A week with the Nikon Z6 mirrorless

[Stagecoach]

Last week I added a Nikon Z6 mirrorless with the 24-70f/4 and FTZ adaptor to my kit. I had spent much time reading the pros and cons of mirrorless and have to admit the conclusion I came to was that for the vast majority that rave over a mirrorless and EVF (I'm not referring to CiC here) the reason appears due to them being able to expose an image 'correctly' prior to shooting, WYSIWYG.

So why did I buy it?

a) I wanted a tilting screen for those very low shots
b) I wanted a viewfinder and/or LCD that I could brighten to assist with framing in very dark light
c) I wanted 'focus shift' for the occasions I wanted to focus stack
d) I wanted a new toy

The first outing was a couple of hours after unpacking it and using the 80-400mm at the Saturday cricket. The only challenging thing here was the very harsh light and I found the EVF excellent and whilst of course there is a theoretical delay it was totally unnoticeable to me. The results were as I'd expected and I suspect the ISO performance is an improvement on the D800.

No 1 - Cropped, 50% of frame


No 2 - Cropped, 50% of frame



A play with the 'focus shift' demonstrated that this facility is excellent once you have worked out numbers of frames and spacing and the first serious test was 25 frames, spacinf '5' (1-10 option), f/14 starting at 1:1 MFD.

What is dissapointing is that whilst 'focus shift' is excellent when working on a tripod it appears Nikon have overlooked it's use when hand held. It is not possible to set the camera up in 'focus shift', look through the viewfinder and position where you want the sequence to start and press the 'start' button. For a camera that can take 12fps in 1/2 a second you could have shot off 6 frames to stack of a bug

No 3 - 25 frames put through CombineZP Soft Stack, starting at 1:1


No 4 - An example of one frame


Luckily the running club here had a social fun run starting early morning which gave me a chance to try out the AF ability for which I chose continous and Dynamic area. There had been rumours of the Dynamic AF not being too good and there is a firmware update for this which I'm unable to do at present.

No 5 - Just a candid



No 6 - The Dynamic AF , magic



This was the last shot of this runner (the fastest) of seven single shots and each was perfectly in focus. In Dynamic area in addition to the single focus point chosen there are 4 bright red dots at the corners of a square area that greatly assist tracking and following the face. Out of some 120 images shot I missed focus on around 5.

What I can not confirm is if the sucess here was due to the cameras AF or the focusing speed of the lens.

Next on my test programme will be some night shots.

[Chataignier]

Interesting, thanks for sharing.
After over 30 yrs of Canon SLRs I'm a convert to mirror-less (Fuji X-T3) and would add size and weight reduction to your list of reasons to change. The silent electronic shutter is also a plus - I presume the Nikon has that too.
On the minus side, my only complaint is the battery life - the screen/EVF does use a lot of juice. However, it's only the action of changing which is a nuisance, the batteries are small and light so there's no significant penalty to carry a couple of spares.

[billtils]

...
c) I wanted 'focus shift' for the occasions I wanted to focus stack
d) I wanted a new toy

Thanks for posting these Grahame - enjoyed the story and the honesty (reasons 'c' and especially 'd'). It lookslike we are getting colse to the point where any new camera body in what is often referred to as the "Prosumer" range will be a mirrorless job. I'm not prepared to give up my old fogey hat though. I don't think there is anything in what I've seen - including these from you - that couldn't be obtained from current DSLR bodies (for eaxmple the superb Nikon D850 can do focus stacking and Helicon make an add-on that can enable it in a range of bodies).

I also find the heavier bodies are more physically stable than the lightweights.

However, this is mainly personal taste and "I wanted a new toy" is as good a reason as it gets. Enjoy it and I look forward to more posts from you journey.

[Stagecoach]

After over 30 yrs of Canon SLRs I'm a convert to mirror-less (Fuji X-T3) and would add size and weight reduction to your list of reasons to change.

At present I can't see me becoming a full convert to mirrorless (based on the Z6 size and setup) as I'm finding the balance and grip with heavier lenses such as the 70-200 f/2.8 a bit strange. In addition, controls being smaller and closer are a challenge but this may improve with famaliarity.

The silent electronic shutter is also a plus - I presume the Nikon has that too.

It has, but it's something I have not played with yet.

On the minus side, my only complaint is the battery life - the screen/EVF does use a lot of juice. However, it's only the action of changing which is a nuisance, the batteries are small and light so there's no significant penalty to carry a couple of spares.

The first few days I was playing it was eating battery life but with its WiFi and Bluetooth now off and timers set sensibly it appears much better. Fortunately it uses the same batteries as my D800.

[Stagecoach]

I'm not prepared to give up my old fogey hat though. I don't think there is anything in what I've seen - including these from you - that couldn't be obtained from current DSLR bodies (for eaxmple the superb Nikon D850 can do focus stacking and Helicon make an add-on that can enable it in a range of bodies).

Fully agree, a sensor is a sensor and I don't expect it to be able to produce anything better than what I could achieve with the D800. What it will give me on just a few occasions is an easier way of achieving those results.

I also find the heavier bodies are more physically stable than the lightweights.

I can not understand why Nikon have made such an effort to minimise the size and weight unless they simply aren't expecting those that use heavier lenses to be mirrorless users yet.