Nikon Z6 II sample gallery

Thanks, but I meant the DPReview review.

LOL, type A won’t be the future as it’s only being used by one company.
Type B is much faster, holds more capacity and is more sturdy.

I just hope when it comes the review is fair and balanced and not the frankly pathetic, agenda-based, biased outpourings of bile you see on YouTube about Nikon. Sad that a small cabal of "influencers" feel the need to bring down a global and long-established brand in their craven pursuit of likes, clicks and comments to drive their YouTube income and T Shirt and preset sales.

Wheeler has already put out whiny reviews complaining about things like the top LCD being too 80s (really?). I am sure Granger and Northrup are sharpening their knives with clickbait headlines and fake controversy hoping for a YouTube payday as they dump on Nikon. Sad.

Wheeler, Northrup and Grenger are notorious Nikon fans. Not long ago they used to bash canon all day and promote nikon all day. I don't think there's a conspiracy. Nikon is simply paying the price of missing the transition from film to digital, they don't make their own sensors, so Sony is controlling what Nikon can produce..

Funny Valentine//

I am sure they were biased before too. Conspiracy not required to drive biases but there are no free lunches.

What is important though is that their reviews are so poor and unfortunately newbies don't understand that.

Wheelers reviews are not reviews, they are opinion pieces...they don't show side by side comparisons, no actual facts, have major errors and contradictions throughout.
He complains about the top LED, yet Fuji uses this same led on their top of the line models.

Is there any evidence Ken Wheeler has ever even taken a photo? His "reviews" never feature any images taken by him or footage of him using the equipment.

Northrups love the D850, then the A7Riii, then the A7Riv, then the Canon R5. and so it goes.

What they all have in common is bashing the slightest thing (no flippy screen - the camera is worthless) and generate lots of hype with clickbait and fake controversy as they make money that way. Sad but they would rather destroy a camera brand if it drives up their traffic, comments and YT income.

You actually quote an opinion piece by EOSHD that links itself to Theo.
Talk about bad to worse, why don't you just share links to QAnon.

@GrapeJam
I do not really understand what you are referring to as a "color science" or "too digital".
Having experience shooting different brands I noticed of course how they use different approaches for interpreting the same scenes in therms of hue, saturation, contrast etc. These differences are noticeable at first glance.
However, when we are looking on the images of modern Nikon cameras alone, I fail to see big color differences between generations. I do not want to say there are none, just they are not obvious. Starting from D7000 and D600 I do not see any significant deviation. They are all good.

I’ll have to agree with GrapeJam here. The Z colors look too digital. Earlier Nikon generations looked much more organic and natural. And before anyone asks about Sony greens or Canon reds let me just say it’s not the colors themselves that makes them look digital... it’s the lack of intertonal variation in Z files.

Fuji would be a better choice?

I also prefer the D750. Best colors of any camera in my opinion ...
But I wouldn't buy one in 2020.

FPrime - any chance to stick the knife in right? Get a life.

😂 you made me spit out my coffee laughing.
Is it just me or is every comment he makes negative regardless of the Nikon subject?

😂 you made me spit out my coffee laughing.
Is it just me or is every comment he makes negative regardless of the Nikon subject?

@fPrime
"...too digital... ...more organic and natural...."

You realize it sound ridiculous, right? :) Zero quantification, just plain subjective statement, which is not possible to prove or check. Get your argumentation in order, otherwise it is hard to take your writing seriously.

@wjan - I take it you started with a D7000 and moved up through a D600 before investing in Z? If that’s the case, then you’ve never shot any of Nikon’s true color kings like the D1X, D100, D200, D40, or D60. No wonder you can’t understand my POV.

The D7000 has a well deserved reputation here for poor color discrimination from its weak CFA. Portrait shooters reported having to constantly fight its rendition of skin tones which often turned skin greenish in shadow zones. If you never noticed any of this, then it’s not surprising you are happy with Z today.

As far as quantification of my POV goes, that data definitely exists. DxOMark has documented a general decline in color accuracy (SMI) over time as manufacturers weakened CFA’s to accommodate high density sensors. Weak CFA’s begat poor color discrimination and with that inevitably went some intertonal variation and came the infamous “digital” look.

Yet speaking of subjective, every time a review is done, regardless of where they stand (for or against) on the Z cameras, they almost universally comment on how great the files are and how beautiful the color science is on Nikon Z cameras.
So fPrime may have his opinion about color science, but it goes against the prevailing opinions of most everyone.
Including many Canon and Fuji shooters in this comment section.

I have shot in the last year Z6, D4, D4S, D850, D780, D5, Z50. Much of it high ISO for sport shutter speeds.

