The new Nikon mirrorless cameras have been announced and with that comes all the opinions on who these cameras are for. Should professionals use these cameras?
In this video, Tony Northrup goes through the pros and cons of the newly announced Nikon mirrorless system. He is by far one of the best and non-biased on YouTube for comparing cameras. He compares the Z6 and Z7 to the original DSLR Nikon cameras, the D750 and D850, and the Sony a7R III and a7 III cameras
The pros of the new Nikon cameras will hopefully push Sony to improve on their system too. A mirrorless camera with the weather sealing of a D850 is a huge improvement to many landscape photographers. Let us hope Sony will do something about this in the future.
Nevertheless, as we say in Denmark, “The trees does not grow into the heavens.” Spec-wise the Nikon and Sony mirrorless cameras look very alike with only minor differences. The Z6 and Z7 are supposed to compete directly with the a7R III and a7 III. This is a bit of a disappointment to those who wanted something new.
Northrup even goes as far as to not recommending the Nikon mirrorless to professionals. As he stresses though, it is of course always up to the individual photographer to make the final judgment. Check out the comparison and preview video of the Z6 and Z7 above to hear why.
What are your thoughts on the pros and cons of the Nikon mirrorless system?
We all expect Nikon to compete with Sony's cameras and that means addressing professional photographers. Many pros use Sony and as a Nikon user I would have loved to see a mirrorless Nikon with all the features necessary to do a job. Two cards are a must!
I would also would have loved if they included the adapter for my lenses. Asking $150 for it? Really? Are they that desperate? All we have now are F mount lenses, it is obvious we all will need the adapter for the next few years.
It would have been smart to just pack it with the camera.
They could have done so if they'd increased the price by $150 but that might not seem fair to people who just want to buy one with one/some of the available Z lenses.
I don't care if they are pro or not. Z7 is 3400$ for that money I want dual card slots.
D750 has dual slots...
I use the memory slots extensively on the Sony, as I shoot weddings/ portraits and real estate so basically I set m1 for wide open natural light, m2 to flash portrait, m3 to bracketed photos real estate, and m4 for flash with a deep depth of field for real estate. Then I can transfer those to custom dial 1 and 2 depending on if I am shooting portraits or doing real estate, I also save those to my computers for each camera so that even if I format the card I can return all the settings back. I wish you could store all the memory internally but m1 thru 4 are stored on the card and are erased when formatting. But these are huge time savers. Helps us speed up or shooting flow day in day out.
I just adjust on location to the job at hand...
A 3500$+ camera is not a pro camera? lol
As a working pro shooting digitally almost every day since 2002 I have had only a few card failures. In every case it was a not more than two corrupt images on a card.
Never a total card failure.
I would note that the ONLY card failures were from Lexar and Sandisk. Two brands that most people seem to laud as the apex of media quality.
The likelihood of total card failure is remote and what is equally likely is write error that duplicates the error to both cards.
I also recall that none of my film cameras offered a slot for a second roll of film yet I was able to shoot entire weddings worrying only about assistants fogging film mis-loading or unloading film, or the lab ruining the entire batch of film. I also remember people worrying about getting a defective roll of film though I never encountered one in 20+ years of rolls and sheets.
Our gear is infinitely less likely to fail yet we whip ourselves into hysterical pronouncements about backup slots as if that is the likely point of failure when history tells us otherwise.
I Had a card failure. Completely gone, full shoot, was really
Important too.
When you shoot a roll of film it’s 12-36 images. It’s less likely that a lab is going to flog the whole batch but things would happen where a roll would get lost or ruined at the lab.
You can’t dismiss this dual card omission, it’s 2018, dual card slots have been around for many years, they could reality have fit an SD backup card in there.
In 35+ years of shooting I witnessed multiple roll losses at labs a number of times. I also encountered assistants that ruined full shoots.
Cars came with crank handles for years after electric starters became standard issue. Today we scarcely think of the possibility of a car not starting.
