Switched to Nikon - 9 months in

I took the plunge late in 2025, and swopped all my Fujifilm X series cameras and lenses for Nikon. I didn’t move due to any dissatisfaction with Fuji - far from it, I had been entirely happy with their gear for over 10 years.

But, as I was now shooting more wildlife photography than ever before, my options for telephoto lenses were quite limited. I had had good experience shooting wildlife using adapted Canon and Nikon lenses on my X-H2S with a Fringer adapter, but as I contemplated investing even more in long lenses, I felt this was not a sensible option going forward.

Long story short, I exchanged all my Fujifilm X gear for a Nikon Z9, and have since built out a lens collection that now looks like this:

  • Nikon Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S

  • Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 VR S

  • Nikon F 400mm f/2.8E FL VR & Nikon FTZ II

  • Nikon Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S

  • Tamron 70-180mm f/2.8 VC GXD V2

  • Irix Dragonfly 150mm f/2.8 Macro

  • Nikon Z 40mm f/2 SE

  • Irix Firefly 15mm f/2.4

  • Nikon Z 1.4x teleconverter

As you can see, the emphasis here is very much on the telephoto side, the budget 40mm is for the occasional ‘normal’ shot, and the 15mm a budget astro choice - something I would like to explore more.

I recently added a second body, the Nikon Z6 III with MB-N14 grip. This gives me a lighter camera without the grip for more casual use, but also exceptional low-light high ISO performance that gives me the ability to shoot almost into the dark with an f/2.8 lens using Starlight view and sometimes ‘warm’ viewfinder colours to preserve my night vision.

I chose Nikon more out of familiarity than any thing else - I was a Nikon shooter before I moved to Fujifilm over 10 years ago. It’s still taken me more than 6 months to get used to the system and refine my settings to achieve a level of performance and usability that I am now very happy with. Not to mention, there’s also been some firmware changes that have massively improved the Z9, which, I will admit, I was a little underwhelmed by at first.

For anyone new to Nikon, I would highly recommend Steve Perry’s YouTube channel, and especially this one on Nikon AF.