Nikon more than doubles the dual-format burst performance of the Z9 with 1.10 firmware update

@Pseudonym

The Z9 doesn't currently support 8K/60, it's been promised in a future firmware update.

Still a little bit better than your A7II’s
XAVC S (Requires SDXC memory card)
1920 x 1080 60p Avg. 50Mbps 😀

@Yxa

Not sure if you're talking to me, but I don't have an A7II.

Its 2K specs were standard in 2014.

I had the Panasonic GH4 in 2014 it did 4k so I don’t know what you ate talking about

2K video was the standard for FF MILC, especially at that price point.

I had the 4K GH4 which was good, but it was far from the FF quality of the time, resolution doesn't make up for other shortcomings.

Having said that, the GH4 was better for video than the A72 and the A72 was far better at stills.
These are hybrids and the Sony was more stills oriented, the GH the opposite.

@JPM29
You must be inhumane. When I have fighting cats with 20fps you have a leg in the back on one frame and on the next one the blow already landed in the other felines face. How do you get the moment before the blow with outstretched claws without bursts? How do you use your brain faster than humanly possible to get that without bursts?

That is the biggest issue faced by most of us forum dwellers. I too am guilty of this. Well said.

Just watch a concert on TV and point your camera at the screen. You'll get all the best shots without having to fight through the audience. Heck, you won't even need a press pass!

@Pseu

All of the Nikon mirrorless bodies are cheaper than Sony equivalents. It doesn't seem to have made any difference in terms of uptake.

The A1 has never had a price drop, so it cannot have another one.

@Pseu_Pseu_Pseudonym
> It just keeps getting better and better.
> Sony will need to give the A1 another price drop.

Okay, the Nikon Z9's buffer length has now increased from a rather short three seconds (v1.0 firmware) to a more useful eight seconds (v1.1 FW)

The Sony A1 seems to be able to buffer at least 20 seconds of 20fps shooting RAWs (400 frames at 20fps = 20 seconds):

"[..] I tested shooting at the maximum 20 frames per second in 50-megapixel raw along with a JPEG backup and I fired at least 400 frames before I gave up waiting for the [Sony A1's] buffer to kick in. This is absolutely insane"
https://petapixel.com/2021/03/02/sony-alpha-1-review-yeah-it-really-is-that-good/

Thus, I'm afraid I don't really see here any compelling reason for Sony to drop the A1's price...
Heck, it might even be a case of "you get what you pay for".

Latex Switches: The A1 has had 2 price drops in my country in 6 months, I know because I bought it before the first cut.

I paid almost $10000 and it's now almost $8000.

https://www.digidirect.com.au/sony-alpha-a1-body-only

Wheel: Australians had stock a few weeks ago, it's only trickling through, but there are dozens of them here our and about, mostly NPS members who pre-ordered. I've left a deposit however I'm not NPS and am told February to March.

a) I'm a Sony A1 shooter (and owner)
b) You're (stills shooters) forgetting that the Z9 obliterates the A1 in video, for example no 8K60p for Sony shooters, no 8K RAW for A1 shooters.

I overpaid for my $10000 A1 by $2000 already and I'm still behind in video specification whilst being about on par (for all real life shooting) in the stills department.

The Z9 is fairly close to an Ursa 12K in terms of video, it loses out a little (just a little) resolution, but it adds full time fast and accurate AF. Oh yeah, on the side it's basically an A1 as far as stills are concerned.

Sony was right to drop the price, but they were wrong to burn us early adopters with a $2000 penalty.

You paid for your a1 knowing what its price and performance were at the time of purchase. There will always be a future camera that has more impressive specs or price or value. That's just the way it is.

I preordered the A1 at the same price you did, and I noticed that price, too. But since I got mine I've shot 80 000 images (I only shoot stills), and thoroughly enjoyed doing so. When I saw that price my first reaction was "do I want another one?"

But hey, if you want to resent it, I can't stop you :-)

I never said I wasn't aware of what I was doing, my post was Sony may have to have another price drop, which is basically what I said when Nikon launched the Z9 and what Sony did the first time.

The second time I think was in reaction to what .y local store owner said to me and I quote verbatim;

'hybrid shooters who own or were buying an A1 are considering and more often than not switching to the Z9 which we think is putting pressure on Sony (Australia) to reduce pricing'.

