Best Nikon Z8 Settings for Beginners: Photo Settings First

The best Nikon Z8 settings for a beginner are the ones that control what the camera saves, where it focuses, and how bright your picture turns out: file type, autofocus area, and the three exposure settings of shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Change those first, leave everything else at the factory defaults, and you will already have far more control than auto mode gives you.

This guide is built from Nikon's own spec pages and press release, plus published reviews from PetaPixel, Popular Photography and Photography Blog. When a reviewer shares something they saw while shooting, the guide tells you who it was.

What makes the Z8 a little different

The Z8 uses a 45.7-megapixel full-frame stacked sensor. Nikon says this sensor reads so fast that no mechanical shutter is needed. Popular Photography confirms that, like the Z9, the Z8 has no mechanical shutter at all.

Think of a normal shutter as a tiny door that swings open and shut in front of the sensor. The Z8 has no door. It uses an electronic shutter, which means the sensor simply turns on, records the light, and turns off.

Older electronic shutters could make fast things look bent, an effect called rolling shutter. A spinning fan might look like it has curvy blades, for example. Popular Photography explains that the Z8's fast readout lets you shoot fast action without your subject looking wiggly or distorted. Nikon's press release adds that the setup can be completely silent.

PetaPixel's review notes that using only the electronic shutter brings a minor loss of dynamic range. That is a small trade-off, and it is not something to worry about while you are learning.

Setting 1: Choose your file type

Your file type is the kind of picture file the camera saves to the card. The Z8 can save JPEG, HEIF, NEF (RAW), or a RAW file paired with a JPEG or a HEIF.

Here is a simple way to picture it. A RAW file is like a bag of fresh ingredients. A JPEG is the meal the camera already cooked for you. HEIF is another kind of cooked meal.

File type	Options on the Z8	Good for
JPEG	Fine (about 1:4), normal (about 1:8) or basic (about 1:16) compression	Sharing straight from the camera
HEIF	Fine, normal or basic compression	Finished pictures in a newer format
NEF (RAW)	14 bit, with lossless, high-efficiency*, or high-efficiency compression	Fixing brightness and color later
NEF (RAW) + JPEG	One photo saved as both files	Beginners who want both
NEF (RAW) + HEIF	One photo saved as both files	People who prefer HEIF

A good starting choice is NEF (RAW) + JPEG with the JPEG set to fine. You get a picture you can send to a friend right away, plus a RAW file you can rescue later if the photo came out too dark or too bright. A photo that missed is not a failure, it is a file you can still learn from.

Setting 2: Set up your memory cards

The Z8 has two card slots: one accepts CFexpress Type B or XQD cards, and the other accepts SD cards.

When you take a fast string of photos, the camera holds them in a small waiting room called the buffer. If the card is slow, the waiting room fills up and the camera has to pause.

PetaPixel's reviewer reported bursting over a thousand RAW images at 20 frames per second on a fast CFexpress card before the camera slowed down. On the SD slot, the same reviewer slowed to roughly 30 to 40 images before hitting the limits of the buffer.

If you shoot sports, kids or wildlife, put a fast CFexpress card in as your main card. If you mostly shoot slow subjects like landscapes or portraits, the SD slot works fine as a backup.

Setting 3: Learn the three exposure settings

Three settings decide how bright your photo is: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. They work together like syllables in a line of a poem. Change one, and the whole line sounds different, so you balance it by changing another.

Shutter speed: how long the light comes in

Shutter speed is how long the camera looks at the scene. Even without a physical door, the idea is the same: a door that opens and closes quickly freezes motion, and a door left open longer lets in more light and shows movement as blur.

Photography Blog lists the Z8's longest timed exposure at 900 seconds in Manual mode, with a Bulb mode for even longer exposures.

As a simple starting point, try 1/250 of a second for people standing still and 1/1000 for running kids or sports. If your photos look smeared, a faster shutter speed is usually the first fix.

Aperture: how wide the lens opens

Aperture works like the pupil of your eye. In a dark room your pupil gets big to let in more light. In bright sun it gets small.

Aperture is written as an f-number, like f/2.8 or f/8. The trick is that a small number means a big opening. For example, f/2.8 lets in lots of light and makes the background soft and blurry, which is lovely for portraits. f/8 lets in less light and keeps more of the scene sharp, which suits landscapes.

ISO: how much the camera boosts the light

ISO is like a volume knob. Turning it up makes a dark scene brighter, but just like turning up a quiet song, you start to hear hiss. In photos that hiss is called noise, which looks like grain or speckles.

