Review: Asus TX-AX58U router – Smart WiFi 6

Back in the day…

I like Apple products. They are perhaps over-priced, but very nice in design and for me easy to understand. So when my trusty router, the Apple Airport Extreme finally gave in after many years of service, I was ready to make a replacement purchase. But I was to learn that Apple stopped producing routers back in 2018! I felt very alone all of a sudden, but also the pressure from the family missing the router for both work and streaming!

So there was nothing to do but consult the homepage of the local IT hardware pusher to see what I could find. And as I feared, the list of routers was long and intimidating, leaving only network engineers happy: routers of many different manufacturers with strange names and prices that range from next-to-nothing to crazy expensive.

I would love to claim that my purchase of the router was a rational man decision after scanning the market for all available options. It was not. This little label pushed me in the direction of the Asus router.

I know from experience that buying the most expensive gear is seldom worth it, and the other end of the scale is also to be avoided. So a good middle-of-the-road alternative is what I was looking for. Me eyes fell on the Asus RT-AX58U for two reasons: it was on sale, and it had a little “readers choice” award that lifted my confidence from zero to just a little bit. The name itself (RT-AX58U) meant nothing to me, other than sending a strong signal that Asus has hired more engineers than marketing people!

From the tin. Lots of things I don’t understand!

The “key selling arguments” on the tin meant next to nothing to me, but I have later learned that the AiMesh is a way to connect several units into the same network in a smart way. So with only the worst of expectations, I pushed the purchase button and started to wait for the parcel to arrive at my doorstep.

Setup

When I opened the box, this is what met my eyes. Intimidating for a non-engineer. But it turned out to be not bad at all.

Opening the parcel, I found what I feared the most: a complex looking compilation of items to be assembled – my IKEA complex started growling in the distance. But I quickly learned that it essentially was the router itself, a power supply and a network cable! What a relief

Power supply and a network cable. That is all that is required other than the box itself. The intimidating booklet named “Quick start guide” to the left.

However, the “quick start guide” quickly reversed that: it was a thick booklet! What! Apple’s quick start guides can fit into a single A5 paper!

The user guide is a book! But the reason is that it comes in a large number of languages. The relevant section is only a few pages – phew!

But it turned out that the size of the booklet was related to the number of languages involved, and that the relevant pages were only a few! I was back in business!

Router rear. Leftmost the power supply, then the power on/off switch, then a USB plug that I have never used, 4 physical network connectors in yellow, the network connector for the internet, a WPC button and rightmost a reset button.

So I plugged the power supply cable into the rear of the router along with the supplied network cable, which I connected to my LAN. My ISP has provided another router that connects to the internet so the role of the Asus is to give WIFI on first floor where the ISP router has insufficient reach.

You can setup the router two ways I learned from the guide: using a browser and a URL, or by downloading the Asus app and take it from there. I chose the latter, and was asked for two things during the setup: A SSID plus password, and an ID and password for logging onto the router. That’s it! After that the network just worked!

Everything I buy seems to be in need of a firmware upgrade. This one is no different. Luckily it was a fast and hassle free experience.

Of course I cannot buy a gadget without the first thing that happens is that it demands to have the firmware updated! It seems to be a thing that haunts me, and this one was no different. But it was both quick and easy.

And then – of course – I misspelled the SSID! I found that the easiest was to reset the router to factory settings and re-do the installation process, this time with the correct spelled SSID. Although there is a “reset” button on the rear of the router, the way to reset it is to turn it off, hold the “WPS” button and then turn it on. I tried to do that holding the “reset” button instead and that led nowhere, so remember that reset to factory settings involves the “WPS” button and not the “reset” button.

I love this: you push a button in the app and the network optimizes itself. It could be a big make believe button, but it feels great that I don’t have dive into technical details to have a optimized network!

The app is easy to use and hold a lot of good information, for example a list of the units logged on to the WIFI, and you can rename them from mumbo jumbo to something useful like “Frederiks Ipad” or the like. Great! Also the app has features like network optimization and allows you to give priority to certain types of network traffic over others. I have no idea if this works or not, but it seems smart.

The app has lots of interesting screens and metrics. Here a real time traffic overview. Another useful screen is one that lists all units logged onto the WIFI.