That was at Z9 launch. Since then two price decreases have been ushered in and I'm betting on a third since A1 sales have decreased (according to store data not my guesstimate).

It's not a probelm, I'm not asking Sony for my money back, I knew what I was paying, I'm just making my observation and opinion public.

I expect the A1 to be AUD7000 in a year, which is $1000 more than I paid for my A9 when it was new and $4000 less than I paid for the A1 about a year ago.

You paid AUD11k for an A1? Ouch! That’s more the the RRP at launch. I paid just under 10k, ordered the day it was announced. And I thought that was a fair price, particularly considering that the preorder price on a Canon 1Ds III was AUD11k in 2007 dollars!

The Z9 has some interesting features, but not enough to make up for the weight as far as I am concerned. The R3 has one interesting feature (that eye-directed AF).

I am looking forward to see the rest of this generation of Sony cameras. The A9II and A7RV will make it clear what Sony’s vision for their range looks like.

No, I said $10,000, not $11,000 and that was a rounding up of a few bucks.

Digi Direct (where I purchased) and others were all locked at that price when it was new, presumably Sony Australia had forced them to sell at RRP (that's a guess, I don't know).

It went down to just under $9K a few months ago and it's just under $8K now.

The only way to avoid the $10K price tag at launch was to purchase grey stock and I wasn't doing that to save a few hundred, Digi Direct have been very supportive when I've had minor issues.

Do you even have a camera , Rubber?

@Yxa

We've even owned the same camera - the Nikonos IVa.

If you weren't such a doorknob on here we could have even discussed it.

@Pseudonym

"You're (stills shooters) forgetting that the Z9 obliterates the A1 in video, for example no 8K60p for Sony shooters, no 8K RAW for A1 shooters."

You're forgetting that the A1 has nearly a stop and a half more dynamic range in video over the Z9. And that the Z9 does not allow backup video recording to the second card - two things that are likely to be much more useful than internal RAW recording.

The A1 also outputs 16 bit RAW over HDMI so it's hardly limited and the Z9 currently does not shoot 8K/60 - this is promised in a future firmware update.

There's also no reason why Sony might not offer this in the future as the hardware of both cameras is indistinguishable.

cb
I thought that Rubber seemingly working for Sony would have all their latest and greatest gear.
Maybe we should talk about the autofocus of the A7II, or maybe not…🙂

Rubber bands, please don't state facts and believe I'll just accept them, there is absolutely no way you can capture true 16bit 8K footage from an A1.

It might be a 16bit file, bit it's more likely to be 10bit, the same way Canon told their customers the 5D2 output 1080p when it was really 720p up-rezzed.

And no, a stop of DR isn't better than 8K60, that's 8K slow motion that the A1 can't achieve and raw, which the A1 also can't achieve, arguably more beneficial than a stop of DR and the nonsense of 16bit output.

I've seen the Z9 footage for myself, it's marvelous, the Z9 is a better video camera than the A1, the A1 has other attributes, it's smaller, lighter and perhaps slightly better at stills shooting.

No, they aren't the same hardware. Strike 2.

@Pseu_Pseu_Pseudonym - "Digi Direct (where I purchased) and others were all locked at that price when it was new, presumably Sony Australia had forced them to sell at RRP"

no, sony didn't "force" any australian retailer to sell at any price... i explained that to you already, but you keep repeating it.

the problem in australia is that there aren't laws against retail price gouging/price fixing and there aren't any manufacturer/retailer agreements, like we have in the states, it's the wild west down there:

"There is no general prohibition against price gouging in Australia." https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=4ec6dda7-ff05-40e8-8d50-a3c44c5f91eb

stop blaming sony for what your camera retailer charged you.

@Pseu_Pseu_Pseudonym - "my post was Sony may have to have another price drop"

no, sony has never dropped the a1 price, that is not true.

