Camera autofocus is always the hottest topic among reviewers and a major user concern.
With the Nikon Z8, one thing I wanted to look at was how well it focuses at night shooting street photography. Is it better? Is it good? Is it worth it? How is it with false positives?
In my efforts to create some content on the Internet with the Nikon Z8 on a topic other than bird photography, I took the camera out for a night in the city of Fukuoka with the Nikon Z 85mm f1.8 to shoot in some challenging conditions. Here is what shooting street photography is like on the Nikon Z8, with regards to autofocus.
Nikon Z8 – Amazon / Adorama / B&H

Nikon Z8 Autofocus – The Major Improvements
Coming from the Z6, or even the Sony A7rIII, which I shot quite a bit with, one of the most significant differences I’ve noticed is how far away the camera will pick up subjects and track their faces; it’s really quite remarkable. The camera’s ability to maintain this tracking is also really impressive, even in dark conditions.
That would be the biggest improvement over the Z6 and Z7 is how well tracking works in lower light conditions and on very dark subjects.
I do want to point out that the Canon R5 and R6 also did this well, but the distance at which it would pick up a face and track it was not to the level we’re seeing with the Nikon Z8. On the Canon R5, I would use more of the standard tracking box rather than letting the camera find a face to track on its own, and here it performed very well.
While all of this is impressive and fun, in some situations, I would call it game-changing, and in others, I would say it is not the silver bullet you would expect.

Here is why –
When it’s game-changing – is when you’re trying to track a difficult subject in low light. I was skeptical about the original Nikon marketing presentation with the ability to focus in low light, but it is impressive.
It’s still not perfect, and the camera still naturally likes to stick to the background, but it’s still surprisingly good although you do have to help it out from time to time. Where it would struggle here is if the background is much brighter or has better contrast and detail than the foreground. So it still sometimes gets confused by silhouettes.
When it doesn’t matter – This might be somewhat controversial, but with all these modern AF changes, it doesn’t feel like the actual AF mechanism is faster or better than what we had a few years ago. It could be the lens communication and focusing causing the bottleneck, but the limitations have not seemed to change much here.
Shooting with an 85mm f1.8 lens at f1.8 will still challenge the camera if the subject is moving around a lot of if they are moving towards you at a close distance. So on those longer lenses, I still like to stop down to around f2 or so, unless the subject is fairly static.
The camera’s improvements mostly come from improved tracking, distance of tracking, and low-light tracking. In well-lit situations and photographing subjects in a space with a fairly deep depth of field, it doesn’t really matter.
For example, if you’re just shooting with a zone box and no tracking with no eye or face detection, I’m just not seeing a huge difference in performance compared to my Z6. It doesn’t make that huge of a difference; this is how I shoot a lot. The reason is that sometimes, with wider lenses, like the Nikon 26mm f2.8 or the 28mm f2.8, you just have to turn off face and eye detection when shooting street photography because of all the false positives or because the camera looks at the wrong subject.
False positives with face and eye or vehicle detection is still a huge problem with all these modern cameras when shooting out on the streets, especially with wide-angle lenses.
When I was shooting on the Nikon 26mm f2.8 I could not shoot in all areas AF and really had to limit the size of the zone box where face detection would engage and I also had to set it to people only, otherwise, I would just get a ton of false positive all the time in the city.
False positives have always been a problem with all of these cameras which is why I almost always turn off face and eye detection when shooting street photography with most camera brands. So I would say, you really can’t shoot all area AF and have to limit your zone box size, especially if you’re on wide-angle lenses. Fortunately, we can now customize the size of the zone box.
On longer lenses, this isn’t really as much of an issue since the image is more compressed.

How I’ve Set My Autofocus
When shooting with any sort of object tracking on any of these cameras, one thing I really like about the Nikon Z8 over any other brand of camera is how quickly you can change between the different focus modes. Do you want a zone box? Push a Function button, and it instantly switches.
With Fujifilm, Sony, and Canon, changing between the different focus modes usually prompts a menu where you have to select the different focus modes physically. On Canon, you could press a button and cycle a wheel, but it was never as intuitive as the Nikon system (as far as I know, anyway; this could have changed recently). This honestly is one of the biggest reasons why Nikon has been my system of choice, besides the Z mount being the best mount for adapting lenses.

So far, I’ve set up my Z8 controls to be a little different from my Z6.
Fn1 – I’ve set my Fn1 button as the old-school DSLR tracker box. So, at any given time, I can push this button, and all object tracking turns off, breaking the camera out of any false positives or allowing me to focus on something specific. For example, if a kid is playing with a toy, maybe you want the toy in focus instead of the kid’s eye.
Fn2 – I usually have Fn2 set as a custom-sized zone box. These days, when just shooting around-the-house lifestyle photography with family and friends, I leave the camera set as default with the all-area AF. Still, when I need to get specific with a subject or area, I can push Fn2 to pull up the box to limit the zone the camera looks at.
Alternatively, I’m thinking of flipping it, setting the default shooting method as a Zone box, and pushing Fn2 for the all-area AF. It doesn’t matter too much because it’s very quick to cycle between the focus modes when pushing the dedicated focus button on the bottom left of the camera and then using one of the function wheels to change the settings.
This is all slightly different from how I shot on the Z6, where I needed one of the function buttons to work as the AF control toggle. Also, the Z6 tracking wasn’t as good, so it wasn’t a feature I wanted to use all the time, so I set tracking to be Fn1 on that camera, and Fn2 was my dedicated AF control button.
Nikon Z8 Street Photography Autofocus – Conclusions
While the Nikon Z8’s autofocus system is now very advanced, it still can’t read your mind, and you’ll still need to learn to set the camera up a little to maximize its usefulness. You still need to learn the limitations and work with them, and once that’s done, the camera is pretty incredible and a ton of fun.
For those who don’t really want to work, I have some great news: There’s now this thing called Midjourney.








