Incorporating video in fashion shoots with the Nikon Z9

Starting out in portraiture, the lure of fashion and the creativity it offered pulled Christian in that direction.

“The main difference with fashion and portraiture,” he says, “is that when you’re shooting fashion you are working with people who are used to being directed. When I was starting out and doing portraits I was a little shy. I would do a good portrait, with good lighting, but I was reticent to ask someone to, you know, go stand on that table, or put your head upside down or something. With fashion, I can bring my vision more and I think showing off a product in a creative and unconventional way suits me.”

Movement and lighting are key to Christian’s style, too, making him perfect to test the Nikon Z 9 in a studio environment. “I tested prototypes of the Nikon Z 9 and now it is amazing to be working with the production camera and using all those features that really make a difference,” he says. “The speed of the autofocus is incredible and I can shoot so fast with all the processing happening in the background. And the ISO is unbelievable.” For example, he adds, “I was just doing a studio shoot, which I was also filming, and using incredibly high ISO with no grain — so you’re able to work quite differently, with smaller lights, and to be more flexible, which is just fantastic.”

Having learned photography using film cameras, Christian was an early adopter of digital, as the technology improved, and then video, which demanded a whole new set of skills. “Video was a huge shift in some ways,” he says. “As a photographer you bring skills with you, like framing and lighting, but the thing that I think photographers sometimes struggle with for a while is the fact that the camera doesn’t have to stay in the same place — it’s supposed to move! And it’s very exciting when you have those transitions and camera moves, which make for stronger storytelling. Now I would say that nearly all my commissions are multimedia, with stills and video being an even 50/50.”

Using the Nikon Z 9 for filming had some real advantages for Christian. “Only last week, I was shooting a free runner and the eye detection is amazing,” he says. “He would be on a ledge and then duck down behind a wall before reappearing and doing this jump. And the Nikon Z 9 locked on to his eye before he ducked and was still locked when he jumped, so you don’t lose anything. The image stabilisation is unbelievable to watch, too. If you have image stabilisation on your lenses and you’re shooting hand-held it’s like having a gimbal. Another advantage relates to colour. On a shoot if you use different brands to shoot stills and video, you’ll see different colours from both cameras. There’s a clear advantage for me, since I’ve been using Nikon for years, in knowing that the look and feel is going to be a same. All of these features, and things like super battery life, save precious time on shoots, which means more time to actually create.”

With his use of movement, Christian often swaps between stills and video capture. “Often there are a few of us on big shoots, people that I work with a lot, sometimes shooting video and stills at the same time and sometimes me swapping between the two. It’s a funny one — with the 8K abilities of the Z 9 you can extract stills from the video and you really cannot tell the difference. I mean, you have to know what you’re doing,” he smiles, “but if you shoot it well the results are fantastic.”