@Pseu_Pseu_Pseudonym - "I've seen the Z9 footage for myself, it's marvelous, the Z9 is a better video camera than the A1"

"Unfortunately, it seems like the [z9]full-frame sensor is NOT properly downsampled for the 4K ProRes HQ mode. Definitely a lost chance for Nikon. ...the Sony A1/Sony a7 IV are doing this 4K downsampling correctly and hence get dynamic range results of about 12.8 stops at SNR = 2 and 14 stops at SNR = 1.
...dynamic range results stay below expectations – the Z 9 shows about 1.5 stops less dynamic range than its competitors from Sony and Panasonic.
This result is confirmed by the latitude test – 6 stops are possible with the Nikon Z 9. That is 1 stop less than the Sony a7S III and a7 IV and 2 stops less than the Sony A1 and Panasonic S5, S1, and S1H."
https://www.cined.com/nikon-z-9-lab-test-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-and-latitude-test/

There is absolutely a price gouging law in Australia, any collusion is illegal, as it should be, enforcement is another story and the ACCC is a known toothless tiger, however, since online purchasing from overseas local retailers are forced to keep honest.

I find the 4K from the A1 to be significantly worse than the 8K, which isn't an issue because I'd never shoot an 8K capable camera at a lower resolution.
When I down-sample I do it in post.

Again, there has been a price reduction in Australia for the Sony A1, twice, by all retailers. It's obvious that was on the back of competition, obviously the Z9.

@Pseu_Pseu_Pseudonym - "Again, there has been a price reduction in Australia for the Sony A1, twice, by all retailers. ...I'm not asking Sony for my money back."

again, a1 price did NOT drop in the u.s. because we have MAP(minimum advertised price) agreements.

you have repeatedly made false claims that sony is responsible for you paying too much, because you don't understand that australia does NOT have MAP agreements between retailers and manufacturers.

"Australia's competition law prohibits RPM(Resale Price Maintenance)...
By comparison, in the United States, MAP policies are generally lawful provided they restrict only advertised, not actual, resale prices, and are unilaterally adopted and implemented. Similarly, in the United States, both minimum and maximum RPM agreements are subject to rule of reason, rather than per se unlawful, treatment under federal antitrust law." https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/accc-brings-resale-price-maintenance-26617/

@Pseu_Pseu_Pseudonym - "I find the 4K from the A1 to be significantly worse than the 8K"

no, you claimed that the z9 can record 8kp60 when it currently can't, that "the Z9 obliterates the A1 in video", when in fact the z9 has poor dynamic range, it's down by two stops of d.r. vs. the a1/s5/s1/s1h, with no nikon fix promised, in fact nikon blamed the weak z9 d.r. on prores, see the nikon response that was quoted in that cined link i posted.

the a1 is an overall more capable more well-rounded camera than the z9, with none of the many bugs that need to be ironed out on the z9.

What competition? Can you buy a Z9?

I can't speak for your neck of the woods, but here, yes.

For the Z9 you want a CFE car with sustained write speeds of 1GB/s minimum to support get the biggest buffers. If you don't care about huge buffers slower cards will work fine. Also the best XQD cards are actually better than the worst CFE cards. Also if you plan on doing 8K 60 you'll want the beast spec cards. For 4K any decent CFE card will do just buy on reliability not just price.

(Sorry posted in wrong place disregard)

You can shoot 20fps with slower cards too, it is just that the buffer will fill sooner.

Another factor is operating temperature of the card. The fact is that the fastest cards have also the lowest temperature (around 40°C or even lower). Some of the slower cards can run really hot, at even 80°C.

Also, if you compare CFE Type B with Type A cards, you may find that Type A cards capacity max out already at 160GB, are significantly slower, and are higher priced (usd per GB):
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1578712-REG/sony_160gb_cfexpress_type_a.html

True, but if you are shooting birds in flight at 1/4000, the difference between 10 and 20 FPS is important, both to get the best picture and to be sure to have a really sharp image!

Well yes but would you put retreads on a brand new Ferrari? Sure, you and drive it but not so fast before it bites. So a fast camera demands the best to deliver the best. 😀

Agree, but you are talking about something very specific, for the general public, the "Disney dad" who needs a camera to capture moments, their phones are enough.

There are still a lot of family moments where a cellphone camera is not enough. Kid's school play, kid's graduation ceremony, kid's soccer game, etc. are all places where I see moms and dads trying to take photos with their phones and iPads. They pinch and zoom the screen thinking they're getting good closeup shots and videos. But later, when they post their blurry pixelated pics to a Facebook group and I post my pics from my camera, they are astonished that the pics from their "best phone camera" pale in comparison to pics from a real camera. I don't even bring a pro camera to these events. I'm talking about an old Nikon J5 with a cheap 10-100mm lens. Phone cameras just don't have long enough zoom lenses yet.

