Thanks for stopping by.
You're probably wondering why I'd start a Nikon Z site when I already have a mirrorless camera site (sansmirror.com). That's a good question, and it requires a full answer.
I've been supporting Nikon camera users on the Internet since 1993. Yes, 1993. First in a usenet newsgroup, then later that decade with a Web site called bythom that I started to support my Nikon-related books and some other interests. When I left my role as a lead editor in traditional magazine publishing in 2001, this happened to coincide with the true take-off of the DSLR era (Nikon D1h/D1x/D100), and the bythom Web site got very active to the point where it became my main job.
I believe in trying to organize information and keep it available, a problem that Yahoo was one of the first to have with the proliferation of information on the Internet. This problem began to show up on bythom, too: if you're going to try to collect and organize information, the fire hose nature of information on the Internet starts to overwhelm almost any Web structure you create. You end up with menus and menus and menus of menus and menus of menus of menus, and a sprawling hierarchy that eventually becomes difficult for someone looking for specific information to navigate. The traditional method of dealing with lots of information is the Google approach: just use search.
But search these days has the same needle-in-a-haystack problem that page hierarchies do, and then Google on top of that started prioritizing ways that monetized things mostly for Google. If you type "Nikon Z6 Review" into Google, you get a sponsored ad on top, a promoted review, YouTube (a Google company) videos, then 2 million other results. And on every search page Google presents you not only get a few actual links to reviews, but also ads.
Even on my sansmirror site things have gotten a bit out of hand. There's now almost 10 years worth of news and commentary, there are descriptions of hundreds of cameras and thousands of lenses, reviews of dozens upon dozens of products. All that information gets far out of hand to browse through if all you really want is accurate, complete information and opinions about the Nikon Z mirrorless system. Sansmirror is now over 3GB of HTML code and images, and should actually be growing faster than I've let it. That's because I, too, try to fight the sprawl when creating new content for that site.
Most of my mirrorless photographic work is only done these days with Nikon cameras, and most of that with Nikon Z cameras. Some with Sony EF cameras. Very little with anything else unless I'm trying to catch up with reviewing products. Thus, I decided it was time to just narrow down things on a single site so that I could cover the system I use most as well as I possibly can. And thus was born Z System User. On this site I can concentrate just on Nikon's nascent mirrorless system and give it the depth of coverage it deserves.
If all you're interested in is the Nikon Z system, then this is the site for you. Not only have I reviewed pretty much everything Nikon has made so far, but I have detailed and exhaustive books on all the cameras they've produced. I consider myself a Z expert, and I'll bet you that there are a lot of Nikon employees that don't know nearly as much about the Z cameras and system as I do.
While some articles and pages on this site may have started their life on sansmirror.com, they've all been completely re-edited and updated for this site.
