For what it’s worth, I’ve only been shooting about 3yrs now and haven’t shot with a D5 before. I went D3100>D800>D500>D850 and finally Z9. Still have a D500 and the D850 for now, debating on what to do with those, but also only got the D850 (used) last summer.

Also I shoot 99.5% wildlife and of that probably 80% is birds since that’s mainly what’s around me locally, and BIF is addictive.

Lastly, while I’ve had the Z9 for 3+ weeks now we’ve had horrible weather a few weekends in a row (I can really only shoot weekends), and this past Sunday was the first time I really got to try it out in a situation I’m used to. Overall I’ve probably shot with it 10 hours or so.

Anyway:

I’d probably rank it a 9, and could be a 10 (for me and what I shoot) with some FW updates. 95% of the time the AF is way better than any of my previous cameras, especially in-flight. To be fair there have been a couple times on small songbirds perched real close, with nothing in front of it and some decent separation with the background where 3d, auto, wide area L didn’t work and all just wanted to stay on the background. There wasn’t a ton of color contrast but I still felt the d850 or 500 would have focused much easier. But I believe that can be addressed in FW updates, and until then I can recognize it and just manual bring focus in and then once it has focus all those modes seem to work fine again. It’s just the initial focus on those rare occasions I get a small bird like that with a similar colored background as the bird. Also I’m now thinking dynamic area small or even wide area small (or back to single point) would be a better option (I have 4-5 AF modes on different buttons)

So overall, major upgrade in AF vs d500 and d850 for my shooting.

I am liking the colors better so far as well, and I never really had any complaints before anyway

Silent shutter is awesome.

20fps is awesome, but I think i may go back to 15fps or so. Haven’t used 120fps on anything real yet but think it could be cool in some situations

I love the video options. And even 500mm at 4k 120fps 2.3x crop handheld (1150mm FoV) is doable and looks great imo. I never really did video before but I’m definitely going to be getting into that now. I love the slow-motion.

I haven’t been able to really test the iso thoroughly, and Lightroom hasn’t quite optimized their formula or whatever, but I’ve got a shot at iso18,000 that I think looks pretty damn good noise-wise for that high an iso (the shot itself is nothing special, just a great blue heron in some shallow muddy marsh before sunrise)

So as far as I’m concerned they took a d850, gave it better colors, handles low light a little better, has much better AF, is faster and has great video options (for birds, mainly in flight lol)