The short answer: you’re not imagining it — the Nikon Z7II does accumulate “virtual” dial turns in P (Flexible Program) when you hit the end of the aperture/shutter range with Auto ISO active.* This is normal behavior for Nikon’s implementation, but it’s undeniably clunky and feels wrong in use.
Below is a clear explanation of why it happens, what’s going on internally, and what you can do to avoid or mitigate it.
🎯 Core takeaway
When Auto ISO is enabled, Program Shift stops updating once the camera hits a hard exposure boundary (minimum shutter speed, minimum ISO, maximum aperture, etc.). But the camera still counts your dial rotations, even though it can’t change the exposure triangle any further. So when you turn the dial back, you must “rewind” all those stored steps before the camera can resume changing aperture/shutter.
This behavior is confirmed in Nikon documentation and analysis of Flexible Program mode.
🧠Why Nikon behaves this way
1. Flexible Program (P\) is designed to track a “shift offset”*
Nikon’s P\* mode doesn’t directly rotate through aperture/shutter pairs. Instead, it maintains an internal shift index — a number representing how far you’ve shifted from the default program line.
When you hit a limit (e.g., max aperture), the camera can’t change exposure anymore, but the shift index continues to increment.
This is why the camera “remembers” how many clicks past the limit you turned.
2. Auto ISO creates hard walls
With Auto ISO active, Nikon imposes strict boundaries:
Minimum shutter speed (from Auto ISO settings)
Minimum ISO
Maximum aperture
Maximum shutter speed
Once the camera hits any of these, it refuses to change the other parameters to compensate — a behavior Nikon explicitly documents.
So P\* runs out of valid exposure combinations, but the shift index keeps moving.
3. Nikon does not “clip” the shift index at the ends
Some brands (e.g., Canon) clamp the shift so that turning past the limit does nothing and does not accumulate.
Nikon does not.
This is why you must unwind the dial to get back into the valid range.
🛠️ Is this a bug?
It’s not classified as a bug — Nikon considers it normal behavior for Flexible Program with Auto ISO. But many users consider it a usability flaw.
✔️ Practical ways to avoid the problem
1. Set a slower Auto ISO minimum shutter speed
This gives P\* more room before hitting the wall.
Try: Menu → Photo Shooting → ISO sensitivity settings → Minimum shutter speed
2. Disable Auto ISO when using P\*
With fixed ISO, P\* works exactly as expected and does not prematurely hit limits. Nikon documentation confirms this difference.
3. Use A or S mode instead
If you want:
Aperture control → A mode + Auto ISO
Shutter control → S mode + Auto ISO
These modes behave more predictably with Auto ISO.
4. Assign ISO to a dial and manually adjust ISO when needed
This avoids the P\* dead-end while keeping exposure flexible.
📌 Bottom line
You’ve correctly identified a real quirk of Nikon’s P\* implementation: the camera keeps counting dial turns even when it can’t change exposure, forcing you to unwind them later.
It’s not fixable in settings, but you can avoid it by adjusting Auto ISO behavior or using A/S modes when Auto ISO is essential.
If Program Shift behavior is important to you — especially avoiding Nikon’s “dial overshoot” problem — then:
Sony, Olympus, and Panasonic are the cleanest and least confusing.
Fuji is also clean, but Program Shift is less central to their design.
Nikon is the only major brand with the hidden shift-index behavior.
It’s a legacy of how Nikon DSLRs implemented P\*