As for a complete card failure it seems you were shooting a really important shoot without the dual slot camera? And there was no warning during your shoot or in your chimping?
I have sent cards through the wash and dry cycles at laundromats and even broke one in half in the hinge of a Pelican case. In all cases I was able to recover the images.
So yeah, get a second slot camera if it makes you feel better. But remember that the entire camera is based on a completely electronic architecture that has basically no backup except another camera.
I had two San Disk extreme pros that were brand new fail, both in the same camera and even tho I had 4 cameras with different focal length lenses on, I was forced to mainly do all the shots on that one camera because it was the only one with a 24-70 mm and because of the mess around I was forced to shoot bridal prep between 55-70 mm range. One card failed outright, the other was corrupted so badly that it took 4 different military grade recovery software before I managed to get back 70% of the prep. Considering I was reviewing the photos all day for eye focus, it was completely unexpected there was no warning. It also is the only part of the day where we don't have 3 shooters working. I had to own up and tell my couple as they had everything still around to recreate that part of the day. Fortunately in the 28 th hour I managed to pull them back for the abyss, and this was with dual card slots. Since then I have purchased the Tamron 28-75mm to double up that focal length so it can never happen again. I actually considered not shooting weddings over it, even tho I love them, I get personally attached to my couples and to break that news to them is gut wrenching and heart breaking. It can destroy a career. Fortunately I work with great people, and they felt worse about how gutted I was. So even tho I do a weeks worth of equipment testing before a wedding event learn from my experience I wouldn't wish those issues on anyone. I have also instituted a back up system where my assistant will back up the bridal and groom preps right after they are shot, to a back up drive.
"and this was with dual card slots." So you had dual corrupted cards?
Sounds like a write error to both cards.
I am surprised by the single slot. For as much grief Sony took for having a single slot, one would have thought Nikon would have taken notice. I'll be curious if Canon has dual slots.
Nikon has never promoted these cameras as for professionals. At least in their advertising, professional is not even used.
https://youtu.be/BqYWixQECTY?t=21
LOOOOL... i feel so bad laughing because i started with the d3200. Anyways, cheers to u bro.
Yay for armchair engineer/economist fanboys.
The market is the ONLY arbiter of whether a product is overpriced.
It's pretty obvious these are enthusiast cameras, not pro cameras. Sony is not taking the world by storm with it's mirrorless pro camera either. The A7's are their bread and butter.
I would definitely not shoot without a dual-card slot. I also would never shoot pro work with an adapter no matter how great it is. The lack of AF assist for low light is also a big deal breaker for wedding work.
As for taking 21 mins to say all this, as you say in Denmark, han er en mega røvbanan! At least I think that's the right thing to say. It was in my travel guide.
Nikon pro cameras have round eye viewers, no PASM dial, and a remote socket in the front. These cameras have square eye viewers, a PASM dial, and no remote socket on the front just like the D750, D610, D7500, D7000...
I think we get your point by now (as you’ve posted this view multiple times). And that’s fine if it’s not a pro camera. It doesn’t have to be, and if you want to push that view as a way of letting Nikon off the hook, go ahead.
But if you let Nikon off the hook in that regard, you put them right back on the hook in two big ways:
1) All the hype and hoopla and totally missing the mark by not giving people the pro mirroless camera they wanted.
2) Pricing the camera like a pro camera.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Yes, pricing is huge for the Z7. The problem is that when they do come out with a pro version of the Z7, it going to be expensive. I do think that the Z7 was mispriced.
neither the Z7 nor the Z6 is priced like a "pro" camera... Nikons pro camera, the D5 are prized at 5-5500 USD, other pro grade cameras have price tags way higher.
I’m pretty sure Sony has the biggest full-frame market share in the USA, don’t they? So, I think they are at least somewhat taking the world by storm with their pro mirroless cameras . . .
They are with the A7 which is debatable whether or not it's a "pro" camera. I would say it's a prosumer camera and the A9 is the pro camera. Just like I wouldn't consider a nikon D750 or Canon 6D pro cameras. Those are the Nikon D850 and D5 or the Canon 5D and 1D variants.