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Really loving my Z9 and yes the weight is “starting” to matter . Wel especially after shooting with my Sony a7siii’s . I’ve been a Nikon guy forever but the difference in dialing in for the photos and the weight , Sony wins . The Sony’s seems happy and eager to work the Nikon Z9 is much slower to use . I’m learning to use it . The Z9 just feels like I could drop it and Kick it around. I’m digging the Sony speed BUT THEE Aony
Yeah, Sony’s are still very fun for street shooting. My only issue compared to Nikon is it’s harder to switch between different focus modes quickly.
Top quality images and blog Alik. And great colour in your edits.
Thanks Les!
Thanks for doing this Alik.
You make reviews from very interesting aspects. I really like it, that what I enjoy to read. Thanks!
“AF for other than bird photography”. Haha. But I do agree that your photos are far more interesting. I didn’t know that so many men were interested in feathered birds before I started following cameras. Thank you for your articles on the Z8 for other than raptors.
I am an Z6ii owner who is still trying to find a way to work its AF modes in street photography. Coming from DSLR works where I used 3d tracking to catch the subject and recompose while still tracking it, I felt that anything that I found on Z6ii was inferior. So naturally when Z8 appeared, I started considering it, but damn Z8 is so much bigger and getting closer to D850 format again. Thanks a lot for this blog, you inspired me to keep trying even more rather than throwing money in a hope of finding “a better camera” :))) and also thanks for all the great photos!
I think you just need to learn the new AF system
Hi Alik, my dilemma is to upgrade from the Z 7ii to the Z 8 or not. I’m not going elsewhere.
With these mirrorless cameras, we may know at what LV they still can focus (Z f: LV -10, Z 8: LV -9). At that amount of light the camera can no linger make normal photos or measure light. But it can focus on what we point it to – using the AF system in the camera.
What I call “recognition AI AF” relies on a form of computer vision (a branch of AI) and needs more light as it relies on the normal photosites in the sensor too.
Then the question is at what level recognition AI AF becomes unreliable.
In my studio, I keep ambient light at about LV 6 or 7 and at that my Z 7ii becomes unreliable. This is to have pupils moderately dilated but not too much (where the color of the iris would disappear, almost).
Your shots in this blog are ballpark between LV 5.2 and 10.
As you “complain” about the keeper rate with recognition AI AF, the question for me is at what LV light level falsely focused shots start popping up.
It seems that the AI plays an important role here and the EXPEED 7 would be able to run more complex, sophisticated, algorithms against richer shape databases.
The people in your shots here all seem in Japan and all seem Japanese or Asian to me – that means they have black eye lashes and dark brown hair, and also their black hair contrasts with their face.
My local bland blue-eyed blonde is less contrasty and this may make matters worse for me, c.q. my Z 7ii. I shoot “S” class primes only and may use the 105/2.8S macro lens for portraits too.
I don’t shoot fully opened, generally, (a) because I want some depth of field in a portrait still, and (b) it seemed the Z 7(ii) has its aperture at about f/5.6 when it focuses (likely the DoF makes finding the subject easier with less hunting). I must admit I never checked with the latest firmware if it still does that.
Your experience?
LV = EV @ ISO 100
Quickly testing with my f2.8 and f1.8 lenses I do not see the aperture close to f5.6 when trying to focus. I do see that on some other cameras though. Maybe if I used a faster lens it would.
I’m curious to see how the Z9 firmware is different, it’s supposed to come to the z8 eventually and is supposed to have some extra improvements.
I’ve never considered using a zone box but especially with an ultrawide in low light, I find that it almost feels like the camera’s processor is overloaded and everything just slows to a crawl.
How do you go about choosing the size of this done box? I imagine it is different depending the lens you use and what you’re shooting, but what are the variables you’re considering here?
It depends on how the camera is behaving, but it’s pretty easy to customize the size now on the fly. Sometimes I use just horizontal and thin. But eye and face AF generally don’t work well with wide lenses because of too many false positives or other people detecting you don’t want, so I often turn those off. I always also have my Fn1 button on my index finger set to Dynamic Area AF (M) so I can immediately just click it to that for a more defined direction.
As a fellow Z8 owner, nice to see someone else using it for things other than birds, lol.
haha It’s nice to see Nikon actually getting picked more by the younger crowd as well. The Zf is getting popular with street travel shooters.