Conclusion

I found this little router easy to set-up and install, despite my track record of messing up even the simplest network things. The app gives useful information in a not-too complicated user interface.

In terms of alternatives to this router or if the price around 120 EUR is fair or not, I have no idea or baseline to assess. There are cheaper alternatives out there, and maybe they can do the job as well, but I just wanted a hassle free solution with quick installation, and that I got.

I am glad the router is in a location in the house we seldom visit. It is a little black plastic thing with 4 antennas, and the design immediately makes you want to wear a silver hat and talk to UFO’s. I have no idea if the antennas play an important role or not, but this router has no better reach than my deceased and beautifully designed Apple router, unfortunately.

Related reading

Apple AirTag Review

RAVPower PD Pioneer Power Bank Review

 

 

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10

No nonsense

The Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10 comes in a small  plastic wrapped cardboard box that certainly does not make a big fuzz with colorful images or the like. It signals an engineering no-nonsense approach from the very start.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
The Ulanzi G9-5 comes with in a small box with no user guide.

In the box you will find the cage itself, with a small cage for the sound adapter already mounted at the bottom.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
The full content of the package. Cage in the middle with microphone adapter mounted to the right. The door bottom left is mounted on the right hand side of the cage and gives access to the USB-C connecter when closed.

To fit the GoPro Hero 9 or 10 into the cage, the rear of the cage has a sliding door. The door is locked into position by a small spring laden ball that fits into a dent into the rear side of door. This works really well. The door on the side of the cage follow the same principle.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
The screwdriver points to a small spring laden ball that looks like the ones you’ll find in ball bearings. It taps into a small dent in the rear frame of the cage, so that it is locked in position.

Mounting the GoPro in the cage is very easy and after closing the sliding door on the rear, the GoPro is well protected. The lens is protected from the side by a metal ring, but unfortunately this metal ring also blocks a little of the view to the front LCD, which is a bit annoying, but not a showstopper in any way. The metal ring around the lens has a thread to mount filters in front of the lens.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
The cage protects the lens very well, but unfortunately also steals a bit of the view to the front LCD.

One very important feature of the Ulanzi cage is that it holds the sound adapter for the GoPro, that would otherwise be dangling down the side of the GoPro, at risk of being accidentally pulled out. The adapter simply slides sideways into position as in kept there by a little bit of friction – this also works well and I think there is little risk that the adapter by accident will be pushed sideways out of the cage.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
The holder for the sound adapter is mounted at the bottom of the cage from the factory. The adapter simply slides sideways into position as in kept there by a little bit of friction.

The cage comes with a metal door that has a small hole to give access to the USB-C connector on the side of the GoPro. This door cannot be mounted together with the GoPro door, so you have to choose between GoPro door (waterproof) or the cage door (access to the USB-C connector).

If you choose the GoPro door, then be aware that it cannot be opened while mounted in the cage – you have to take it out of the cage to get access to the battery, SD-card and USB-C connector.

As I am very dependent on access to the USB-C connector, the choice is easy, but I have to be careful with water and dust.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
Cage right, cage side door left, GoPro door in the middle. You have to choose between these doors as only one of them can be mounted.

Another item that I am keen to keep track of is my Røde wireless recever (sound), that needs to connect to the adapter at the bottom of the cage. You can find a review of the Røde wireless Go here.

There are two cold shoes for mounting the Røde sender, either at the top or the side. If you mount it on the side, then access to the power button is blocked, so I prefer to have the Røde on top of the cage instead.

The black box on the top of the cage can easily be removed – I think it mainly serves to give some distance between the camera and the microphone, in case you want a microphone to be mounted on the top.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
When you mount the Røde sender on the side of the cage, the power button on the left side of the GoPro cannot be accessed. I prefer to mount the Røde at the top of the cage instead.

I have not really used the 2nd cold shoe, but I would imagine that a small light could go here to help out in case the ambient light does not suffice.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
If you vlog where the ambient light is sparse, adding light to the setup could be a way to compensate. Here mounted on the top of the cage, on the side where the Røde sender sits is an alternative.

