Nikon Z System News and Commentary
The Nikon Z6 III Review and Book are Ready
Today I posted my review of the Nikon Z6 III, as well as made my Complete Guide to the Nikon Z6 III available for purchase. I was able to get these two things done earlier than usual because NikonUSA lent me a pre-release version of the camera to get started with (I've since replaced it with a copy I bought, which I used to verify my findings).
Some of you probably want the short version (there's no short version of my books ;~), so here goes:
The Z9 established new mirrorless-only technologies that have now been brought down to three other cameras, the Z8, the Zf, and now the Z6 III. There a small differences in performance between the latter two and the earlier two, mostly centered around autofocus, and which derive from the slower image sensors of the Z6 III and especially the Zf. Other than that, Nikon seems to be bringing pretty much the full set of features and performance well downward in their lineup.
So, the question you'll have is probably this: how much autofocus performance difference? For most things, you probably won't notice any difference. It's only when you get to extreme action and extreme wildlife (small BIF) that they start to show up. If you need ultimate performance, get a Z8 or Z9 and expect to pay for that (in size and weight as well as price). If you don't photograph extreme action, both the Zf and Z6 III work just fine and carry over all of the Z9 goodness.
Some of you will wonder about how much you give up with the lessor cameras. Less than you probably think. I'm perfectly happy with the Z6 III photographing wildlife, including small birds in flight. It's just that every now and again the Z6 III might trip up where my Z8 doesn't. On the flip side, the Z6 III can have an infinite buffer, so some will see that "every now and again" because they're mashing the shutter release for long periods of time.
The real news is that the Z6 III is very close to the Z8 and Z9 in focus performance, and the original Z6 and Z6 II were not, nor did they have particularly great or extensive subject detection. I proved several times that you could, with care in settings and handling, photograph sports and moving wildlife with the Z6 and Z6 II. I won't need to prove that to you with the Z6 III, as in most cases you're going to find it remarkably close to the Z8. Ignorably close.
Which leaves the measurbator's lament going around the Internet about the Z6 III: it isn't a dynamic range champion. Well, first of all, compare it properly against the Canon R6 Mark II and Sony A7 Mark IV. The Z6 III will happily photograph for as long as you hold the shutter button without losing anything in dynamic range, while if you want the fastest shutter speeds out of an R6 Mark II, you're going to see noticeable—and I mean noticeable—degradation of image quality. Meanwhile, the Sony chugs along at a max of 10 fps to keep its dynamic range up.
Not that the Z6 III is a slouch. 11.5 stops at base ISO is plenty enough dynamic range, and at ISO values from 800 to 25600 I measure the results as slightly better than the Z6 II it replaces (more data integrity, no color shift, less contrast blockage, etc.).
Overall, the Z6 III is a pretty remarkable little camera. A bag-friendly middleweight that punches above its class. Which is why I gave it a Highly Recommended.
What RED Might Provide Nikon
Everyone was quick to scrape and translate Nikon President Masaaki Tokunari's comments to reporters made in a recent interview in Japan, but almost none actually try to make any sense of them (let alone quote him accurately).
The quote that seems to have to provoked many of the news articles has to do with Nikon's intent to incorporate RED technology into Nikon mirrorless cameras. Fortunately, I have some knowledge of RED's "technologies," so can go project further than the vague quote as to what that might be.
The first and foremost technology that might prove useful to the Z System cameras is REDcode Raw, the video encoding that RED accused Nikon of violating with the Z9's introduce of N-RAW. It appears that RED's implementation can be more lightweight than Nikon's (and has better metadata), plus making it available on Z System cameras would also open up additional post processing. Right now, DaVinci Resolve is the primary support mechanism for N-RAW, for instance. The other primary video editors have not yet provided support for N-RAW, but do have support for REDcode Raw.
From there, everything gets more technical, which makes me wonder how much of RED's technology Tokunari-san was really thinking might be useful for the Nikon mirrorless cameras. For instance, RED has excellent and well developed LUTs and something they call CDL (color decision list), which was developed by the American Society of Cinematographers to exchange color correction information via metadata. I would think that both of those items fall into the "lower hanging fruit" side of RED's technologies.
As you move upward into "more difficult" things that could migrate, RED's support of Frame.io comes to mind, though Nikon's anathema towards Adobe (who bought Frame.io) would have to temper. The Nikon/Adobe relationship got off on a bad foot with the Nikon slide scanners and Photoshop, went through silly arguments over white balance metadata, more recently at Adobe MAX was the first to show initial support for Content Authority Initiative on a Z9 that never shipped, and has never really found solid footing where the two companies seem to work well together.
These three things—REDcode raw, LUT/CDL, and Frame.io support—would move the higher end Z System cameras more into becoming Canon Cinema and Sony FX competition, at least at the low end.