You can review the different cameras and colours in the fiedl for yourself here: https://uncoy.com/photography Everything is processed with DxO Photolab so the playing field is level in terms of post-processing.

Z6, D780, D850, Z50 files are very similar in terms of colours. Best colour is D4S and D4 RAW. Worst colour (but excellent detail resolution) is the D5 by a long way. There's some kind of green in the noise which is very hard to remove.

You wrote:

"DxOMark has documented a general decline in color accuracy (SMI) over time as manufacturers weakened CFA’s to accommodate high density sensors...the infamous “digital” look."

I'd agree that there's something special about Canon 5D and Nikon D700 files (12 MP) but the files with the most similar colours to the 5D are the 5DS R at 50MP. At low ISO of course. At high ISO, all of the Nikon's above do better.

@UncoyDP - Good post, interesting that you see the same greenish shadows in D5 photos that I cited for the D7000. Green shift is actually there in varying degrees for most cameras released post 2008. I first began writing about this in 2013.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/52365420

Also, concur with your sentiment that among CMOS cameras both the D700 and 5D Classic are color kings. I still use both.

@20thCentury - Actually I’ve added lots of “new to me” CCD cameras since the I bought the D700 and 5D. These included the D1X, D200, D100, D60, and Fuji S5 Pro. When one isn’t required to shoot high resolution, one can focus on color fidelity.

Color can be changed to ones liking...resolution, high iso and dynamic range, cannot.

Disagree. Color is intrinsic to the CFA used over the sensor. Even if you custom profile two different brands against the same target they’ll still capture skin tones differently.

@fPrime
You are absolutely correct that they will capture colors differently, but you are absolutely incorrect that you can not adjust the colors to virtually match each other.
This has been discussed and proven numerous times, including online profiles to match the color science of different models and different brands.
But you are missing or ignoring the 2nd half of my reply.
Features and functions from modern sensors/cameras, which cannot be replicated.

@fPrime
Quite on contrary, I started with D40. I also had D200 and D2h, they are all in my gear section here on dpreview, check for yourself.
And again you didn't provide any solid facts (vague referring to dxo is not a fact, as you didn't show your analysis).

@20thCentury This is not correct, due to the mathematics/physics you can't fix a weak CFA after the fact. When color filters overlap, for example some green wavelengths will bleeds into the red channel, and you can't get rid of this color bleed because the sensor did not capture information about the green wave length causing the bleed. So therefore you can't quantify how much to correct the bleeding, which is why increasing color contrast to counter this consequential color greying will only partially fix the problem, because it lacks accuracy.

This is why I laugh at people who say "just shoot RAWs and color correct", no, you can't fix something that was never there due to weak CFA.

And it's sad that all camera manufacturers nowaday keep weakening CFA for "better" noise performance to fill up the specs sheet.

"20thCentury"
Alot of people who sell "canon colors profile for Sony" but virtually all of them are snakes oil sellers, when you try to compare Canon vs the Sony with "canon colors profile" they're completely different. and the difference gets larger when you edit further.

Nice to hear from the chorus of users that don't have basic editing skills.

@20thcentury, you're talking to yourself?

That is true. I just bought a Fuji for landscape photography and I'm still not happy with the colors. They are really unnatural compared to Nikon.
I'm always enthusiastic when out in the field but then a bit disappointed when I see the RAW files on my big screen.
But for street photography they should be good.
Ken Rockwell told me so before but I didn't believe him :)

It's hard to trust someone whose website looks like it hasn't been updated in 20+ years and who has pages and pages of junk out of date articles and whose reviews are not even based on using the camera or lens.

I use Fuji (Street and casual) and Nikon (for everything else) and from my experience Ken is correct.

I heard it said: You dont judge a book by its cover.
;-)
Maybe not judge at all.

For unbeated DR and general image quality: D850

@entoman, when I said chimpanzee AF I was referring to the YouTubers themselves jumping around in front the camera to test the eye AF, when in real life you are not going to photograph people inside a mental institution on a daily basis. It doesn't reflect real life usage. Even the unpredictable movements of children are not as erratic as what the YouTubers did.

EXkurogane - Heaven forbid that anyone would want to focus on the eyes of chimpanzee YouTubers.

Coming next - fingertip-AF, to focus on the arm-waving lunacy of Jared Polin...

@Entoman No I agree that birds and animals move fast, but at the same time, things like AF (or even regular AF) aren't reliable 100% of the time and in those instances then you have to fall back on other methods (which I think some people either are lazy about, or simply don't know what the best method is to use because they've relied on eye AF too much and so they blame the camera when in reality, there is an alternative that can work just as well in a pinch).

