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?
"Are you smoking crack" . Who would you recommend?
i think a lot of people, especially the youtube talking faces, are missing the point with this camera. it's not a professional camera. it's an enthusiast camera with "pro level" features and maybe even a second body for pros willing to dip their toes into Z-mount. aiming strictly for professionals would limit their market, like any other release other than the single-digit D series range.
the use of recycled internals, specifically from the D750 and D850 exemplifies their desire to remain cost-conscious, yet putting so much emphasis on the durable, weather sealed body and capabilities of the new mount system just screams "enthusiast" camera (i watched the introduction live last night). it's not designed for professionals who need 100% uptime, but for enthusiasts who want a camera with those "pro-level" bullet points. it's like the difference between the D750 and D850 series' or 5D versus 6D canons.
why? because it's the lowest-cost way for nikon to get into mirrorless and directly compete with the features of the sony a7 series. they're simply plugging a hole in their lineup created by introduction of full-frame mirrorless to the market and is a sort of "beta test." if the largest part of the market, enthusiasts, respond positively to it, then expect a D5- like variant to show up with a Z-mount. if the market doesn't respond well, expect it to be radically changed again, as the lens development costs are far higher than body development, so nikon will be reluctant to drop Z-mount development.
give it a year and hope for enthusiasts to buy these cameras. the highest hope is for videographers to buy the Z6. for pros, you should be hoping for that and waiting for a D5 series equivalent in Z-mount, a counter to sony's a9, with a more photographic aim than the Z7 or Z6 currently. whether it be a D5s, D5x or D6, i'd expect a pro-level Z-mount, with dual slots, etc to come out alongside it, with a newer processor and improved autofocus system more tailored for mirrorless.
had nikon aimed at the absolute top of the market, they would have priced themselves out of the market, snubbing enthusiasts, the largest portion and most profitable subsection. yes, everyone benefits with 2 card slots, but this is nikon feeling out the middle to-higher end after having felt out the low and mid-range with the CX mount ILCs.
PS so, why only 1 card slot? the XQD/CFast card is much larger than SD. to fit 2 would've required making the body larger. one of the most oft quoted benefits to mirrorless is the slimmer, more compact body, and nikon likely weighed that over card redundancy. yeah, it may sound silly, but card reliability is much less a factor for enthusiasts IN GENERAL (there are obviously exceptions, like the people who will try to argue with what i've just said about it, claiming how they demand that feature, blah blah blah, but i'm not including them, speaking only for the other 9 out of 10 owners, silent owners who don't spend every day commenting on websites like this), who dont physically swap out their cards as much as pros, or face adverse environmental conditions as some shoots require... the vast majority of enthusiasts are simply more gentle with their gear, making redundant slots less important. thus, expect an "a9" competitor, or D5 equivalent in the future with 2 slots. or maybe even a Z6.5 and Z7.5 with dual slots in a year or two, should the market dictate that card redundancy is more important than body slimness.
The XQD is more robust than any SD, Compact Flash or CFast card. I would take 1 XQD slot over any dual SD, CF, or CFast slots. Those cards need redundancy because physically they are fragile compared to XQD cards.
So you're saying that XQD cards will NEVER fail, you can guarantee this. Scenario: Wedding photographer has 3 bodies tethered to himself. Bride and father coming up the aisle. He sees a message that his single card has failed and camera will not fire. By the time he realizes this has happened and gets one of his other bodies up, more than likely with a lens less suited for the situation, the bride has been handed off to her husband to be and the whole "up the aisle" memory is gone. Uh, oh. I hope you have a second shooter that's also shooting the walk up the aisle. Otherwise....
You're charging a client several thousand dinars and you would put your faith in a single card? Okay.....
Put another way, what are the chances the XQD will fail vs both SD cards? I don't know the answer but a single XQD may, in fact, be more reliable. The big thing, to me, is speed. That Z7 is moving a lot of data and I don't think it could do it nearly as fast with SD.
A $3400 camera is an enthusiast camera? In most cases, I'd call bull shine, but in this case, it's correct. Love him or hate him, Northrup is correct in recommending that a pro (wedding, event, one off shooter) should go with camera with a built in insurance policy.
