What did I write back on October 13th? "I expect the third teaser to hint more at the focus system, and likely to be sports oriented."
Well, teaser three does exactly that. Eye focus in tennis, soccer, track, and vehicle focus for motorcycles and auto racing. There are a couple of small things to note in the video. First, eye detect from the side is shown a couple of times. Curiously, in the hurdles, the eye being followed is not the closest one. In the vehicle tracking, closest subject priority seems to be used (or at least "closest part of the vehicle") and as the car goes round a corner note how the focus slides and narrows from one side of the car to the other. Note how off-center most of the focus points shown are, too. The final soccer scene is a little confusing to me: why are none of the players identified as being the focus target until we pan across, and then why does the system move from eye to face detect? Finally, the burst speed shown at the end works out to 20 fps. But it's unclear if that's mechanical or the faux electronic shutter sound.
Whatever the details you glean from the 28 second video, Nikon seems to be making a statement of confidence and applicability here: the Z9's focus system can handle sports just fine. Probably better than the D6 given the off center eye detect.
So what's next?
Nikon Rumors is saying announcement is next week. I'm not so sure. The date I was originally given was the first week of November, not the end of October. It's possible that Nikon moved the date, given all the other action going on among their competitors. With Sony launching the A7 Mark IV tomorrow, Nikon is going to want to counterpunch quickly.