ISO setting	Value on the Z8
Lowest (L1.0)	ISO 32
Base ISO	ISO 64
Highest native ISO	ISO 25600
Boosted settings	ISO 51200 and ISO 102400

Photography Blog published 100% crops at each ISO setting so you can see the noise for yourself. Keep ISO as low as the light allows, and save the boosted settings for when nothing else works.

Which mode to start in

Manual mode lets you choose all three settings yourself. On a bright, sunny day, try setting ISO 64, f/8 and 1/250, take a picture, and look at the screen. Too dark, slow the shutter a little. Too bright, speed it up. Each test shot teaches you something, so take as many as you like.

Setting 4: Set up autofocus

Pick an AF-area mode

An AF-area mode tells the camera where to look for focus. It is like telling a friend "look at the dog" instead of "look at the park."

With single-point AF in the FX image area, the Z8 offers 493 focus points to choose from.

AF-area mode	What it does	Try it for
Pinpoint	A very small focus spot, photo mode only	Tiny details, still subjects
Single-point	One focus point you move yourself	Portraits, products, landscapes
Dynamic-area (S, M, L)	One point with helpers around it, photo mode only	Subjects that move a little
Wide-area (S, L, L-people, L-animals, C1, C2)	A bigger focus box	Groups, pets inside a set area
Auto-area AF (also people and animals versions)	The camera chooses where to focus	Beginners and casual shooting
3D-tracking	Follows a subject you pick around the frame, photo mode only	Sports, kids, birds
Subject-tracking AF	Tracking for video, video mode only	Video

A friendly place to start is Auto-area AF for everyday shots and 3D-tracking for anything that moves. PetaPixel's review describes 3D tracking as very easy to start. The PetaPixel hands-on compares it to Sony's real-time tracking autofocus.

Use subject detection

Subject detection means the camera recognizes what it is looking at. Nikon says the Z8 recognizes humans, pets, birds, trains, cars, motorbikes, bicycles and various types of airplanes. Photography Blog reports that if a driver wears a helmet, the autofocus locks on to the helmet.

PetaPixel's reviewer found the subject detection modes work very effectively for wildlife and portraits. The same review says the Z8 handles precise focus on the iris much better than earlier Nikon cameras.

When focus gets confused

PetaPixel's hands-on found that snowfall or heavy rain can make the Z8's focus drift, and that reacquiring the subject can be frustrating. If that happens to you, it is not your fault. Switch to single-point, aim at an edge with strong contrast, like the line of a jacket against the sky, and try again.

Setting 5: Choose a burst speed

Burst mode takes many photos while you hold the button down, so you can pick the one where nobody blinked.

File type	Top burst speed
Full-resolution RAW + JPEG	Up to 20 fps
Full-resolution JPEG only	Up to 30 fps
DX-format JPEG	Up to 60 fps
11-megapixel JPEG	Up to 120 fps

Fast bursts fill your card and your computer quickly. While you are learning, a slower burst gives you plenty of choices without hundreds of near-identical files to sort through.

Setting 6: Turn on playback helpers

The Z8's playback tools include Highlights, Histogram Display and Playback Zoom.

Highlights flashes the parts of your photo that are so bright they turned pure white. A histogram is a little hill-shaped chart: a hill pushed all the way left means the photo is dark, and a hill pushed all the way right means it is bright.

Playback Zoom is your best friend for catching blurry photos. After a shot, zoom in on the eyes. If they look soft, try a faster shutter speed or check where the focus point landed.

Setting 7: Try the portrait features later

Nikon's press release lists settings made for portrait photographers, including Portrait Impression Balance for control of skin tone, a Skin Softening function and improved white balance.

These are fun tools for later. Leave Skin Softening off at first so you can see what your photos look like on their own, then turn it on and compare.

Battery and firmware

According to PetaPixel, CIPA rates a fully charged battery at roughly 325 shots. PetaPixel's reviewer reported shooting well over a thousand burst shots a day for two days and swapping batteries once each day. The reviewer suggested carrying a few extra EN-EL15 batteries.

Nikon says Firmware 3.0 adds new features for photo, video and workflow. Firmware is the camera's built-in software, a bit like a phone update, so check Nikon's site for the newest version before a big day of shooting.

Where to learn more

Nikon offers a Reference Guide (Web Edition) with more complete instructions for the Z8. Nikon's Digitutor videos assume your camera is at its default settings, and the cameras shown in those videos include the Z6 and Z50.

For the ideas that carry across every Nikon body, read the Best Nikon Camera Settings for Beginners guide. Change one setting at a time, take a few pictures, and notice what happened. That slow, patient practice is how auto mode turns into real confidence.