frontpage Posted by LovelyIdea542 • Yesterday
May 20, 2025 2:15 PM
Item 1 of 1
frontpage Posted by LovelyIdea542 • Yesterday
May 20, 2025 2:15 PM
Refurbished: Nikon Z8 Mirrorless Camera w/ NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S Lens
+ Free Shipping$3,600
$4,400
18% offNikon
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If DJI releases their rumored mirrorless FF camera that'll hurt everyone in the industry.
But yeah, probably still worth putting "Nikon" in the title.
28-400 is $994 ($1300 new)
24-120 f4 is $781 (currently the new one is $100 off at $1000).
100-400 is $1944 (currently $400 off new at $2300).
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Nikon Refurb always beats used prices 4 times a year
The camera body is a Nikon Z8, it's a 45.7MegaPixel stacked CMOS full frame sensor mirrorless camera that can record at 8k/30fps max (or 6k/60 or 4k/120)
Full frame just means that the sensor size, that is what the light ultimately hits. Full frame is a sensor the size of one of those old style analog photo tapes. You remember those old ones that you would take pictures with and you get a little spool that had a negative of the photos in small little rectangles? The full frame is the size of those rectangles.
The next smaller ones is APS-C and even smaller than that are phone camera sensors. You can google how big those are.
Why is a larger sensor important? A sensor is essentially just a layer on some silicon substrate of photosites, which are electrical components that take in photons and convert it into electrical signals. A larger sensor means either you can have larger photo sites so each pixel is generated using more photons (so essentially more information about the world is used to make 1 pixel), or more photosites to cream in more pixels. So a 24megapixel full frame camera just has larger photosites compared to a 48megapixel full frame. The 48 megapixel is more expensive to manufacturer since you need more overall photosites but it still gets the same information about the world.
A phone camera can have 200megapixels but this is where the argument of physics limitations comes in. Even though it could have a lot of photosites, it's not capable of receiving as many photons since it physically is just not large enough to do so. There are some optical tricks you could do like use mirrors and larger lenses that focus the light but still limited. A lot of the end result is the phone "guesstimating" what the pixel should be based on surrounding real pixels it makes.
A stacked CMOS sensor just means it has a few layers between the photosites and analog components that process the light input. What I mean is that instead of having a sensor that just intakes light and computation occurs somewhere else in the camera, it can all occur on the same sensor just need to physically separate it. This means it's a lot faster to process images just because less distance the data needs to transfer.
The cons is that it's a little more expensive to manufacturer.
The rest of the physical camera is usually controlled by the chip powering it, so this one can record at 8K which is definitely nothing to scoff at. Since maybe 10 years ago you'd need 20k camera to record 8k.
The lens says 24-120 f/4, what does this mean?
The lens is actually a very difficult to manufacturer properly part, and most people don't realize how difficult optics can be. For example the only company in the world capable of producing the mirrors used in ASMLs EUV machines is the German company ZEISS. It's literally the only one possible because it's so hard to manufacture this specific mirror.
So the 24-120 refers to 24-120mm which means that the lens is a zoom lens, you can have the distance the front of the lens is from the camera body, called the focal length, be 24mm away or extend it out to 120mm. The further away you have it, the more "zoom" you have at the cost of the fact that you are reducing your field of view.
For example when you zoom in your phone camera, you get closer to the subject but the rest of the photo is gone, like your camera is no longer looking at nearby plants or whatever. Same concept, you are getting closer to the subject but the total field you look at is reduced.
The way you can measure the optical zoom is simply divide the furthest it can go out by the smallest, so in this case 120/24 is 5x optical zoom. Optical zoom is better because we currently do not have technology that is capable of simulating the world as well as the world can simulate itself. So when you zoom in 5x, you are looking at the world 5x closer. When you use your phone camera to digitally zoom in you are essentially having the software take 1 pixel and make it 5x bigger which is why the images look blocky sometimes.
The f/4 is the aperature size, or essentially how large is the opening to the lens. It is shown as the focal length divided by some number, which in this case is 4. Normally for a zoom lens there is some changing number so it would be something like 4-6 saying that at 24mm the aperature is 24/4 or 6mm, and at 120 it expands to be 120/6 or 20mm.
A larger opening means it allows more light to come in. However a larger aperature is more expensive and heavier, it's better in low light situations and can produce a better focus on the subject.
It's kind of a give and take, there is no "best" although if someone were to give it to you for free obviously an f/1 would be the ideal lens since it has the largest opening but like I said it's gonna be heavy usually and expensive since it needs a larger front glass.
Other than that lenses can be a little complicated internally, modern ones usually has baked in auto focusing, they have USB c ports and require FIRMWARE UPDATES (which is crazy actually but cool), the have in lens stabilization so it handles a little hand jittering, weather sealing etc.
Ultimately smart phones destroyed the low end market which is why most cheap cameras are gone. The more expensive cameras do produce way better photos for sure. If you're new I wouldn't recommend blowing 4k on this, just because if you don't really care for the best image possible but just "good enough" then a phone camera is fine.
Honestly a modern iPhone or Samsung or whatever images are solid, I just think that right now they're still a ways away from being as good - but never say never of course
Z5-2 Z6-3, ZF are great mid-cam sub $2000
Z50, Z50-2 and Z6 are good entry cams for sub $100
1-inch phones great for everyday use.
good glass is easy to mass produce. great glass is hard.
Nikon, Canon, Sony make their profits on glass and batteries.
Dont be fooled by marketing
Nikon is pretty good bang for the buck. And most of their high end lenses are good. But they're in the same general category as e.g. Canon and Sony, producing everything from cheap junk to some really great glass. But they are definitely not the "best lenses on the planet", unless you're a fanboi and you've built all of your self-esteem based on the brands you already own.
Nothing wrong with buying Nikon gear. For that matter, nothing wrong with buying Sony or Canon or ... etc. There are basically no bad cameras today, just bad decisions on what you actually need and/or will actually use.