Nikon Z7 – Vampire Mode

Here’s another one from our Nikon Z7 project. I was very keen to try out the low light capabilities of the Z7 with the new 35/1.8 S lens, so with new moon we set up our tent in a cool spot and switched to vampire mode – get up in the middle of the night!

The sensor behaved just as I expected with good color rendition and very low noise even at high ISO settings. For this shot I ended up shooting 16 second exposures at f/1.8 and ISO 5000. Why 16 seconds? Two reasons: first, when you’re shooting at 35mm you can’t really go much longer than that or your stars will start trailing and no longer look like points (I’m already pushing it here), and second, I found out that 16 seconds was the maximum time that my assistant could sit motionless :-)

I had planned this shot as a white balance blend – two different white balances: one for the sky and one for the foreground. The official image that Nikon has used in their Z7 campaign is the completely unprocessed version with just one (warm) white balance, but this is my personal preference.

Marsel