Sony sold the most full frame cameras in the last year. That's different than having the biggest full frame market share. All due credit to them, the A7 filled a niche a lot of people wanted for the price. What they have though is a head start, not necessarily a superior product. Sony Alpha DSLR's were just average compared to other products available when they were introduced. They may well be just average again in a few years. I hope not, competition is a good thing.
I'm definitely not at any risk from Nikon to Sony for my digital work. I'm not a videographer. Sony's professional support is improving I'm told, but hear it's nowhere near Canon or Nikon.
I still prefer the battery life and handling of a DSLR. The average extra 200-250g of weight for DSLR's vs. Mirrorless is fine for me (D850 = 915g/1840 shots per charge vs. Sony A7 = 650g and gets 710 shots per charge).
This post just seems like a bunch of manoeuvring and posturing. I really don’t know what your definition of a “pro” camera is if you wouldn’t consider an A7R3 a pro camera. Several “pro’s” use it, and several “professionals” who make a living from photography such as myself use it as well. Honestly, I don’t think there is a real textbook definition of what constitutes a pro camera, but in your analysis, the D750 would most closely correspond to the A73, and the A73R/A9 to the D850/D5. Anyway, it’s kind of a pointless debate anyway. If you can get professional results with a D750 (which you can), I have no qualms with you calling it a pro camera (a camera that a professional might use).
There are consumer cars that go 0-60mpg in under five seconds, but they're still not considered race cars. That doesn't mean people don't go out and race them.
Why does the A7iii cost half the price of the A9 when their raw specs look very similar? It's difference in quality and refinement all the way down the line. It's the experience of interfacing with the camera when your job and your reputation is on the line.
A pro is when it matters when you blow a shot — when there are no redo’s. That’s what pro cameras are designed for. Which often means pro cameras aren’t the latest and greatest technology.
Not only card failures- but I shoot events where I hand off one of my cards to a runner to give to editors for upload - with a single slot I’d be left w/o a copy for me! As a D850 owner the ONLY advantage I see is better video compression/10 bit output. Otherwise same IQ/FPS ( surprised they couldn’t have beat 9FPS with no moving mirror). And I change lenses a fair amount- mirrorless leaves your sensor much more exposed to dust. Round 2 of Nikon mirrorless might have more for me...
The more I think about it the more I conclude that the lack of dual slots was a critical design failure.
That was the biggest criticism with the Df, and possibly the reason for its failure in the market.
It's unbelievable to think this product could fail commercially. It's even more unbelievable that Nikon repeated the same design error.
not just redundancy but if a bend a pin of the card slot while changing cards in a middle of a shoot?
Your are thinking about Compact Flash and CFast cards. Those will bend, XQD has a different type of interface similar to SD cards, but more robust.
I didn't have the time/patience to watch a 20 minutes video. From what I've read, the battery life is a big concern; mirrorlesses draw more power than a dslr, and the battery Nikon threw in is good for maybe 300-500 shots? That's a problem for many pro shooters. Imagine having to swap a battery every hour or two during a wedding shoot, for example.
The CIPA rating uses a weird method. I can shoot more than 1k shots with my Panasonic G9, which is rated for 400 shots. I change battery every 3-4 hours in the studio and use 1.5 batteries/day when traveling.
thanks tony, now the market won't get flooded with cheap D4's and D5's..........................
Great camera for Nikon shooters, only the last generation of Sony have dual slots, I think it should not be such a big deal. Please make eye detection/ face detection that works on the cameras and I will get one to see if I like it better then my Sony, And a 24-105. How about a 42-85 f2 Nikon, did you not once make something like that?
I for one gives Nikon tumbs up, a great start!
I'm quite upset at Nikon. I've waited years for them to come out with a good mirrorless option. I want to go mirrorless because of the EVF, IBIS, silent shutter, and other things.