"Not enough" depends. For sharing online where 99.99999% of all images end up, latest-gen cellphones like the iPhone 13 Pro, are good enough for soccer moms and beyond. That is where the market is heading which is beyond discussion.

That is why, camera makers will focus on high-end products, as we can already see.

Even 10 years ago at my kids school only 2 of us had 'real' cameras with decent zooms. Any time there was an event half the parents would rush to the front of the stage taking pictures of their kids with their phones and the rest would be taking videos from their seats.

Leica users are sure fond of boasting about their stack of cash, and fear mongering about doom.
Don't worry, neither Canon, nor Fuji or Nikon are going to stop making sub $1000 cameras anytime soon. The Z fc and X-S10 are very capable devices and their successors will appear in due time. Folks can ignore these lies spread by Sony/Leica rich boy trolls.

Smartphone pics may be technically great but handling a phone as a camera is still hell for me. Even the worst, flimsy, non-griphaving, dedicated camera is way better at that.

Yeah well I'm seeing people getting their phones snatched by monkeys because they have to come close to take photos and yes I do hope that trend continues.

The point is not whether smartphone cameras are better than something like a D50. The point is that they are good enough for what most people want. Easy to use, always on hand, snap shots good enough for facebook, instagram, etc.

Phone cameras are very good now but unless all people become interested in casual snaps only, there will always be a place for cameras vs phones, that is, unless phones can develop to have viewfinders which is highly unlikely to happen because they will not be pocketable anymore. A phone in current form can never replace a camera for nature photographers so there will still be lower level cameras for people who can't afford a Nikon Z9 or similar

For utility purposes, phones will do. But for photography as a hobby, not enough. For any artistic work, definitely not. You simply cannot beat the laws of physics.

Yes, 99% of the moms and dads and kids out there will find their phone sufficient, but the same 99% would probably have never bought a camera in the first place.

Did the advent of cameras stop people from buying brushes, canvases and oil to paint?

The camera market will shrink for sure, but it will eventually stabilize, because there are enough people out there who still find photography a fun activity to pursue and phones are just not up to the task.

Pre-digital the SLR market was relatively small, most people, if they had a camera, used compact cameras of one sort or another. With digital came a boom in compact cameras and DSLR's which were now easier to use and cheap because film was no longer needed. Add to that frequent upgrades because the technology was advancing so quickly. Phones have essentially replaced compact cameras and DSLR / MILC volumes are heading back to pre-digital levels, in part because only enthusiasts and pros want them and in part because people don't need to upgrade as often.

Actually why not use both, they are all tools, use them accordingly. Some are more specialist than others, its not always that I could bring a big camera/lens but I'd still want the best IQ possible at any given time. I mean cinema doesn't look at the current line up of MILCs and go 'Oh these are gonna replace cine cams'

The same thing happens with every single hobby.

For example, high-end audio fans can't understand how millions of people are more than happy with "crappy" 20-bucks SkullCandy headphones bought at TJMaxx when they paid 6 grand for their Ultrasone ED5's.

Again, 99% of the population doesn't care/need to buy anything else.

It is a difference in someone wanting to take pictures and someone into photography. someone who wants to take pictures will use their phone. Someone who loves photography will always want a proper ILC camera.

Based on the timing and content of this SW I bet that these features were in the development pipeline since well before the release of the camera and just didn't quite make it in time.

There's a shortage of chips but not necessarily a shortage of engineers 😀

@Kerensky97 yes true, and I think it's will be good that this update will already be out (and circulating) by the time the bulk of people receive their Z9's. To those who already have them, obviously they will be able to report back to the rest of us on the improvements.

Horshack let me know if you know any good engineers. I’m hiring. :)

@MikeRan I’ll shamelessly recommend my son LOL. Started building thousand-piece Lego sets since 4 years old, always wanted to do engineering, straight As for his entire academic career to date, with an IQ of 155…

Two problems though…He’s only 14 and his current passion is playing soccer…

We need EEs with some software coding experience to help us automate testing of semiconductors that operate up to 100GHz. Maybe in a few years. :)

He does do coding! I was just joking about the hiring part, that would constitute child labor 😁

This country needs a lot more engineers!

