If you follow my posts on Gab.com, you know I’ve been considering a new camera for quite a long time, to upgrade from my Nikon D610 DSLR. Initially, I thought I might buy a Nikon Z9, although it was quite expensive. When the rumors started about the Z8, I decided to hold off my decision a while. That prove to be a good idea.
On May 10, the Nikon Z8 was officially announced, and for most things important to me and my use case, it has the capabilities of a Z9 (an incredible camera), but costs around $1500 less. Plus, it’s quite a bit lighter. My old back will be able to appreciate that.
The Z8s are supposed to ship to the dealers at the end of the month. I wanted to make sure that I placed my order as early as possible to increase the probability of an early delivery. So my plan was to get online and place the order as soon as they were made available. (Z9s were on back order for many months, and the Z8 will likely sell more units than the Z9 did.)
The tricky part was that the official announcement would be at 8 AM and I had a dental appointment I had to leave for at 8:30 am.
I am happy to say that I managed to squeeze in the order for my Z8 between the 8 AM official announcement and my 8:30 AM time to leave for my dental appointment. Initially, on B&H the camera was available for preorder, but no specs were posted. Knowing that I could cancel the order if needed, I went ahead and ordered one anyway, along with a Nikon 70-200 mm f/2.8 lens and a couple of other things. (I already have a Nikon 100-400 Z lens).
Those two lenses will cover almost everything I will ever want to shoot, and if that changes I will take a look at other lenses.
The minutes after 8 AM were incredibly hectic for me. I decided to use PayPal for payment so that the money would leave my account right away and not stay in my checking account until the camera shipped. (I had moved money over from another account yesterday. I like to keep my checking account balance fairly low.) Initially, PayPal rejected my attempt to purchase the gear. It did that three times before I figured out what I was doing wrong. The sale did finally go through.
On any days that I have a medical appointment I reward myself with a fast food breakfast. That was going to be tricky today, because, by the time I was finished with my dental appointment, fast food-breakfast-ordering time would be over. So I placed an order to be delivered and put it on hold until 10 AM. I've never trusted that before and wasn't sure it was going to work out right. Plus, what happens if I get held up at the Dentist and my food is out there exposed to curious kids or hungry animals.
I managed to get the camera and food orders placed, then headed for my dental appointment. Just as I was about to pull into the parking area for the dentist office, I got a call from the Fraud Protection group from my bank. Driving while taking that call would’ve been quite dangerous for me; too many distractions in the heavy morning traffic. Fortunately, I was able to pull over and take the call and confirm that I had, in fact, spent a lot of money that morning.
The dental appointment was for a cleaning. The nice lady who does that cleaning was not in the same hurry I was in that morning. But when someone has sharp utensils in your mouth it's not a good idea to try to get them to speed up the process. The cleaning went well (as dental cleanings go, a bit uncomfortable at times), the dentist said my teeth looked good, but the receptionist wanted me to fill out a form to update my health status. I told her I didn't really have time. At this point, the food was supposed to be delivered to my home within about 10 or 15 minutes and I was 15 or 20 minutes away from home. We did a fast version of the form she showed me ... and I was out of there.
When I got home the food was in containers on the little table on my front porch, and not strewn all over the yard as I feared might be the case. The coffee was still hot. And the food tasted delicious. I spent most of the morning watching a bunch of videos about the Nikon Z8. It looks perfect for my use case.
I only have one question:
When am I gonna get my camera?
The best case scenario is to receive my Nikon Z8 sometime in June, perhaps even early June. Let’s not talk about worst case scenarios.