The final thing to do is mount the cage on a tripod or the like, and for this purpose there is a thread at the bottom of the cage, or more precisely at the bottom of the holder for the sound adapter.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
At the bottom of the cage is a thread for mounting the cage on a tripod or the like. The two smaller threads on each side of the center thread is for fastening the traditional GoPro mount.

So with both the Røde and the sound adapter mounted on the cage, and the cage on a tripod or the like, you are ready for vlogging with all your bits and bobs well under control and your GoPro well protected.

Review: Ulanzi G9-5 Metal Cage for GoPro 9 and GoPro 10
The GoPro Hero 10 mounted in the cage and on a gorilla tripod ready for vlogging!

Conclusion

I really like this little no-nonsense product. It does exactly what I had expected it to. It protects the GoPro well, it gives access to vital buttons and contacts and it keeps track of the additional items that I need for sound and light. And then it enables you to mount filters in front of the lens and put the GoPro on a tripod out of the box.

The only problems that I see with this product is that it partly blocks the view to the front for LCD for vloggers that need to frame what they shoot while in front of the camera. And then the cage is not water or dust proof when you want to have access to the USB-C connector like me. But in all fairness, this is more due to GoPro that insist both an adapter and a connector is necessary to get the sound into the GoPro.

Price wise I find this product to be a bit on the steep side, but it is very well made and keeps a much more valuable product well protected. So I guess it is ok, but a bargain it is certainly not.

Shopping link

Buy the cage on Amazon here.

Related reading

Røde Wireless Go review

XTAR Camera Battery Charger Review

 

Review: Photo Icons, 50 landmark photographs and their stories, by Hans-Michael Koetzle

400+ pages of iconic images

The title of the book as per the headline is a very precise description of what this book is all about. It “puts some of the most important photographic landmarks under the microscope” as it says on the cover. And very much so.

Photo icons, 50 landmark photographs and their stories, by Hans-Michael Koetzle.

The 50 images are presented and analyzed over the 400+ pages of the book, giving an average of 4 pages per iconic photograph. Enough to cover the basics and tell the story around each picture.

The table of content has an excellent overview with each picture in icon size and annotated with the relevant year and page to look up. The 50 images range from year 1827 to 2001. So you can quickly dive into the images of interest (I doubt you will read the book from front to back unless you are equally interested in each image).

Photographer Peter Leibings picture “Leap to Freedom” from 1961, just after the wall between East and West Berlin was in effect.

As I “cherry picked” the images of most interest, I have not read every single page in the book, but many of them, and I really enjoyed the “behind the scenes” view that you get to each image: What was the story, the photographer, what was going on in the world at the time the shot was taken, was it staged or candid, etc. Hans-Michael Koetzle really packs a lot of information into very few pages for each picture – it is a condensed read, but certainly worth the while.

So as a photographer it is not a book that will make you wiser in terms of photo technique (f/11 vs f/5.6), but it really documents how a photograph – even with all the videos and movies available today – can be powerful and influence what we remember and how we see history. And as such it for me adds a layer to my motivation to shoot the best pictures I possibly can.

Related reading

Understanding a photograph by John Berger

Nikon Z6ii: Focus shift shooting for landscapes

Vary the focus

Focus shift shooting is not a new thing as such, but the automation of it is new to me, owning primarily DSLRs like the Nikon D4, D750 and D700. The Nikon Z6ii offers an automation of a series of shots where the focus is shifted a little bit for each – moving from near to far. When you do focus shift shooting, the Z6ii will produce a series of images to be merged in post processing.

It is a precondition that the camera is able to control the focus of the lens, so manual focus lenses of course cannot be used when shooting focus shift. As the Nikon ML cameras do not have mechanical AF motors built into them (nor does the FTZ adapter), this means that AF and AF-D lenses do not work, nor does AI and AIS lenses unfortunately.

Focus shift shooting enables you to have images where the depth of field is indefinite, as you in post processing combine the images into one image, picking the sharpest part from each. The only “price” you have to pay is that the shots need to be taken from the same viewpoint and angle (using a tripod) and that you cannot have any moving parts in the frame while the shots are taken. But both these are easy to fulfill as a landscape photographer.

Another thing to be aware of is the lens and if it suffers from focus breathing. If that is the case, then the images will be very difficult to merge in post processing, as you involuntarily will be zooming during the shots. Merging images with different angles of view is mission impossible. So make sure to use a lens that does not have focus breathing.