Yeah I know. I did employ my son as he graduated high school to build a database for us. When he’s a high school senior PM me. :)

@panther fan: Another option I've often wondered about is having the ability to shoot all images to one card, but then to also transfer those images to a second card when not shooting. A RAID-esque setup, if you will. It'd burn through battery, I'm sure, but that way you get all the benefits of speed shooting to one card, but can also have the camera make copies onto an identical card when the shutter isn't pressed, in between shots.

I occasionally wonder why camera manufacturers decide it’s impossible to read images off the card for subsequent processing.

Using your example above to support dual card writing the camera could write odds to one card and evens to another. And when the burst is finished and the camera has some idle time it could read the evens/odds from one card and write them back to the other. Of course if there is an initial write failure you don’t benefit from the redundant writes but if one card gets run over by a truck well then you do.

And in the case here where it seems the CPU doesn’t have enough power to process the distortion corrections in real time the camera could write raws to one card and then during idle time read them and write the JPgs to the other.

Edit: Gannon we were typing at the same time. :)

@Gannon Burgett
Oh, I imagined the same thing. But thought this would be too much feature to ask for a first version.

Basically, if the camera is idle it copies the images from card 1 to card 2 and vice versa. Would also be a good solution for cameras with asymmetric card slots. Shoot to the fast first, copy to the slow later.

You could go even more extreme. For example if you want to shoot RAW+JPEG, but be as fast as possible you could shoot basically just RAW, and then have the camera autogenerate JPEGs when the camera is idle and the bandwidth not needed

Edit: @Mike
Seems like we had the same thought

Ok. It’s clear we are all on the same page. Haha

The reason why camera manufacturers did not implement the later JPEG generation or copying is probably that users are st#pid. If the battery dies or you take out the card while it's processing in the background this would lead to a bunch of complaints.

That's why I think the easiest thing to ask for is the alternate shooting mode. It is also the easiest to implement and the most foolproof one.

Camera just has to keep that red card activity light on. Or when you switch off the camera the camera says “still writing”

In fact with a little thought they can make it all transparent to the user so they don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes.

Are there three of us all agreeing on something in the comment section?

2022 might be off to a good start after all. Haha.

It’s a Christmas miracle!

@panther fan, https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/40905950

@Horshack
With 2012 you were way before me on that. But even in 2012 that wasn't a new idea. I mean, after all, it is basically raid 0 at a filesystem level instead of block-level.. The fact that the idea has been around so long just means that it is even more unlikely that we get it in any new camera. Surely the folks in japan also now about such basic concepts and didn't find it worthwhile

@panther, Agreed, which is why I prefaced my 2012 post with "This has probably been thought of before" 😀 To which Joseph S Wisniewski replied with "It has. I posted about it maybe 5 years ago, when dual slot cameras like D3 first hit."

That shouldn't discourage us though. It's a good idea nonetheless and congrats to everyone including yourself who has thought of it. Well done.

As you indicate, technically there is no redundancy but since the feature would only need to be employed during heavy shooting bursts (buffer pressure) there is actually what I'd term "spatial/temporal redundancy" for the feature - each frame would be very similar to the last so even if one card fails the other would have an almost identical photo. You may not always have a redundant copy of the absolute best shot in the sequence but in most cases you will or something very close to it.

@panther, Btw, keep in mind that on flagship cameras employing the fastest media cards available (CFE), the media interface/card is not the bottleneck - the image processing chip is (Expeed). So while this feature would certainly help in allowing slower (cheaper) cards or in asymmetric card setups like CFE/SD it wont necessarily improve write throughput at the top end of the market. I dive into how Expeed can throttle card throughput here: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63645424. That post was specific to Z6/Z7, so the Expeed upper limit is higher today but media cards have gotten faster as well.

I’ve got a novel idea. Why don’t we just cut the crap with all these dumb little CFE SSD wanna be’s and just have cine mags with real M.2 SSDs that can write 6 GB/s without breaking a sweat no buffer necessary. They honestly aren’t that much bigger, far less expensive, have much higher capacities, and far more reliable.

