Strange behavior

[PerVindis]

I have taken a lot of macro photos earlier where I use a tripod and the subject is on a horizontal surface.
I have photographed in wide format and the photo has entered in wide format on the Mac via Helicon Remote.
Now the photo suddenly is in portrait format and as soon as I move the camera away from horizontal position and take photo, it is in wide format again.

Z9 and iMac M1
A friend with Z9 has the same problem.

I have tested with Z6 - No problem!

I have added 3 photos of the situation.
Photo 4-6 shows when camera is vertical and wide format. 4 is the setup, 5 is how Z9 sees it, 6 is how LR or Helicon Remote sees it.

[Catherine]

When the camera is pointing down its orientation sensor is confused since it's neither portrait nor landscape orientation of the camera. Turn off auto-rotation in the camera menu (I'm not sure about the exact name of this option, but it's there).

[shutterbug]

In some cameras you can't turn off the orientation - in that case you can use certain tools (like Exiftool) to set the orientation of the RAW-files to "0".

[PerVindis]

Nothing happens when I tirn off the auto-rotation.

If I do the same in Lightroom Classic Tethering Shooting the image changes rotation.

Per

[Catherine]

Where did you turn it off? It's a setting in the camera body to prevent it from rotating photos randomly. As for the photos that you already shot before turning it off, you'll have to use one of the batch image rotation tools to fix them (Lightroom probably also has a way to do that).

[PerVindis]

Tks for your answer.

On Nikon Z9 I turn it off in Play Back Menu - Auto Image rotation.

[Catherine]

There are two settings, "Auto-rotate pictures" and "Auto Image Rotation", one is only for display and the other affects the actual image files (that's what you need). From the description it's a bit unclear which one is which, so try both.
https://onlinemanual.nikonimglib.com/z9 ... n_383.html

If you don't see both options, update your firmware.

Check by shooting one photo in landscape and one in portrait, and view them on a computer.

[BernardPicton]

I can confirm that there is a strange problem with Nikon Z8 used horizontally. If the camera is on a copy stand, using Helicon Focus, the display flickers quickly and randomly between landscape and portrait and this makes it almost unusable. Tilting the copy stand forward by a few degrees (book under back) stops this behaviour. The same applies if the camera is mounted on a microscope.

This is regardless of whether Auto-rotate pictures or Auto image rotation are on or off. There is a third setting, in the setup menu, Auto rotate info display, but again it has no effect on this behaviour. I thought perhaps it was a bug in the Nikon firmware which fails to read the state of Auto image rotation when outputting to an external monitor (tethered computer). However when tethered to Lightroom (14.2) this behaviour is not manifested, only with Helicon focus.

Auto-rotate pictures [ON] - Display menu - Pictures are shown in correct orientation on camera monitor after capture.
Auto image rotation [ON] - Display menu - Pictures are always shown landscape on the camera monitor, but display as landscape or portrait in editing software.
Auto rotate info display - Setup menu - Info on monitor or in viewfinder is orientated correctly when camera is held in portrait or landscape position.
Note that none of these settings apply logically to the orientation of the image being sent as a preview. The camera is clearly sending a signal which is flicking from landscape to portrait, but Adobe seem to have defeated this in Lightroom.

Hoping this can be resolved!

Bernard

[Catherine]

When tethered to Lightroom, do the actual photos all have the same orientation, and not just the live image? You can turn off auto-rotation in the Helicon Remote settings, that will "fix" the display, but your actual images generated by the camera will still have random orientation, as long as the camera still writes that data into EXIF and your viewing/editing software respects the EXIF rotation.

Do you have the latest firmware installed in the camera (v. 2.01), and is there an option "Recording rotation information" in the Playback menu?