Best results are achieved shooting where the lens is the sharpest, typically around f/8 or f/5.6 – avoid very open apertures (e.g. f/1.8) and very closed apertures (e.g. f/22) as your lens most likely is not the sharpest in these extremes. Use a “middle of the road” aperture, where you know your lens is sharp.

Configuration

To initiate the shooting, you first have to find the “focus shift shooting” menu in the “photo shooting menu”. It is the second last item in a long list that spans across several pages.

focus shift shooting menu
You find the focus shift shooting menu item in the photo shooting menu, second last item.

After selecting that one, the “focus shift shooting” menu appears. When you hit “start” (highlighted in yellow below) the camera starts shooting a series of images according to the parameters set below.

focus shift shooting menu
The focus shift shooting menu from the Nikon Z6ii, but I believe it is very similar to the Z7.

The menu above looks a bit long and intimidating at first, but don’t worry, it is relatively few parameters you will be changing after the initial setup.

The number of focus shots can be set to a very high value, like 100. The camera stops shooting new images when it reaches infinity, so for landscapes you cannot really set this value too high. I think the large possible number here is intended for macro photography. In my experience 5-6 images are more than plenty for a landscape shot.

The focus step width is not very well documented in the Nikon manual, but it has to do with how large steps the camera takes between shots. Values range from 1 to 10. You have to give  it a try here. I have set mine to 5 and it works fine. In my experience, the chosen aperture has more influence on the number of shots than this parameter.

The interval to next shot is intended to give flashes time to recycle power and for landscapes I do not use flashes, so it is set to 0″ in my case.

The first frame exposure lock is important to have switched on. It secures that the exposure values are not changed throughout the shots. Provided that there are no changes in ambient light during the series, you should get consistent exposure results across the images in a series. You can of course fix this in post processing if you really know your software, but IMHO it is much easier to get right in camera.

The silent photography is switched on in my case. I like that I can hear what the camera is doing when it shoots the series. This tells me how many images are there and when the shooting is done. It is of course a matter of personal preference, so entirely up to you. But the camera is not very informative when it is done shooting, so I like to have some sound to relate to.

The starting storage folder can be handy for separating the images from others, as you will be generating quite a lot of images.

Shooting

Be fore you give the camera green lights to shoot a series, it is important that you initially have focused on the closest part that you want to be sharp in the frame. So if you have a stone or the like in the foreground that you want to be sharp, make sure to focus here before initiating the shot. Once the shot is done, the camera leaves the focus to infinity.

Other than keeping the camera still using a tripod, shooting at a middle aperture and selecting a scene with no moving parts, there is actually not much more to it than that. Only remember to focus near every time before the first shot. And then pray that the ambient light stays constant throughout the series.

Post processing

The first time I read about focus shift shooting, I was hoping that it would also do the post processing in camera, just like your smartphone effortlessly merges several images together when you instruct it to shoot HDR. Unfortunately that is not the case – we “only” get a series of images and have to do the post processing ourselves.

If you open the images as layers in Photoshop, the process is not complicated at all: first ask photoshop to align the images, then ask photoshop to merge the images and finally you may want to crop the image a bit as the edges may look funny after the alignment is done. You find the items you need in the edit menu. The first item is named Auto-Align layers… and the second one is named Auto-Blend images. When you select these a menu appears in both cases – I just say OK to the default values.

Lightroom processing
Here the 2 images in the top of the series have been taken out, and you can see how Photoshop via masks join the images into one. The two images removed (no “eye” bottom right) are the ones focusing on the near part in the picture.

I recently shot a scene with a icicle in the foreground and a path in the woods leading to some trees in the background. When merging the series of images in Photoshop, you can see that photoshop uses masks to select the sharp parts from each image – black conceals, white reveals. In the example above I have deselected the two images that deliver the part closest to the camera (the white part).

Lightroom processing
The image is sharp from the icicle in the foreground to the tree in the background. Bottom right you can see that Photoshop via masks has merged 6 pictures together to one.

So if you have managed to keep the camera still etc., the resulting image should be one with what appears to be infinite depth of field. Everything in the frame is sharp, from front to back.