There’d be no need for redundant shooting since they are so reliable and would solve all these issues for good. Cinema cameras have been doing this for ages. Just integrate it into the vertical grip and you’d barely notice a size increase.

@JPM29
Instant backup wont improve any photo as it is just a copy. A copy can't get better but having a backup lets you sleep better. You want it for the same reason as redundancy in a nas like with raid or unraid. I've heard of some people space is wasted, we don't need redundancy just a large storage and save money. Yeah, some learned their lessons when a drive failure occurred.

Alternating recording would be the best of both worlds, having full storage and not loosing everything from a time in case of a failure.

@Brett8883, Not sure I follow your reasoning. If you have a single card and it fails then you lose all your images. If you have two cards and one fails then you only lose half your images, and the loss will not be temporally correlated since the images are interleaved between the cards, meaning you'll have some surviving images for each shooting location.

What leads you to believe that SSDs are more reliable than CFE cards? The underlying flash technology is the same, including the NAND chips themselves and the data-loss prevention technology like wear leveling, parity/CRC/ECC protection, recoverable-error remapping.

My point about redundancy is it’s only redundant if you write the same data to both cards. Otherwise you increase the chances of data loss.

let’s just say for simplicity sake there’s a 25% chance of a card failing. If you have two cards that increases the chance of a card failing to 50%. Whereas one ssd only has a 25% chance of a failure, though it would be catastrophic. Though perhaps you have better chance of data recovery with a SSD? I’m not sure about that though.

I understand that with burst even if you lose half the photos you still have some to fall back on but if you are using burst it’s probably because something is happening really quick and who knows if the burst is fast enough to get almost identical frames. I think for that you really need 120 fps in most sports situations. For every other situation where you aren’t shooting quick bursts shooting half and half would make your data loss probability worse.

The other benefit (other than possible performance) of two cards in an alternating write mode vs a sequential write to one card and overflow to the second card is that if you lose one of the two cards (corruption, damage, lost, etc) you still have half the images from your whole shoot. Instead of all the images from the first half (or the second)

Not sure about you but even during a portrait shoot I take 2-3 pics just in case I get a half smile or eyes closed.

Just another thought.

@Brett8883
Well even in that world there is still the need for redundant media in the camera. Not all shooting scenarios are the here described high speed / single event type where you can benefit from the increased write speed.

There are still scenarios where you want a true simultaneous backup.
1. an internal SSD in the camera also is not more or less safe than a regular SSD. You also wouldn't trust the SSD in your computer with 4TB of data without any backup. There are hundreds of scenarios where that can go wrong
2. smaller cards are your friend when it comes to safety. If you are on a trip and regularly swap cards, and then fry your camera on day 11 in saltwater your would only lose that last part. Not all 4TB of internal storage with no backup
3. Splitting media is also an important safety measure. By storing the two cards in different places/bags you are better protected against common causes of image loss, like bag theft/ misplacement, camera theft, and other accidents

If I may ask.

If you don’t intend to buy a Z9 why are you deciding to use some of your precious time on this planet to write numerous comments about a minor firmware update of a canera you seem to consider isn’t on par with the one you own?

I am just being curious. You appear to be a well educated smart person and this seems to be a very poor usage of your time.

Are any of my comments off base?
Do you disagree?

Or you just want to keep non Nikon lovers out of Nikon articles?

Anyway if you read my comments I’m almost completely supporting Nikon here. No? What’s the problem?

(Crickets)

My question wasn’t clear?

First degree, no hidden intent or meaning.

I didn’t comment about the fairness or objectivity or your comments did I?

I just fail to comprehend your priorities in life and am curious about things I don’t understand.

Oh please. You have posted so much Anti Sony/Anti Canon drivel you either have no self awareness when you say you "fail to comprehend" or you yourself are trolling me. Please. Move along. I have a right to post on whatever I see fit to post about.

Not sure why you feel attacked by this question.

As far as your comments go:

- "Anti-Canon" comments? Some of my comments could certainly be perceived as anti-Canon by Canon fan boys I suppose. But 99.9% of which in threads devoted to products I use. Either Nikon or Fuji.

- Anti-Sony comments? Not a single line. Feel free to search, you will find none.

But I don't remember ever roaming the Canon/Sony forums and writing tens of comments in those threads.