I can see a handful of other RED expertise that might carry over, too, but some of this is buried further into things that many of the hybrid camera users probably don't play a lot with. For instance, RED's PTP frame synchronization and IP-based streaming play well with Nikon's acquisition of Mark Roberts, but not so much with the general public that's buying Nikon's mirrorless offerings. RED does have a better pre-amp, audio handling, and a number of audio connection abilities, so perhaps Nikon will finally get around considering adding electronic controls to the hot shoe; they did that with the Nikon 1 and then abandoned it for some reason.
The things at the top end of the list in terms of complexity to bring over are probably the RED Control app and global shutters. RED seems to have a better iOS/Android team than Nikon, so that's good, but Nikon is still using decades-old protocols in terms of interacting with the cameras, protocols that were established with serial communication on the original 10-pin connector and haven't meaningfully migrated into the 21st century. I don't know how you wed what RED is doing in their apps to control cameras with what Nikon is doing.
Sitting on top of RED's image sensors (at least some of them) is an electronically controlled Neutral Density filter. This would be an interesting addition to the Z System cameras, but unless Nikon stacks that on top of the already existing filter—where it would introduce some optical issues, particularly with wide angle lenses—it would need a lot of new integration work on something Nikon believes is now long-established and well understood.
Global shutter would be the trickiest of the bunch. First, RED is not using Sony sensors. Moreover, RED's larger Raptor sensor is 40.96mm x 21.60mm, so not "FX." The smaller Komodo sensor is 27.03mm x 14.26mm, so not really "DX." Thus, new versions of those sensors would have to be generated, and it's unclear how they might link up to Nikon's current expectations in data offload, as many of the methods the mirrorless cameras rely upon are sub-samples to obtain speed, which I don't think is how RED does it. Still, I'm sure that Nikon's sensor group is now looking at RED's sensor source and trying to figure out what they might incorporate.
All the above doesn't even get us to some of the potential insight buried in RED's internal software. For instance, I'm not sure how Nikon is generating the waveforms on the Z6 III, Z8, and Z9 cameras. However, I bet you it's a different algorithm than RED is using.
However, the real problem with integrating anything RED into Nikon and anything Nikon into RED is basically going to be communication. Not just in style, language, or directness (or lack thereof), but mostly in time. I've never seen an integration of two organizations take as little time as was predicted. Beyond the turf fights that come up and have to resolved, it's just a lot of dirty work down in the underpinnings that requires study, understanding, and then agreement on how to proceed. I once saw one company start using their acquisition's work only to find that that the company they had bought was already getting ready to jettison what they had done and move to a new architecture and model. Oops.
There's little doubt that Nikon scored a big win by picking up RED for as little as they paid. Even if Nikon never integrated anything either direction, it would still be a win. Thus, anything that does migrate from Hollywood to Tokyo or vice versa is going to be a bigger win, perhaps even a BAW (Big A** Win). Let's hope that we see the fruits of that in the next generation of Nikon Z System cameras. I don't think we'll see it in the current generation, as they're still being defined from the Z9 technologies.
The Constant Question I Get
It seems that there’s just one question I can’t seem to shake, as it just keeps showing up over and over in my In Box (and on Internet fora, for that matter).
What’s the question?
Some form of the “is the X lens with a teleconverter (TC) a good substitute for the longer Y lens?”
The answer is invariably “not really.”
First, why does this question keep coming up? Well, it’s basically due to economics. In almost all cases, X+TC is cheaper than Y without TC. Some people do ask the question the proper way, which is “can I save money by buying the X+TC over the Y?” Yes, you can. But you also want to know what you might give up when you do that, and the answer to that is always “some optical quality.” While this is less of a problem today than it was with yesterday’s TCs, you'll still see a loss, and usually a clearly observable loss.
The more devious versions of the question are actually a statement that goes like this: “I’m using the X+TC and I can’t see any difference versus what I see others getting from the Y.”
Which brings us to the second reason why the answer is “not really.” Again, I’m an “optimal capture, optimal processing” kind of guy (my pronoun is optimum ;~). Pretty much always the X+TC is not optimal. Just how unoptimal it is varies, but generally you’re going to lose some edge acuity, which you’ll probably try to get back via sharpening. So: not optimal capture, not optimal processing (the act of sharpening starts moving those pixel values in ways that can be detected, sometimes even in just casual view).
The “I can’t see a difference” construct is one you need to be careful about trusting. If you don’t know the person making that statement and they haven’t established enough credibility so that you would trust their assertion, then you should immediately discount this kind of statement. Seeing a difference as opposed to testing to reveal a difference are very different things. Those of us who value our credibility do both. If we think we see something, we test to verify that what we thought we saw is true.
