Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera announced

Thursday 28 October 2021, 20:40 by Elja Trum | 3,901 views | 2 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

It was announced in March that it was on the way, and plenty of details have been released over the past few weeks. Today it is official: the Nikon Z9. The high-end full-frame mirrorless camera for professional photographers.

Nikon Z9 specifications

- 45.7 megapixel stacked CMOS sensor
- Sensitivity: 64 - 25,600 ISO
- 30 frames per second (Jpeg, full resolution)
- 20 frames per second (RAW)
- 120 frames per second (Jpeg, 11 megapixel)
- 8K video, 30p (60p will also become available in the future)
- 3.69-megadot OLED electronic viewfinder
- Tilting display (4-axis)
- Dual CFexpress card slots

This afternoon I got to play with the new Nikon Z9 for a little while. It is an impressive and solid camera, and it feels like a professional DSLR in your hand too, even though it is a mirrorless camera.

For a mirrorless camera, it is a sizeable camera. It is just slightly more compact than the Nikon D6, by around 20 per cent. The fact that it has a second grip makes the size fairly clear, of course.

What stands out is that you keep a continuous view in the electronic viewfinder when taking photos. The image does not go black or stutter. There is an effect visible, so you can at least still see that you have taken a photo.

The camera is not just interesting for sports photographers. In fact, the camera is a real all-rounder. The 45.7 megapixel sensor is also excellent for studio work, of course, and the 8K video is more than you probably want in a video camera.

If your memory card is large enough, you can keep filming continuously for up to 125 minutes. So you do not have to worry about overheating.

Autofocus

The autofocus is incredibly fast and has too many options to explore fully in an hour. I mainly shot in 3D mode, where the camera looks for the subject itself and focuses automatically.

The camera automatically looks at what it considers more important. If it sees a car, it focuses on it. If it sees a face next to or in that car, the focus shifts to the face. If it can detect the eyes, it focuses on the eyes of the person in the car.

I mentioned it briefly already, but ‘vehicles’ is now also a type of subject that the camera can focus on automatically. So a train, aeroplane, bicycle, motorbike or car is recognised in the frame and automatically focused on.

With animals, it can automatically focus on dogs, cats and birds. With people, it can recognise bodies, faces and eyes, and focus on them.

Speed demon

That fast autofocus is useful with the huge number of photos the camera can take per second. I suspect that even most sports photographers will not use it in the maximum mode, as you simply get too many photos.

Price and availability

The Nikon Z9 has a recommended retail price of 5,999 euros. It should be in shops from December, but bear in mind that availability, as with almost everything at the moment, will be limited.

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