Nikon Z 6

Entry Date: 2/2/2024 (summary in retrospect)

My first full-frame Nikon mirrorless camera.

Purchased it in Sep 2019 due to a few reasons:

• Intrigued to see how the Z-system is like, and especially interested to see the IBIS in action with my prime lenses.

• Trying it out to see if it is a viable option to use for my work

• Cashback campaign brought the price down to a reasonable level

• Bundled 64GB XQD card

• Consumption tax in Japan was slated to rise the following month

Took it as a sign to do some spring cleaning and sell off some of my unused gear (the D700 that I loved, and the Sony A7 + FE 85/1.8 I got for experiment purposes) to fund this body.

I did not get any Z lenses initially as I wanted to get used to the system first before deciding how to optimize my equipment should I decide to use it for work.

Instead I got the FTZ adapter and paired it with my 105/1.4E to get stabilization for that lens, and used it for a year or so to understand the system before finally substituting one of my D800’s as a workhorse.

I did have experience with mirrorless bodies to some extent (the Nikon V1, Olympus EM5II, Sony A7), so had an idea of what to expect beforehand in terms of EVF and exposure preview.

As compared to the aforementioned bodies, with a proper grip it felt nice to hold in hand, and definitely way lighter than the D800’s that I were using for work at that time.

The EVF is nice and clear (compared to the EM5II and A7 which were pixelated), but I had to get used to the slight delay in the EVF/monitor images - there was a small viewfinder lag which meant that I had to give more leeway when anticipating fast moving/action shots (like jumping shots) as compared to optical viewfinder.

My copy of the Z6 shipped with FW 2.00, meaning eye-AF was part of the package right from the get-go. Many initial reviews when the camera came out (with FW 1.00) mentioned about the lackluster AF and lack of eye-AF, but with FW 2.00 things were definitely more in line with expectations, except for subject tracking which was a pain to set-up and use.

For my personal use case I found myself using single-point AF in AF-C most of the time, and the increased AF accuracy is definitely evident whenever I use the 105/1.4E wide open.

When FW 3.00 was announced with animal-AF, I updated it immediately and tried it out on the four-legged princess at home - I was definitely flabbergasted with the improved performance of the AF algorithms and the ease of having the AF system pick up the eye instead of moving the AF point all around! AF accuracy was high too for static/slow moving subjects, but when the subjects start moving there seem to be more AF misses than I like. This can be mitigated by swapping to AF-C single point, but kinds of defeat the purpose of eye-AF I think.

On that note, there also seem to be a delay in the AF box appearing on the eyes even though AF lock has already been acquired - this was remedied in later firmware versions to improve the refresh rates so it is not much of an issue now, but writing this summary does bring back memories of all the improvements that this body has seen throughout its career.

The combination of the BSI 24MP sensor + Expeed 6 CPU also brought about very welcomed improvements in high ISO performance - compared to the D800 I had previously I could see myself pushing high ISO more and yet the noise are easy to clean up in post processing. I usually have no reservations on setting it to shoot up to ISO 6400, though any higher than that I usually would run the RAW files through an AI denoising software (DxO PureRaw in my case) before further post processing.

I have used the original Z6 that I had bought over roughly 4 years actively and gotten more than 200k clicks on its shutter unit, and decided it might be good to semi-retire it as a backup set and just use it for casual use just to play on the safe side - it is more or less permanently attached to my Z 40/2 now as compact set-up, and I would bring this set with a spare Z 24-70/4S in my bag when I head out for assignments as a backup.