Thank you!
Most people that run around with Sony Alphas aren't pros either. Most people that run around with D750/D850 or Canonon 5Ds aren't pros.
I live in a city that is a tourist magnet for Asians (and some Americans). I see so many high end "pro" cameras on the average Joe, slugging arounds thousands of € to take holiday pictures (5D IV with 70-200 f.8 L to take a photo of your wive in bright daylight).
Those are the people you earn money with. Not the handful of pros.
Nikon just wants to get our there. I'm not saying I'm gonna run out and buy a z6 (or any new camera for that matter). But the things i care about as an enthusiast are 1. Image quality, 2. Ergonomics, 3. Viewfinder 4. Build quality (incl. weather sealing) 5. Battery life
From what i hear so far the zs do quite well in that regard, apart from Nr. 5. And actually a poor battery life would eliminate a camera for me much more than a missing card slot.
your comment is to long i didn't read it
I wonder why cameras manufacturers do not have a built in storage on top of a card slot (or two). Many advantages this way. Yes, SSD's can fail but designing it with an easy to replace compartment will make it a valuable add on. If my Samsung 1TB SSD is any indication, it takes roughly the same space as a CF card.
Built in SSD should be much faster to buffer and view. It's annoying when my D750 takes sometimes a couple of seconds to view an image and it happens every few images. Also, no need to take out and put in the cards constantly, one of the reason cards fail.
Anyway, one card was not a good decision from Nikon.
You make a great point, I thought at one point I should develop a battery grip with SSD included as well as some other components that would boost those single card slot cameras as well as add features to dial card slot cameras why camera makers don't include internal ssd's with the back up going to external media I am not sure, it would alleviate so many problems. You could also make the SSD replaceable or interchangeable.
Personally, I think your all messed up in your thinking, Tony, Do you really think that Nikon did not think about this? The fact that, you know they could have added another card slot, just like what they did on the D850. These are very intelligent top engineers at work at Nikon, You know they have to have verified the specs and reliability data on the XQD technologies. Especially, knowing that GAS Heads like many of us, and Pro's are going to puke at the thought of trusting 1 XQD card. They have to know something that we don't in regards to reliability of XQD, especially when they are marketing both the Z7 and the Z6 as Pro Cameras.
I have been through many different digital cameras with many different data cards, by many different Mfg's, over moderate use, and all have been exposed to many different weather, and some harsh environmental conditions and I have never, ever, had a bad card period! In fact, I can't remember ever seeing a read, or write error, and a number of these cameras were not weather sealed. So for me, I'm totally comfortable with one XQD card.
I don't claim to know all the Data Memory Tech engineering facts, but I trust Nikon, They know they have to Win in this Mirrorless evolution from the DSLR world. You know there are going to be Pros, and many Semi-Pros, and Armature's that are going to trust the 1-XQD card slot, so, we will see if Nikon is a little more savvy then the paranoids. I Have Faith!
I'm inclined to start to believe in what your saying.
Tony & Chelsea Northrup, Youtube.
I spent the last 3 days in Rome (Italy) photographing.
At the end of every day I always transfer the images from the SD card to my notebook.
In the 2nd day my SD card got corrupted and I lost all images from that day (my sony A6500 only have 1 SD card slot).
So yeah, I understand the feeling of what Tony’s is talking about
While I think the single card slot was a bad idea, I can't understand why that seems to be the biggest issue people have with this camera. Why is nobody really talking about the battery life? 300 shots? My fuji gets more than that, and I still have to carry around 2 extra batteries in a day.
Comparing the price of the Z7 "Enthusiast" camera to that of pro bodies like the D850 and 5DIV, you see why photographers are scratching their heads with Nikon's decision. Example: Most of my shooting (landscapes, cityscapes, street photography, still nature photography) could be handled just fine with a 6DII. However, I still do some paid work, so the fact that the 6DII has one card slot was a deal breaker. I spent the extra money for the 5DIV specifically because it has 2 slots.