From the get-go I said that in order for Nikon to have any hope in catching up they will need to release something that is closely comparable to what Sony is offering at the same price AND it MUST include the lens adapter at the price point. They have chosen to not include the adapter.
Fail. It's just stupid. With all the F-mount lenses out there throwing in the adapter at the given price point is a freaking no brainer with regards to encouraging adoption of the platform. ESPECIALLY since there are so few Z-mount lens options available at this point.
Also, from the beginning I said that they MUST have dual card slots.
Fail. This is just astonishing. Sure, card failures are rare, but as Tony says they do happen. I have had them. Plus, a dual card slot is a necessity for reasons other than card failure; like human error. It does happen.
People are saying, give it a few more years. Be patient. This is their first offering, etc.
Nonsense. Because it's already been years is the very reason they needed to get this right from the beginning.
I have a D750. It's a great camera. But I want/need silent shutter, EVF, and IBIS. I've held off long enough. I'm going to bite the bullet, sell my camera and lenses, triggers, etc, and go all in with Sony. Probably the A7III.
Damn you, Nikon.
No silent shutter? Seriously?
There is SS. He said he wants to go ML for that
Yes, that.
Your D750 has two SD card slots, yes SD cards fail a lot. That is why your D750 needs two of them. They are so fragile that I actually had one bent. In the 5 years shooting with XQD cards both on a D4 and D500, I have never had one fail. The XQD cards are more robust than any SD card. During that time, I have had many SD cards fail.
Seriously, you have had many cards fail, how many?
I shouldn't say anything but the last cards that I have had fail were 2 Lexars many many moons ago, like 12 years of moons... I have lost a few and washed a CF card that still works but I don't trust. I just counted and I have 9 cameras (Sony, Canon,GoPro) only one has 2x card slots. I have 16 SD and 11 CF cards of various sizes and ages Sandisk and Transcend. I have had more cameras malfunctions than card :)
Maybe I am just careful or lucky and now that I said something the luck streak will end.
But they should have 2 card slots.
I have two failed SD lexar cards. One was bought as a set of two from B&H at 2015 and failed a year later (64GB). The other was bought from Amazon in January 2017 (also a set of two and 64GB) and failed around April this year.
On the other hand I have many CF cards going back to 2006, some are 1 and 2 GB and I never had one failed.
They say that the new XQD cards are much more rezliant but having two cards is a must.
Really Nikon?
YMMV
SD cards fail "a lot?"
No, they don't. They rarely fail. I've gone years and many thousands of captures and only had one fail.
The more likely factor is the human factor. If I were a betting person I'd be willing to bet that human error has been negated by a redundant card than a card failure.
Stop being goofy. It's not good. Also, develop basic reading comprehension.
It's not just the lack of an included lens adapter. It's that combined with the fact that only has one card slot.
All Nikon had to do was come up with something comparable to the A7III and with a value proposition to entice Nikon users wanting to get into mirrorless. They couldn't even do that.
Very happy Nikon D750 to Sony A7R3 convert here. I was in love with the picture quality of the D750, but the Sony A7R3 has all that picture quality, plus a bunch of other great features as well. I’ve never had a camera that got out of my way as easy as the A7R3 does - it just suits my workflow, and that eye AF, sweet Lord I love it!
It's also pricey for a new mount, there is no incentive to invest 4 years in a desertic ecosystem for 4000 $. + you need XQD.
and the lenses are expensive, like sony, the 58 mm will be 6000 , that's leica territory
"He is by far one of the best and non-biased on YouTube for comparing cameras." Are you smoking crack ? Their channel is one of the top 3 Shill channels on Youtube..Can you say affiliate links ?
and if you fact-check his videos, you'll find he's one of the least knowledgable, having little to no mechanical or technical knowledge or familiarity despite attempting to espouse those details. from a technical perspective, his videos are laughable. he may be a competent photographer, but he has no credibility regarding how a camera works mechanically or electronically beyond exposure.
And lets not forget that he makes up facts as he talks. Unlike Mads, who has excellent videos.