I’ll get to the why in a moment. First the updates:
- Z6 II and Z7 II version 1.20:
- Increased AF performance in low light
- Improved subject detection performance
- Enhanced subject visibility (I think they mean focus sensor updating)
- Improved tracking for face and eye detection, as well as Subject Tracking mode
- Z6 II will eventually get voice annotation
- Z6 and Z7 version 3.30:
- Added focus position save when camera turned off
- Z6 gets voice annotation function
- Z5 version 1.10:
- Added focus position save when camera turned off
- Faster AF detection in low light
- Z50 version 2.19:
- Adds focus position save when camera turned off
All these updates will be available on April 26th.
So why announce these updates a week in advance? My best guess is that Nikon has another announcement coming (maybe as soon as next week) that they don’t want the firmware update announcement to get lost in.
It’s either that or they’re pacing announcements now to appear active before and during their usual end-of-year financial disclosures. Nikon’s usually reluctant to announce products in the period between their fiscal year close (March 31) and their year end shareholder’s meeting (typically second/third week of May). But it has happened before.
Now, as to the updates themselves.
Obviously, any focus improvement updates are highly welcome. As much as I’m firmly comfortable with the Z Series focus capabilities, nibbling away at edge and margin conditions to improve it is something I fully embrace. The Sony A1 I’m currently testing is indeed better at some focus situations than my Z’s, so Nikon still has some catching up to do, though not nearly as much as most people think.
Adding voice annotation is also highly welcome as I use the Z’s more and more for events and sports. You don’t appreciate this feature until you’ve used it: basically it links an audio file to a image file, so you can quickly record names, captions, and so on without having to resort to pen and pencil and access those later while editing the image. However, Nikon hasn’t noticed what Sony has done, which is to take voice annotation that is linked to a file and use voice recognition to automatically apply the data to an IPTC field in the image file. (An enterprising programmer could probably do that as an application applied to a folder of files, hint, hint.)
Why no voice annotation in the Z5 and Z7 models? Seems Nikon has discovered that the Z6 is the D750/D5 replacement. It’s the camera that former DSLR users are using for events and sports.
Saving the focus position on camera off isn’t quite the big win most of you think it is. Because modern glass is temperature sensitive in terms of where it puts focus, the remembered position might not be the position you want if there is any temperature change. But, for those changing batteries in astro photography or time-lapse sequences, yes, this is a good thing.
All that said, the updates—as described by Nikon; I obviously haven’t tried them yet—seem a little on the “thin” side. We want to see pixel shift shooting on the Z7 II, for example. Plus there’s still plenty of small things and changes that could come over from the DSLRs (e.g. if the Z6 bodies get voice annotation, why don’t they also get IPTC data entry?).
I’d like to see Nikon be more aggressive with firmware updates, particularly with the Z6 II and Z7 II. Perhaps they will be, but are leaving “new” things for the Z9 to reveal. Still, Nikon faithful are still waiting for a “big reveal” that shows Nikon is on top of the technology game again.