If you got more than 500 shots, you'ed still carry extra batteries.
Honestly I NEVER EVER had an sd-card fail on me, and i'm using them for 12 years! Even when I had a camera with 2 sd-card slots I used it as an overflow and not as a back-up! There are so many camera's with 1 slot, the first 2 generation of the Sony had only 1 sd-card slot!
I don't think they choose to put only 1 sd-card in, I think it was about space for the battery! Maybe Nikon should think outside the box and should've added a micro-sdcard slot for all people who really think sd-cards fail!
Save space for the battery that lasts half as long as the current standard for mirrorless now... saved “space” to give you 300 shots per battery... hmmmmm smells like sh*t to me
My God, man, even if you got 400-500 shots on the battery in the Z7, your going to carry a couple of extra batteries, anyhow, I don't get it!
And the fact that people actually get closer to 1000 images on a battery... real life and a constructed battery life test are two different things...
Even with my D2x, where I actually can get around 5-5500 exposures I always carry atleast one extra battery...
Did the old masters film cameras have two film slots? Guess not. Strange that the headlines around these two amazing new cameras focus mostly on the lack of a extra card slot, not how great they are. Being alive is risky and allowing fear of all of life´s dangers take control is a choice. I have had cameras for the past years that use two slots (D3, D4s, D850) but I never use the second slot for backup, always for overflow. XQD cards are extremely reliable.
To me it is more important to have a backup/second camera.
Actually they did... large format film holders have a dual film system, where you just turn the holder... but there the single point of failure was the film holder...
Hmmm. I'm sure a "professional photographer" doesn't need a Youtube personality to tell him/her which camera to buy.
Having a dual slot save me in a couple occasions during a wedding. Once was a card failure but on the other it was the slot itself that broke. Till then I never gave the proper importance to that spec in a camera.
I´m wonder now how the Canon competitor will be.
Insight this valuable is enough to buy you a coffee if you add $4.
Just give it a few weeks and Tony will be changing his mind...
As a Canon user I'm delighted with these two Nikon cameras. I think both are a pretty good first attempt of full frame mirroless by Nikon. I think dual slots are over-rated. Yes I've had cards fail (mainly not to write anymore) and cards fall apart but its rare. Silent shutter for weddings for me would outweigh dual card slots for a wedding (although I would tend to make use of dual slots for wedding). The Nikon cameras limit how weak the Canon entry will be. I'd expect Canon would take note of the concerns about dual memory card slots. Continuous autofocus FPS might another thing Canon might try to improve upon. But all in all I think Nikon have done a good job. I know many Nikon users pretty happy with the announcement (even though that doesn't seem to be sentiment here but the internet is not always the best source of opinion).
I just don't know that I'd find it to be a deal breaker. I do put two cards in my D750 when I shoot a wedding and it's great to have that peace of mind but I've never had a card go bad in the camera or fail in some way. I also carry a second camera body always. Didn't the D810 offer the option of a single CF slot or dual SDs? That would have been a good option to offer. Maybe it's a poor design choice but then again, it's pretty solid technology. I don't recall many film cameras having two slots.
Umm, I think the "Pros" will make up their own minds whether or not to use this camera. No offense to Tony, but I'm pretty sure the pros don't look to him for camera advice.
Isn't Tony sponsored by Sony?
For those worried about the 2nd card slot for redundancy purposes, why not use the built-in Nikon Snapbridge to stream full res photos to a phone or tablet while your shooting.
That way you have your backup AND instant availability to share your photos with clients, social media, etc.
Now there's something to bitch about! Snapbridge, Too SLOOoooW, to connect and too slow to send.
All those years I shot film, my camera only took one roll at a time. I somehow survived. Too expensive IMO, and I'm in love with my D810 which I just got for about half the price of the Zs. Now get off my lawn ya damn kids.
Why , why why why why..... why 1 card slot. I know it doesn't make a hill of beans to a lot of people but i've seen consumer bodies that come with 2 card slots. It's probably the best insurance a camera has. I've had memory cards fail when shooting in the snow and wished my camera at the time had a dual slot.
