras like the Nikon F4 and the consumer AF cameras of that era. But they also then worked on more recent film cameras such as the F100, and F6 which were the peak of Nikon’s AF film cameras. They also worked on many of Nikon’s digital SLRs, including the pro series cameras right up until the D6, D850. These later cameras obviously had much more advanced AF than the early AF cameras. Though, as with when mounting on the LA-FZ1, at some point the lens is going to become the limiting factor in the equation. The mechanical screw drive just isn’t as quick as the more modern focusing systems that superseded it. This all, I suppose, begs the question as to by what I am measuring that idea of “nearly as good”?
This is a question I am yet to find a way to tackle head on. I do have a few Nikon AF cameras, but I don’t have anything particularly modern, at least beyond my F100, and testing the AF of a digital camera against that of a film camera feels like a task I’m not sure I can be bothered to undertake. I think it’s the word “test” that bothers me – I’m just not the sort to test kit beyond trying it and seeing how well it works for me. This might sound somewhat limiting in the context of a review series like this, but in a world where a lot of reviews do lean into more objective testing, I’ve always taken the view that I might as well just take whatever approach I like, and if it helps someone make up their mind or otherwise about a bit of kit then great, and if people need objectivity, well they can seek that elsewhere.
It’s my subjective approach that’s led me to the idea of this article, and indeed the “test” I undertook to write it. Of course, it wasn’t really a test at all. I just took the 180mm lens to the same event two years in a row. The first time was with the lens mounted on a Nikon Df, which is a fairly modern, and certainly pretty well respected camera when it comes to autofocus capabilities. The second time was with it mounted to the Zf via the Monster Adapter.
With the first of these experiences being over a year ago, I can’t specifically remember how well the autofocus worked. Fortunately, as mentioned in my post about the photos, I did start writing about my experiences on the day and had some notes in that draft about how impressed I’d been with the autofocus. The gist was that whilst my expectations hadn’t been set at an equivalence to a modern lens on a super-fast AF performance mirrorless camera, I’d still found the lens to have performed really very well indeed. It had grabbed focus quickly and reliably, and hadn’t missed a single opportunity I had pointed it at. As I say, I can’t remember the specifics, but I do remember being happy and both impressed with the camera and lens. This is probably unsurprising really, since the Df really is an excellent camera with very good autofocus performance that’s probably in the category of equipment that’s going to be getting as much performance as there is to get out of these old AF and AFD lenses.
The relevance of this here though is only in how the 180mm performed on the Df compared to how it did on the Zf via the Monster LA-FZ1. Especially as this lens has been the most problematic out of my collection in previous tests. In fact, in my previous post about it, I said that I hoped for another update as I thought that “it didn’t work particularly well”. That update came to me a little while ago in the form of a version 1.2.1 firmware. This update wasn’t made available to everyone – as far as I know, just a few people who are testing the adapter were given it to try, me being one of the lucky few.
I must admit, I was a little concerned that I wasn’t going to get the sort of performance I needed to get the shots I wanted, but all of the above considered, I thought it worth a punt nonetheless And you know what? I was really very pleased with the outcome!
I had, of course, tried the combination before hand and found that I could get it to fall over when testing it, but in this real life use case, I only found it to fall short of my expectations a couple of times. I will admit that the experience didn’t feel anywhere near as flawless as the one I had with the Df, it just doesn’t feel as certain or even as trustworthy at focusing. But, despite this, I was still able to achieve a very high percentage of shots I set out to without any need to take repeated shots. If fact, for all but a handful of shots, it didn’t met me down at all… And that includes getting a few shots of this guy walking toward the camera, all of which the 3D tracking AF system handled very well.
I did miss one shot where I’d just tried to be too quick I think. I also had the same issue I talk about in the previous post where trying to focus from a far subject to a very near one just doesn’t seem to work very well without a manual adjustment to the focus on the lens. But, importantly with that limitation in mind, I just got used to quickly manually tweaking the focus before letting the AF take over. Not the perfect solution, but the point is that in practice I found it pretty workable and didn’t find myself let down, nor did I find myself frustrated in this real life shooting situation.
Of course, it would be ridiculous not to recognise the limitations of this set up. I’ve just borrowed a Tamron 50-400 lens to review and comparing it to that on the Zf is night and day. One of the things I have borrowed the Tamron lens for was to take my daughter to take some photos of the local Women’s Football team. There is no way on earth the 180mm on the Zf/Monster adapter would be good enough to get the hit rate I wanted for that. On the Df, I’d reckon I’d have got a few good shots – not as many as the Tamron on the Zf – but a few I think. The Zf/Monster/180 combo just would have no chance at keeping up with football players, especially in my inexperienced (when it comes to sports photography) hands.
But, that’s ok I think. This experience at the Steam Fair has broadened my use case possibilities with the adapted 180mm lens – with v1.2 firmware I felt it just didn’t match up to my needs or expectations, with v1.2.1 – which has now been released as v1.3 (with more lenses supported too) – I am now comfortable using this adapter and lens in more circumstances. I certainly wouldn’t think twice about taking it to an event like this again!
All photos taken with the Af and LA-ZF1 can be found here
My wider experiences with the adapter can be found here
Monster Adapter have added the v1.3 firmware to their dropbox here
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