If you like this kind of shooting is of course entirely up to you. Some think it looks a bit artificial, and prefer that sharpness is a function of the aperture and a single focus point. I have added it to my toolbox as an option that I sometimes use subject to – well – the subject. It is all up to you!

Video link

Related reading

Nikon Z6ii – How to work with manual exposure

Nikon Z6ii – any need for the Preview button?

Review: Røde Wireless Go

Easy to use

It is seldom that I praise a product for being easy to use. Somehow, when everybody tells me a product is easy to use, I manage to find the wrong way to go about things, and a well designed easy to use product suddenly becomes complicated. Not so with the Røde wireless go. It is just plug and play – no need to pray!

Røde Wireless Go review
The essentials: A sender, a receiver, two dead cats and a connector cable from receiver to camera (red).

It consists of a sender unit, a receiver unit and a cable to go between the receiver and the camera. In addition there are two “dead cats” to mount on top of the sender, to reduce noise from wind and the like. The sound is then wirelessly transmitted in real time from the sender (with the mike) to the receiver. No cable to be tangled up with or other cumbersome things. A simple solution to getting the sound from a microphone in front of the camera, to the camera’s mike input connector.

Røde Wireless Go review
Here the red connector is applied between camera and Røde receiver. The receiver fits into the hot shoe of the camera. On my Sony A7Rii the receiver is not visually dominating at all.

The tin promises that this is an ultra compact wireless solution with digital transmission and a built in microphone. All this is true. The marketing department did not exaggerate at all.

Røde Wireless Go review
The tin promises digital transmission, built in microphone and a ultra-compact wireless setup. I tend to agree….

To activate the system, you hold in the button marked “ø” for a few seconds, and the units turn on. The sender and receiver connected the first time I turned them on. No need to pair them or the like. Brilliant!

Røde Wireless Go review
A microphone is built in. It does a good job, but if you want a more discrete microphone, use a small cabled microphone and hide the receiver in a pocket. The connector is left to the microphone on the right hand unit. The units measures approx. 4,3cm x 4,3cm x 1,3cm and seem really small.

The sender has a built in microphone, but I prefer not to use this one. The sound is great, but it requires that you have the unit close to the one speaking and hence very visible. The unit is small, but not very discrete when recording a video close up!

The DB button changes mike sensitivity. Toggle between high, medium and low. I always use medium.

You can regulate the sound level hitting the “dB” button. It circles between high, medium and low. I have only used the medium setting – it works fine and further adjustments can be made in post to fit your needs.

Røde Wireless Go review
The receiver has a battery indicator display for both the sender and the receiver. The green bar in the middle is the sound level. Triangle bottom left shows the mike sensitivity and bottom right is the strength of the wireless communication.

The receiver unit has battery indicators for both the sender and the receiver, so there is no display on the sender. I seldom record for more than an hour at a time, and for my needs there has always been plenty of battery power on both sender and receiver, so for my needs battery power is more than sufficient.

Røde Wireless Go review
If you care to download the user guide (PDF) from the Røde homepage, you will find that it is short and informative. Here the description of buttons and display on the receiver unit. Credit: Røde.

Two blue diodes on the sender indicate if the sender is connected to the receiver and if it has sufficient battery. If you need more details, you need to consult the receiver.

In terms of connectivity I have not stress tested the connection, but recording a video recently where I was out and about with perhaps 10 meters distance between sender and receiver, I experienced no issues with the connectivity. Clear and crisp sound all the way with no dropouts or similar issues. It just works.

Røde Wireless Go review
If you have a microphone with a TRRS connector (4 rings), it will not work with the sender. You need an adapter to take you from TRRS to TRS (3 rings).

The only thing that may be a bit tricky is the connector when you want to use your own microphone. The Røde Go system requires a TRS connector, and your microphone may have a TRRS connector. In that case, you need an adapter as shown in the image above. So count the number of rings on your connector, and if it is 4, then make sure to get an adapter when you order your copy of the Røde Go.

Røde Wireless Go review
Both sender and receiver charge via USB-C. Brilliant!

A final thing that I want to bring up is the fact that both units charge via USB-C. I cannot underline the importance of industry standards and USB-C is exactly such one. I am so glad the Wireless Go comes with no chargers at all! Wonderful! If you knew how many chargers I have on stock for my cameras and flashes…. I welcome USB-C so very much. And of course also the USB to USB-C cables that came along with the Wireless Go system.

