Let me be frank up front. Testing comes first. Documenting to the world comes second. Thus, I'll tease this first impression and go silent until Christmas.
First up, thanks to NikonUSA for providing a Z9 pre-production body to run through its paces. As usual, all the pre-production disclaimers apply. I don't know if the firmware is really 1.0 or not, and Nikon has asked me not to share raw files or to reveal any lab testing to determine specific numbers on image quality aspects. With that in mind, it's time to begin.
So, what did I get? Answer: a white box that appears to be the finished Z9 boxing, but without any printing, and missing a number of materials that are likely to ship with the finished product. Inside the box was a Z9, the MH-33 and EH-7P charger combo.
So let's deal with that charger first: the MH-33 charger doesn't plug have an AC socket or cable: it has a USB-C connector only. Thus, it has to be powered with a USB PD capable wall wart, of which the EH-7P is Nikon's version. This also means that you don't need an AC adapter to continuously power the camera: you can simply plug the EH-7P directly into the camera, if needed.
I don't know if I like this approach to charging or not. Probably like, but I need to be using it for a bit, I think. Because I'm based out of vehicles, on sidelines, or in the middle of nowhere and have no AC plug nearby, I've long moved towards USB type chargers, because I can run them off of 12v in vehicles and via large watt-hour capacity batteries I carry. That's the future for all of us, I'm pretty sure, but the Z9 is the first pro camera I've seen committed to that future. I did verify that the MH-33 can charge the D6 EN-EL18C battery, by the way. Haven't tried a B version, though Nikon says that should work. Original EN-EL18's and the A version won't charge on the MH-33.
Next up, a first impression.
Given that the Z9 is smaller than the D6 I often use, I was interested in how the configurable controls work when handling the camera. I don't have large hands, so your mileage may vary, but the primary thing I immediately noticed is that when holding the camera in the horizontal position, my finger positions were slightly off. By that, I mean that my middle finger was directly on the top of the Fn1 button, my ring finger on Fn2, and my pinkie on Fn3. Normally, my middle finger has to move some to get onto the Fn1 on the smaller cameras, while my hand position on the D6 is typically ring finger on Fn1, which makes things one finger off for me on the Z9.
However, moving to the vertical grip, Fn3, which is the only one of the buttons you're likely to easily access, was exactly under my middle finger, which is closer to what I’m used to on the D6. I'm sure that all this slight finger repositioning will eventually become second nature to me, but right now it's something I'm very conscious of as I move from the D6 to the Z9.
Something I wasn't expecting is this: subject recognition now works in both Wide-area AF modes (S and L). That's another small change that opens up new capabilities when trying to control the camera in situations where it might be detecting a lot of different subjects, but you want to tell it which one to concentrate on. I'm not going to get into the autofocus aspects of the Z9 for awhile, but I will repeat my philosophy about autofocus in general: it's fine to have the camera do the heavy lifting, but you want to be able to quickly jump in and focus (pardon the pun) or redirect what the system is doing. This is why I advocate for AF-ON+AF Area Mode button options. You always want to be able to jump in and change what the camera is doing based upon the situation that pops up in front of you.
Nikon had told me earlier that you couldn't turn subjection recognition on or off via a button. They're wrong. As Brad Hill has also noted, there's a way to do that, though it involves dedicating Recall Shooting Functions to this. I'll give you an example of where that might be something you want to do: a team wins the championship trophy and a player suddenly thrusts this forward towards your camera. You probably want the trophy in focus, but if the player is in the frame and human subject detection is on, the trophy will likely be right up front and out of focus. Press the button you assigned Recall Shooting Functions to (with Subject Recognition Off) and if you're in one of the two Wide-area AF modes focus should move to the closest thing (the trophy).
Which brings me to a "kudos". Kudos to Nikon for finally realizing they shouldn't be so paternalistic on button assignments. On at least one recent Nikon camera, Fn3 could only be assigned to something like six things. Why, I have no idea. Three of those were things I'd never use, so basically this meant that one function button really had to be relegated to a couple of things I "might" use (as opposed to "do" use).
On the Z9 we have six function buttons that can be programmed to pretty much any of the settings you'd expect or need. This is going to take a great deal of thought as to what goes where—again, remember that Fn1 and Fn2 aren't available on the vertical grip, though there's an extra button just behind the shutter release that can serve that function—as the combinations and permutations are now well into the billions. Another tidbit on customization: it hasn't really been mentioned elsewhere, but you can customize the voice annotation and QUAL buttons below the Rear LCD. I don't change Image Quality/Size often, so suddenly I have another customizable button with a lot of options to consider.
I spent the first hours with the Z9 doing a lot of random exploring and quick-and-dirty testing. The camera came to me with a 51% charged battery and 875 shots on that battery. I quickly took the battery down to 40%, but in so doing I had taken 3000+ "photos" (mostly of nothing interesting).
Which brings me to a quick buffer comment. With a ProGrade Cobalt card in the camera, I was curious about buffer performance, given all the mysterious variations that had been reported prior. At 20 fps and Lossless Compressed, I got about 80 frames (4 seconds) before first hiccup, but the camera kept working at a high rate even at buffer full, just not smoothly. Dialed down to 15 fps the number went up to somewhere around 300 frames (20 seconds). Dialed down to 12 fps, the buffer became essentially infinite. The r indicator (buffer remaining) just stuck on r018 and stayed there.
Now I don't report that as any absolute test number—and remember, this is a pre-production camera—but merely a quick casual observation. I need to try to figure out how I'll be using the camera, and this quick-and-dirty test told me something useful: that Shooting Method button up on the top button cluster is going to get used. I'll likely standardize on 12 or 15 fps, but quickly dial in 20 fps for things I want more frame choices for fast action.
That's it for today's first impressions. Tomorrow I'm off into the field, and probably starting my Internet silent time. So consider today a tease for what's upcoming…
Update: Okay, first impression became first.1 impression: fixed reference to finger positions on Fn buttons.
