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Recently, I’ve made some upgrades to my Nikon Zf in the form of a new lens, a sensor shield, and trying it out for a paid photo gig. I think we can all agree that anyone who buys one is in love with the camera. But it surely does have issues of all sorts that even Nikon has admitted actually happen. And recently, it caused quite a bit of frustration to where I often had to overshoot frames to get the image I needed and wanted.
Below is our updated text from the Nikon Zf review. If you want to view the whole thing, click here.
Ease of Use Update September 2025
The newest firmware, 2.02c, offers different wording on some menu items. Specifically, the firmware page states, “Updated some guidance texts displayed on the camera when connecting to the Nikon Imaging Cloud service (the connection procedure itself remains unchanged).” So overall, if you know how to use the Nikon Imaging Cloud service, then you won’t have a problem at all.
Originally, in my review of the Nikon Zf, I complained about the camera not having a sensor shield. My new way around this is to use a clip-in filter over the sensor that I bought from Kolari Vision. In my review of that product, I note how it’s easy for Sony cameras. But with Nikon cameras, you have to do a bit more work in the form of attaching some magnetic strips. Since then, though, I’ve noticed that my Nikon Zf images are overall much cleaner with a few exceptions and problems that cleaning the sensor fixes pretty easily.
Recently I bought the Nikon 24-120mm f4 S lens and took it with me to a paid gig. To refresh here, my day job is running the Phoblographer as the Editor in Chief and Publisher. On the side, I’m paid taxable income for my photography services. To clarify that even more, I’m paid to shoot photos — not share content on platforms. This gig was Pig Island out in Staten Island.
I chose to use the Nikon Zf and the new Hasselblad X2D II because they share the same flash interface. Each camera had its own lenses and own batteries. The Zf needed a battery swap around 3/4 way through the gig, but it otherwise worked fine. Where it had problems though, is with flash sync.
With both Nikon and Profoto flashes, the Nikon Zf just couldn’t give me consistent results when doing high speed sync — which Nikon otherwise calls Auto-FP. By that I mean that the camera wasn’t always syncing with the flashes, which is a problem that I’ve been reporting on for a while and Nikon hasn’t formally addressed a fix for in conversations with me. However, they are aware of it and in messages back and forth, even acknowledge that it exists.
To recap the problem:
- Set your Nikon Zf to a shutter speed faster than 1/125th using the dedicated shutter dial. When you shoot with a flash of some sort, it won’t always sync up.
- Change the shutter dial to the 1/3rd step setting and control the shutter as you normally would with any Nikon camera. The problem still happens.
- Try this with both Nikon and Profoto flashes and it will happen.
The Nikon Zf has a dedicated setting on the shutter dial marked with an “x”. This is for flash sync and fixes the shutter to 1/200th. In bright light during the daytime, this will mean that you’re going to need to use a very low ISO setting and stop your lens down quite a bit in order for the camera and flash to overpower the sun. For the record, I’m using my Profoto B10. This is a strobe that I’ve used for many gigs and across various camera systems. It has never once failed me, and it works just fine with the Nikon Z8 and Z9. So in my findings, and those of fellow staffer Feroz Khan, it’s an issue with how the shutter dial works.
Generations of reviewers before me would make up excuses for this, but I refuse to let billion-dollar companies make up excuses like this. The camera’s flash sync doesn’t work properly. But it works just fine with the Nikon Z5 and Z5 II — which is a lower-end product.
On top of this, and I don’t believe that I’m saying this, the lack of a grip can make it hard to work with one-handed unless you’re clever about how you’re holding the camera. I got the shots I needed and my clients were happy. But as I like to say, I love humanity, but I hate humans. I don’t expect most humans who are buying cameras these days to understand or know how to properly hold a camera.
Nikon is supposed to issue another firmware update offering up film grain soon. I wonder if they’ll fix flash issues too.
More importantly, I wonder what’s taking them so long. Nikon is a company I truly want to root for. But when stuff like this happens, I’m reminded why they nearly completely fell apart several times over the past 20 years.