Conclusion

If you want a simple cable-free solution to transmit sound from a microphone in front of your camera to your cameras input port, this is a really easy to use and stable solution for exactly that need. Just make sure you have an adapter if your microphone has a TRRS connector.

The solution reviewed here is not applicable if you want to record an interview or other situations where several channels need to be recorded in parallel. I believe Røde also has a more advanced solution for such situations, but that is not the product reviewed here.

I have used this solution for my YouTube videos and for my needs (walking and talking in front of a camera), this solution fits my needs spot on. It is simple to use, stable and with good connectivity. Exactly what I need, for less than 100 EUR. Highly recommended.

Related reading

XTAR Camera Battery Charger Review

COLBOR CL100 Video light review

Review: Wild and Fearless by Uri Løvevild Golman

What a life!

When I started reading this book, my immediate reaction was: what a life this guy has had! And my next was: hmm, is my life a little boring perhaps?

The first 2/3rds of the book is a super entertaining and seemingly endless stream of adventures, beautiful women, new friendships, more adventures, great food and lots of alcohol! We follow Uri as he describes his life as a ski bum, bartender, a soldier in the Israeli army and travel adventurer.

Wild and Fearless by Uri Løvevild Golman – the epic life story of a National Geographic photographer

About 2/3rds the focus shifts towards Uri’s career as a wildlife photographer and how he and Helle (2nd wife) finally makes it as National Geographic Photographers. The adventures continues, but with Helle and photography in the center.

I must admit that I bought the book to see if I would be able to look over the shoulders of one of the greatest wildlife photographers of all times, but I was in that sense a bit disappointed. There is no description of f/8 versus f/11 or how Uri learned to photograph. Only his photography mentors are briefly mentioned. However, you do get to understand how much hard work there is in wildlife photography – one example is hiking 3 weeks in icy mountains only to come home with zero images of the snow leopard!

But I got something else: I got insight into a man with a mentality that very few posses.  At age 42 he was attacked and stabbed to a degree where most of us would have given up, and he was dead for several minutes before being revived. The attack left him injured with permanent disabilities as his brain was deprived oxygen for several minutes. He says towards the end of the book: “I have finally come to terms with the truth: I will never be able to walk freely again; no more hiking under the stars in the tundra or the forest. Nor will I be able to work my camera”. However, he refuses to take the role as a victim and he does not show any signs of feeling sorry for himself.

It is Uri’s hope that the book will give others inspiration to follow their hearts and dreams. Speaking for myself, I can say: mission accomplished.

I give this book my highest recommendations.

Related reading

WILD! What you love you will protect, by Helle and Uri Løvevild Golman

Nikon FTZ adapter: Is it waterproof?

When it rains, it pours…

The other day I was out shooting, a happy camper that did not consult the weather forecast. I paid the price for my ignorance, and was soon caught in a heavy downpour in January. The problem with January in Denmark in combination with rain is that there are no leaves on the trees, and hence nowhere to seek shelter.

The Nikon FTZ adapter
I hope you can see here how heavy the rain came down. This is actually a quiet lake on a windless day, but the hard rain makes all the difference!

Towards the end of the shoot I arrived at a big lake where the rain came down as if I had stepped into my morning shower wearing all my clothes! I was wearing proper clothing for the weather fortunately, but my camera gave up just when I was about to take a shot of the dramatic lake.

The Nikon FTZ adapter
As you can see in the surface of the lake, the rain was pouring down. This was shot on my iPhone, as my camera had stopped working.

Lucky for me, I was able to use my iPhone to take a shot. The iPhone was difficult to operate because there was so much water on the screen that the phone had difficulties figuring out what was rain and what was my fingers trying to give instructions! But I succeeded as you can see above. I am still today really annoyed that I was not able to take shots with the Nikon Z6ii that I had brought along with the Nikon AF-S 70-200mm VRii. But the camera had stopped working and the iPhone image is all I got.

The Nikon FTZ adapter
This is the error message I got from the camera. I figured that the camera and the lens did not communicate well anymore, as there was water shortcutting the CPU contacts, so I turned off the camera and walked home.