Agreed. The only compelling reason I can think of for someone to upgrade is if the weight of DSLRs and DSLR glass is a factor.

There are benefits to getting a Z that you may not have thought of.

e.g. silent shutter is hugely useful for many genres of photography where the clatter of a DSLR can distract the subject, or draw unwanted attention to the photographer.

I'm a DSLR user, but open-minded and I welcome advances that increase my chances of getting the images I want, so I'll be adding a MILC alongside my DSLRs when opportunities to travel open up again.

Uncoy - Yes, I agree re micro-adjust. I micro-adjust my macro lenses at 1:3 scale, but I do it at 15m with my 100-400mm and my wideangles.

It makes sense to carry out micro-adjust at the distances that the lens will in practice be most often used at.

I don't doubt for a moment that MILCs are faster and more accurate when it comes to focusing, but I still greatly prefer the optical experience to the electronic experience.

Lifestyle and spending priorities dictate that I'll stick with my DSLRs for at least another year. I'm definitely a "late adopter" when it comes to cameras, as it seems pointless to change when the gear I already own delivers superb results.

Actually it goes to show that for all the blowhard fake controversy on YouTube, AF tracking is fairly specialist and not needed for every shot as they would imply (and Nikons tracking is fine anyway combined with all the other good reasons to choose the Z cameras).

No I agree from what I've seen. Just wondering.

Not sure but I have been trying to generate banding in shadows by pushing raw files to the extreme and so far no luck... so maybe, as unlikely as it may sound, they have tweaked a few things.

What is the point in doing this? Really.

I've been pushing Raw files from the Z7 for two years and never seen banding. That's just anecdotal, but it does seem to be extremely situation-specific.

I have a Z6, and see it more often than I thought I would, especially in high contrast scenes shot at dawn/dusk, with pushed shadows. I guess it makes sense that they would be less visible in the Z7.

@Barney Britton

In terms of personal experiences - got my Z6 in early 2019, right before the festival of light in my city. High contrast of bright lights and dark winter evening environment provided perfect conditions for PDAF shadow banding to show itself.

I've been trying to get banding to happen in as many RAW files with deep blacks as I can get my hands on, and I see no evidence of banding. That would be a sufficient excuse for me to upgrade, provided Nikon can't fix it in firmware.

Extremely situation-specific - meaning the Northrups basement.

The only time I saw “banding” in R6 is in the DPR studio shots with extreme shadow recovery. If you go to RAW DR: exposure latitude tool and put the loop on the black colour of the colour checker you will see several faint horizontal stripes (with +6 stops of boosted shadows).

I guess it doesn’t have any implication in in realistic scenarios and this plays such a minuscule role in photography that it can be ignored.

I use the original Z6 (purchased one in 2019) for event photography.. (used to be more.. far and few atm). Lighting rarely gets worse than that for me.
There was no banding I saw so far.

No one doubts that the Z6 II can take a good stills photograph.

What everyone wants to know, however, is if Nikon’s C-AF and Eye-AF has caught up to Canon and Sony. The community consensus seems to be that it hasn’t.

@fPrime
"Community consensus" seems to largely consist of some pathetic claims from people never directly compared current cameras and just parroting something they heard somewhere. At least this is my impression, as I was not able to get any strong evidence from anyone here on dpreview complaining about Nikon AF.
(I own both Nikon and Canon cameras)

Even if the said cameras are compared directly, there's much more to that.
Shooting / testing a camera for 2 days or even 2 weeks isn't remotely enough to master it and see how it operates optimally.

The reviews highlighting AF problems are invariably subject to heavy criticism in the comments from people who actually use the cameras highlighting that they are using the wrong mode, wrong technique etc.

It's almost as if some people have a vested interest to make v some brands look better or worse than others on spurious grounds...

Talking if which, there is evidence the Canon AF degrades and actually freezes as the battery level drops. Ouch.

In fact in this test someone compiled all the Photos from Polin side by side test. He himself just concentrated on the AF box stickiness. Guess who finished last, it was not the Nikon nor the Canon https://alikgriffin.com/nikon-z7-eye-af-better-than-sony-a7riv/?fbclid=IwAR1wYcfjtTekL2WVl-CMiPGd5tOpFttNvn7SQ1Lc8g_EYvrgvhQDVQ6GWjY

But the Canon R5 finished first with no AF stickiness or lag. Are you suggesting Nikon should be proud to be middling?

LOLOL

Not like for like images. Which is why the gallery is essentially pointless as a point of comparison.