But other than that... the z6 and z7 is going to work out the bugs that they'll hopefully release with the z8.
I'm excited at the new mount. 52mm F0.95 ! that's just wicked cool!
I don't think you'll have any failures with the XQD Cards.
Even if XQD is ten times less likely to fail, it's still A LOT more likely than the chances of two SD cards failing at the same time. Tens of thousands times more likely.
Take a survey, and you'll see that most photographers don't use dual cards as back-up, they use them in the overflow mode for more room. If. and I mean IF any card fails it happens from removing or placing them back in there slots. Especially, when shooting video.
I think this is an expectation issue.
This point would not be an issue during film days...when photo backup was just another camera body, if the film roll went bad..well...yes! we are not under film days anymore...so I try to understand the market strategy so my expectations are not so high.
Sony : They give everything possible with new mirrorless releases. Why ?
1 - They desperately need to maximize their market share by convincing Nikon/Canon PROs to switch.
2 - Sony's marketing strategy follows the general electronics lifecycle, like cell phones. Every year you have a new/better model. "New" and "Hyped" reflects more sales...even if that won't improve your photography.
Nikon : They are giving the bare minimum feature set (to be attractive to a certain user base) with their new mirrorless. Why ?
1 - They dominate the DSLR market, they don't want to cannibalize it, it's still very profitable.
2 - They have a long term strategy and see mirrorless + DSLR running side by side for years to come, until DSLR slowly phases out or their mirrorless market share needs quickly growth.
3 - For the short term, Nikon user base expected to buy the Z body as a complement to their Nikon gear line up, not to replace their current DSLRs.
Seat back and relax people, Nikon won't give you the perfect mirrorless PRO for years to come.
So Nikon is saying: "If you want a great PRO quality body, get in line and order a D850."
I was considering Nikon based on the rumored specs. But a smallish battery and 1 card slots killed my interest. I’ve had cards from Lexar (2) and Sandisk (1) fail, I’ve sent them to the manufacturer and they only replaced them, no recovery, luckily I had a redundancy back up. Not willing to a risk even if the chance of failure is 0.01 percent. The last thing I need is to have Fstoppers write an article “photographer sued for ruining $100k wedding because he wanted the latest toy”.
If your that worried, You need to have a clause in your wedding contract that protects you from any Liability of equipment failure. That is just freaky with you having 3 cards fail, maybe you need to go back to film, LOL
I do, but you think a lawyer cares what a contract says. They will still take it to court and argue negligence in my part because the industry standard is two cards. Even if I win, do you think I want to waste my time and money defending myself? Yes, three cards have failed in 16 years, just because some have been lucky, it does not mean every will. It’s like saying, “I haven’t been in an accident yet, so that must not mean that they do not exist, so I will not wear a seatbelt or buy auto insurance.”
I have had a memory card with a failure on a trip to New Zealand, which is the longest distance I could travel from my place (EU). I had to have the card sent to those forensic type of restore to get some pictures back.
This was the reason why I would not buy any camera again with only one card slot. By the way it was one of the compelling reasons why I then bought the D7000 from ??? right from Nikon.
I don't understand this engineering choice.
Nikon does not care about your understanding, They know what they are doing. The XQD card is going to be Super reliable. They want to you to carry Two bodies, It's good for business. Lol
As a Sony user, I’m glad for this camera as it will keep Sony on their toes and pushing ahead. But at the same time . . . Ouch! Half the battery life, half the card slots, no Eye AF, and more expensive to boot (compared to A7R3)! I’m sure image quality and ergonomics are great, but yeah, kind of a let down for Nikon users (of whom I used to be, and still root for the brand).
OH, wow you have to carry an extra battery, let me see they are about 3"x2" and weigh about 4.oz This just kills me!
If it works for you, that’s just fine. That does not change the features to price comparison. It just changes what you’re willing to put up with. Do you shoot weddings or other time sensitive events? It’s no fun worrying about battery life and having to switch one over on the fly. Great comment though!
Oh boy, who gives a shi.. on Northrup...
I only rely on camera reviews from people who have never actually touched the camera.