You challenging my priorities in life and you wonder why I feel attacked by this question.

Your comments demonstrate a complete lack of self awareness...

Expeed processors simply don't have the power, the ability to do fancy stuff the processor in Z 9 does, not even in dual setup. FW updates can only do so much.

It seems fair to say that nobody knows what % of the Expeed 7 compute potential is currently tapped into by the Z9, nor the CPU cost of the various aspects of the AF breakthrough features and therefore how close Nikon could get with the Z7II through firmware updates.

Statements such as “there are limitations to what can be done in firmware” while true therefore tell us absolutely nothing about the improvement potential with the Z7II.

And finally the first thing would be to start looking objectively at how good the Z7II already is vs the R5. It’s much better in most situations than it’s being given credit for.

I own both a z72 and an r5, and to say the z is much better than the canon in most situation just doesn't seem to ring true, at least in my experience. For most things I'd call it mostly a draw, but when it comes to af tracking and fps the canon blows the z out of the water. I like the iq of both about equally, maybe a tiny edge to nikon..but that's about it from my vantagepoint. When shooting wildlife I'm shooting canon 100% of the time. The performance difference is not slight, it is huge. The canon is a much more expensive camera so it should perform better...and it does.

But the potential is there. And we know how many people create a whole idea of what a camera is like based purely on specs...

@JPM - The Z9 is not an Instagram or lifestyle camera, it is a professional sports and action camera where capturing the precise decisive moment is everything.

When things are happening fast, (split second fast), you need frame rates like this camera will produce, or pros do. It's kinda like a performance car, you rarely will hear the driver say " gee, I wish I'd bought a slower one"!

45MP these day is really not whole a lot to process, even with my M1 Mac mini it seems like a easy job, not to mention on the Mac Pro and the Macbook pro, I really don't see that much difference between processing a 24MP D500 image vs my D850 raw any more with those machine. yes, on my old 2013 Macbook pro I saw pretty huge difference.

Also, it's really easy to select the photo you want before you even go the the Post Processing, you can use applications like Photo Mechanic ( and whole bunch similar products) to just quickly go thru and select the ones you like then just process those picture, you don't have to sit there and wait for LR or some slow applications, even I come back from airshow with 2000, 3000 shots, it will take me less than an hour to crank out some picture i want to share.

I don't always keep my finger on the shutter and come home with 5000 picture all the time, but there is time the 20/30 frame per second comes in handy,

@darngoodphotos.... I disagree... it's an everything camera. Not relegated to sports. Just as the D850 was the "do it all" camera (minus the higher FPS of the D5/6), the Z9 is the same. Wedding, lifetstyle, sports, architecture, video etc. Before anyone says 'you can do those with a Z6 or Z7', yes you can. But each of those requires accepting a trade off and compromise and a third party recording monitor to get the best out of video. The Z9 does all that plus has better video without requiring the need to record out to a monitor. People keep putting labels on what any given camera is for. Just let people sort that out for themselves.

Yeah the LCD on the back is still no replacement for a proper monitor. Not saying the Z9's screen is bad, just saying the purpose of a monitor/recorder isn't just being a recorder.

20 fps is more than enough and the less we have to use it the best it is. Up to 120 fp, moreover with RAW is pure nonsense, but it looks like we have here a lot of amateurs testing their gear more than focussing on the photo they focus on the number of it and on their buffer. When we cover, professionnally or not, different events, we don't want thousands of photos for each but a few hundreds good ones in jpeg. Same for the resolution, 20 to 24 MP is more than enough, still, I know some using 45 MP to post on..... Facebook. Amusing.

Ugggh Facebook. Their compression destroys pictures. For a test, I put the exact same JPEG on Flickr and on Facebook. Put each in a separate window on the same browser, same screen, same computer.. sat my untrained eye, photography illiterate friend down and asked if he could see any difference.. he asked why I destroyed the one on the right (the FB copy).

My 4 megapixel Camedia E10 can more than max out Facebook's display if shot thoughtfully. Let alone any modern camera nicer than a cheap phone. I use it because I kinda have to when promoting my shoots.. but I sure don't like it!

@Mr Bolton, I agree, Facebook is often the best way to make the promotion, along with Instagram. Losing quality is better than a 50 MP hidden and unseen in the computer.