Underlying all this teleconverter discussion is another factor: we are all at a different stage of our photographic ability. When you just start out, you don’t notice much. The fact that smartphone camera quality is gushed about is a good example of that: at the lowest common denominator level—both viewer ability and the restricted resolution/size of social media—the results look better than a lot of alternatives (film, instant photography, smartphone, etc.). Particularly when you also consider that focus doesn’t have to be quite so precise given the often larger depth of field of some of those other captures.
As you get better, what you can see gets better and you start to see issues. Or at least you become affected by them (e.g. you might not know why you don’t like what you’re seeing, but the issue rose to the level where you’re aware of something being wrong, even if you don’t know what it was that caused it). So you come to the Internet asking questions. And immediately have to understand that some answers you’ll get are correct, some are misleading, and some are wrong ;~).
If you keep progressing in photographic ability, smaller and smaller things start to become important in your work. One of those will be edge acuity in telephoto use. And that’s where the teleconverter (TC) becomes important to understand. I’ve seen good TCs and bad ones, but I’ve not seen a teleconverter ever improve a lens’ performance, only weaken it when it comes to contrast, resolution, and chromatic aberration. The contrast loss comes from additional air/glass elements, the resolution loss and chromatic aberration increase come from taking an image “in air” and altering it.
Whether you can see the impacts a TC has on a lens or not is pretty much fully dependent upon the level of training and photography you’ve achieved. Virtually every professional has and sometimes uses a TC, but only because there’s no other answer to what they’re trying to achieve. Almost always, that same pro will simply use the right lens for the photographic problem if they have it available. The lenses that have built-in teleconverters—400mm f/2.8 TC VR S and 600mm f/4 TC VR S in the Z world—have us using the TC mostly as convenience (not having to change lenses), but their TC is also designed in conjunction with the lens itself so it does a bit better with understanding the “in air” image and changing it, as the designers know exactly what it is they’re changing. Generic TCs don’t have that knowledge, so don’t perform quite as well.
I’m not a fan of using a TC to solve a “reach” problem. But I understand why a TC is desirable: it costs far less than a bigger lens, and you can’t get closer to your subject. Just understand that neither of those things is optimal. You’re taking a shortcut. If you want to achieve the same results as those that don’t take those shortcuts, you’ll have to address both things at some point.
Z6 and Z7 Get Minor Firmware Updates
Version 3.70 firmware for both the original Z6 and Z7 dropped today, with the changes for both versions being the recent change in encryption keys that’s been made for every camera, and a fix that would sometimes cause buttons to stop responding if you were using an MC-N10 video control grip.
The Nikon Cloud is Ready?
Nikon today seemed to activate Nikon Image Cloud. I can verify that my Z6 III can get to it and access it properly.
That's (most of) the good news.
The bad news is that getting Nikon Image Cloud set up properly is an even bigger warren of thorns and stumbling blocks than SnapBridge. We're talking Access Codes, verifying codes, logging into sites on devices other than your camera, and more. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to document this well in the initial version of my upcoming book, as it appears there are potholes everywhere. For instance, Nikon Imaging Cloud won't allow me to log in with my already registered email address ;~).
But let's get to some specifics. The current Recipes you can download are from Brandon Woelfel, Takahiro Sakai, and Luizclas for portraits; Emilie Hill for travel; Aparupa Day for nature and wildlife; and Danny Gevirtz for video. As an example, Day's only current recipe is Beach Blue, which will put a cyan cast on your photo. Luizclas has four: Red Moose, Purple Mood, Cine Mood, and Blue Mood. My guess is that if you don't like white in your photos, you'll probably love the recipes ;~).
In terms of transfer, what Nikon is offering is a pass through. Your Z6 III can push to Nikon Image Cloud, and Nikon Image Cloud can then further transfer to Dropbox, Creative Cloud, Google (Drive and Photos, both listed as "coming soon"), OneDrive, and Nikon Image Space. This is a 30-day temporary pass through, and requires manual action on your part to complete. Your images are automatically deleted from Nikon Image Cloud after 30 days.
I can't test the firmware download portion, as there isn't an update yet for the Z6 III.
The other good news is that my Z6 III seems to reliably use my home network. Nikon appears to finally have conquered Infrastructure mode (SnapBridge uses Ad Hoc). You have options for connecting only when powered by USB, connecting while the camera is off, and shutting down automatically for inactive connections. In terms of uploading, you can automatically do so, or manually (i-button on playback has a function for sending). You can have the camera upload only raw copies, only JPEG copies, or both when you use RAW+JPEG.
Since the Z6 III supports direct FTP and even through Ethernet (via a USB dongle), if all you're trying to do is get images from your camera to your home computer, there's a better way than using Nikon Image Cloud.
