After spending months thinking, pondering, and considering, I decided it was time to upgrade my camera. So, just a little over two weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and make the purchase. Ultimately, I didn’t just upgrade my camera from a DSLR to mirrorless; I completely changed camera systems from the Canon 5D Mk IV to the Nikon Z8. There were several reasons why I felt Nikon was a better fit for me, but I was still nervous about making that significant of a switch and whether it was the right decision to make.
I was excited to try out the new gear, but, as luck would have it, my work schedule prevented me from getting out as soon as I would have liked. I was finally able to get out last week, a week and a half after I made the purchase, and give everything a bit of a test drive. Sticking fairly close to home, I decided to make a trip to Collins Creek.
Checking the weather forecast the night before, an overcast day was expected, and that’s what I got. Sunrise occurred about 15 or 20 minutes before I arrived at the parking area, though I couldn’t tell it with all the heavy gray clouds overhead. I made my way to the creek and, in keeping with my effort to slow down and observe before I ever take my camera out, I sat down on one of the many rocks listening to the sound of the flowing water and noticing what was around me.
One of the first things I noticed was this waterfall. I’ve photographed this particular waterfall many times before, but it seems like it presents itself a little bit differently every time I visit. I positioned the camera so it was essentially level with the top of the larger foreground waterfall but angled to include the smaller background falls in the upper left to give a sense of depth to the scene. This, along with cropping in-camera to a 16:9 aspect ratio, served to eliminate the trees and brush in the background that I didn’t feel added anything to the composition.
Waterfall along Collins Creek, Arkansas, February 2025
Because the light was very flat, I ended up converting the image to black and white and processing it from there leading to what is my favorite image so far this year. But, the year is still young, so it doesn’t have a lot of competition, yet. I’ll see how it holds up over time.
As to how the new camera performed. . .well, it performed wonderfully. The sharpness of the images straight out of the camera was impressive, and the ability to handle noise was incredible. Just to see what would happen, I raised the ISO to 10,000. Even that high, the noise was incredibly managable. With my previous camera, an ISO above about 4,000 would begin to cause considerable degradation in image quality. So, thus far, I am very pleased with my decision.