News from Japan say next batch may be shipped only in late 2022

I don’t believe that news. I expect Nikon will be shipping rather continuously though the volumes will be limited by the supply chain.

User123 etc: That sounds like a troll post.

https://nikonrumors.com/2022/01/05/the-next-batch-of-nikon-z9-cameras-is-preparing-to-ship.aspx/

@User1234567890 LOL! By "news" you mean the rumor posted at SONYrumors?

BTW: Isn't it funny that even at Sony rumors they're obsessed about making the Z9 look bad? Is there not enough good rumors to talk about sony product that they have to make up stuff to put down Nikon?

Next batch has been already shipped
Sony rumors try hard lol

The Oct-2022 story is coming from a banner posted by 2 large retailers in Japan.

But Japan is also where I got my Z9 on 24-Dec without being an NPS member.

We don’t know how many Z9 already shipped in Japan (it seems a lot) nor whether the information posted by these retailers is going to remain as is.

Knowing the Japanese mentality they probably decided to under commit by a wide margin to avoid having to deal with thousands of inquiries by frustrated customers. Japanese can both be the best suppliers in the world and also act incredibly immature as customers…

So in short this piece of information was blow incredibly out of proportion by people with an anti-Nikon agenda. Not too surprising.

@Ruby Rod is right. There's a reason for those decimal points in version numbers 😀

Fully agree with Ruby. When the company I work for releases it’s new service pack of their operating system it basically receives tons of maintenance updates on day one, just because there is a month of delay when the gold master is ready and marketing and sales kicks off.

I know
Doubling burst speed in software would be quite a step

@MikeRan
All companies have foot notes. But the foot note king has to be Canon, especially with their R5

But this is just a weird one for Nikon. Especially since distortion correction and chromatic aberration correction usually are done in one step. With stuff like anti-flicker or file formats, I understand the technical reason. Even Canons "battery has to be above 50% charge" can at least be kinda explained. But distortion correction?

I agree about Canon being the worst. I guess not enough processing power to apply the distortion correction to the JPG files before they are written is the reason. But not sure. Total speculation.

Anyway it doesn’t take away from the Z9 which people purchased with the previous limits understood. (And in many cases very generous limits.)

In this case I think this firmware update is going to end up being a don’t care for many. Just shoot raw and not have this limit. Or deal with the buffer restriction if you need raw+JPG. I don’t see many people going into the menu regularly to turn on or off the distortion correction to open the buffer up.

As I said the timing is just ironic given all the discussion about corrections previously.

Distortion correction probably eats away processing capacity that is needed to keep the image transfer speed up. I've seen similar processing related quirks with other, mostly older mirrorless cameras without the manufacturer mentioning it at all.

@MikeRan
But why don't you need to turn off chromatic aberration correction then? You can do both in one calculation

Edit: chromatic aberration correction is basically just distortion correction but with slightly different amounts for the red green and blue channel. You don't need additional distortion correction if you also bake in the correction in this calculation step

A performance limitation of Expeed wherein it can't sustain the image pipeline throughput for the data transformations involved with the distortion correction. I'm guessing Nikon could've added additional logic/gates to support it if they wanted but considered it a lower priority since such corrections aren't as critical for the sports/action shooting usage cases associated with high FPS shooting.

But this buffer depth improvement is only in RAW+JPG writing. So I’m presuming in this mode the shooter wants their JPGs.

@MikeRan, One must also consider embedded JPGs in raws, which are always generated irrespective of whether the user also enabled JPG shooting. Presumably the corrections for embedded JPGs honor the same correction settings as standalone JPGs, although with a much smaller data set.

Consider this scenario:

Lateral CA correction requires just warping the red and blue planes of the Bayer set to align them with a reference geometry. That reference geometry, of course, is the green plane occupying 50% of a typical RGGB Bayer set.

Thus, if the green plane doesn't need to be touched during CA correction, only half of the pixels (the red and blue planes of the Bayer set) need to be sent through the warping process.

For distortion correction, OTOH, the green plane cannot be considered to be the alignment reference anymore, and must be warped following the geometric prescriptions of the lens being used.

The number of pixels to be processed by the warping algorithm — i.e. the computational load — thus doubles compared with the CA correction-only mode.