If you remember mounting a lens on a DSLR without setting the aperture locked at the minimum value (say f/32), then you probably also know the “FE” error, where the camera tells you that you need to change the aperture on the lens. This is exactly the message I got in the top LCD, and a more elaborate version in the rear LCD. The camera had stopped working, and there was nothing I could do out in the rain. It was clear to me that the CPU contacts had been short-circuited by rain getting into the camera somehow.

The Nikon FTZ adapter
The water got in between the F-mount lens and the FTZ adapter. Here traces of water where it should not be – in the FTZ adapter. After drying the adapter for a few hours, the problem was solved.

Arriving at home I could get the Nikon Z6ii to work with a S-series lens, so the camera was fine. And I could get the Nikon AF-S 70-200mm VRii to work with my Nikon D4. So the problem was isolated to the FTZ adapter. And I found water inside the FTZ adapter, that should not be there, so no wonder the camera could not talk properly to the lens.

After drying the FTZ adapter for a few hours it all started to work again and I was very relieved. I would have been sorry to see my almost brand new Nikon Z6ii being damaged for obvious reasons, and also I would have hated my beloved Nikon AF-S 70-200mm VRii lens to stop working. I could have accepted the FTZ adapter to be damaged, but was so lucky that also this one got back in operation.

My solution to all this is to get a rain cover for the camera. They come in different sizes and price ranges, but I am sure they would have saved me for the watery experience. I know that both lens and camera are waterproof, but going forward I prefer to be better safe than sorry, and will bring a rain cover for eventualities.

Video link

Related reading

Nikon FTZ adapter – when is it relevant?

Nikon Z6ii vs Z6 – Which one for you?

Nikon FTZ adapter: When is it relevant?

The go-between solution

When Nikon launched their mirrorless camera series, they did so introducing a new lens mount called the Z-mount. It was a brand new design with a larger diameter than the classic F-mount and also it had a much shorter flange distance, both – according to Nikon – to improve image quality.

The new Nikon Z-mount is only compatible with a brand new line of lenses, known as the Z-mount lenses or S-lenses. These lenses fit directly to the Z-mount. As all the S-lenses have motors built into them, there is no need for a focus motor in the mirrorless camera bodies.

In order to give some backward compatibility with all the good glass made from the middle of the former century and still being made today, Nikon decided to market an adapter, the so called FTZ adapter, or the F-mount to Z-mount adapter. It was probably also because the amount of glass available to the Z-mount was very limited when the ML series was new, so many focal lengths were simply not available for the Z-mount previously.

Nikon FTZ adapter
The back of the FTZ adapter shown to the left. This side faces the Nikon mirrorless camera when mounted.

The FTZ-adapter allows you to shoot with all the glass that is made for the F-mount, as the adapter takes F-mount glass on the front and fits to the Z-mount on the back. The only downside of this adapter, other than the price of it and that is slows down AF speed a little bit, is that it has no focus motor built into it. All the glass with mechanical auto focus is dependent upon a motor in the camera body, and hence you are left with manual focus for these lenses. AF-S glass with the motor built into the lens of course auto focuses as it should, but many will probably hold on to their DSLRs to maintain auto focus for AF and AF-D glass.

Nikon FTZ adapter
The Nikon FTZ adapter sits between the F-mount lens and the camera body.

Many have speculated that Nikon would produce a FTZ-adapter with a motor built into it, but I doubt it will happen. Nikon did produce a FTZ adapter version 2, but this one is specifically designed for the Z9 camera body, and still has no motor built into it.

Nikon FTZ adapter
The classic 50 mm f/1.2 mounted on the FTZ adapter mounted on the Nikon Z6ii.

So my best guess – and it is a guess – is that we will not see mechanical auto focus motors in the FTZ-adapter. I think Nikon finds that you have lots of aid in focusing manually in the ML system, if you insist to use vintage glass with the mirrorless cameras.

So the FTZ-adapter is relevant if you have F-mount glass that you love and want to hold on to, and at the same time want to upgrade to a mirrorless camera body. Other than giving you the benefits of a mirrorless camera relative to a DSLR, it also opens up a new (and expensive) world of S-series glass that in most cases have got excellent reviews for stunning results.

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