The Z9 may be Nikon's most significant camera in a decade. Does it live up to the hype? Find out what Chris and Jordan think as they go hands-on with a pre-production Nikon Z9 to shoot sports.
Odd, it looks like the grip doesn't have an indent on the inside. A lot of Nikon bodies have that feature, so do Olympus bodies. Haven't checked all the Panasonic bodies, pretty sure some do. Leica FF M-ILC bodies do. Also pretty sure Pentax bodies do. Haven't checked the latest Canon bodies specifically for that grip indent.
Having a true global shutter paves the way for possible computational photography akin to what many phones do. This could be groundbreaking and take FF photography to unimagined levels within a few years.
In late 2021, setting aside the point that all digital photography is already a type of computational, good in camera computational photography is still a decade away. For example, taking 5 photos (raws) within 1/1000 in lowlight and stacking them in device is not possible at present with publicly available digital camera technology.
Doesn’t help you if your tripod doesn’t handle it, frankly many tripod doesn’t handle these big camera very well. Also a vertical grip is a massive faff and don’t sit flush on a clamp and L-bracket that is so much used for landscape photography, it is a real annoyance on vertical grip cameras, and haggling that seize camera up a mountain seems like the single most annoying thing I could think off, and these also fit poorly inside many ICU’s and camera bags
Sports pro is also probably the worst choice for landscape as these have worse DR perfect then any other FF camera, even this performs worse in that regard to the Z7ii.
It’s fine for what it’s mainly designed for sports, action, wildlife and secondary event shooting and portrait/fashion (some of the latter still like vertical cameras) but for something that requires movement and flexibility I could possibly not come up with a worse choice then this type
@Mailing Seriously? You are going to buy 40,000 US$ worth of camera and lens and buy a cheap enough tripod that it cannot handle a few extra hundred grams?
Besides, isn’t it obvious that the person you are replying to was speaking about handheld photography?
Finally many landscape shooters carry their P1 XF and IQ backs up mountains. I happen to be one of them. So the Z9 is a compact camera to me.
It’s more then just a few it’s literally like twice the weight.
Many tripods are steady for Mirrorless up to a certain seize and weight if you already invested a $1000 on one, You might not exactly dream of replacing it. But the same tripod might not be suitable for a DSLR seized camera.
There is not a single 1,000 US$ tripod on the market having any issue with this.
To start with 1,000 US$ tripods are from RRS, Gitzo,… I currently own 5 RRS tripods of different sizes and all of them support my P1 kit without any problem.
Every tripod have a capacity max. just as there is difference in stiffness and damping, some are not suitable for DSLR seized bodies with vertical grip and large telephoto lenses and yes some of these are actually $1000, these might granted be cheaper in the states.
Big bodies and lenses require far more stiff tripods and heads then a lightweight Mirrorless set. One of the advantages of Mirrorless have been able to reduce the overall seize and weight of our gear, making it far more enjoyable and easier especially for those who walk far and in terrain with their gear or who actually bring other things along.
Yes you can bring heavier stuff along, but some of us believe in cutting grams where we can, this goes in the polar opposite direction, back when everything was big bulky and heavy, not a problem for allot of fields but for landscape it’s just unnecessary.
I've got a general question for Chris, Richard and really Nikon developement (Canon, Sony, el al) ... ok so you are at a sporting event of some sort and you are shooting many many bursts. Wouldn't it make sense for review purposes that whenever you lift off the shutter a blank black frame (especially with shutter count/time printed nice and large) was included at the end or beginning of each burst. In other words, visual brackets between which all frames are a contiguous burst. ???? Just a thought
The CFexpress card makes a HUGE difference with this camera. Chris used a SanDisk CFexpress card, which has a relatively slow MINIMUM write speed (MWS). Card manufacturers usually advertise MAX write speed, which is relevant only in the lab. The difference in MWS between slowest and fastest cards is humongous. Prograde's cards range from a pedestrian 140MB/s MWS to a blazing 1400MB/s MWS for their cobalt series. With my R5, the write speed doesn't seem to matter much. I think that I get 4-5 seconds before a slowdown with a Prograde gold 512GB card (400MB/sec MWS). I suspect that the R5 has a bigger buffer, and I also shoot in cRAW. I suspect that even with this intermediate-speed card, the Z9 could squeeze out a couple of more seconds before slowing. With the Z9, it seems to be imperative to get as fast a card as you can due to the relatively small buffer. I look forward to seeing how much longer one can shoot with an ultra-fast Prograde Cobalt card.
Based on a test Matt Granger did, he was getting more than 1800 shots in efficient raw on a ProGrade Cobalt. Chris is normally very good with this stuff, very strange for him / Nikon not to have the right CF Express card to hand. The whole idea of high speed cards is that the buffer becomes irrelevant / redundant.
Nikon have generally done a terrific job with the launch, it is a shame that they botched it with one of the most important channels. Good to see that they have skipped Tony and Chelsea, shame they didn’t do the same with Jared Polin.
This is a great camera on paper. I can understand the frustration of high end enthusiasts and wildlife photographers and weddings pros complaining about burst speeds. From Nikons website and discussions it shoots at 20fps RAW ( lossless compressed?) for 1000 frames. However, this camera is squarely aimed at pro sports shooters as the primary audience ( everyone else is sort of secondary) though other genres can easily adapt this beast of a camera for their needs ( except selfies 😂).
As a pro photographer i want to be able to send publication ready quality jpegs to my editor as the action is happening. Controlled lighting during event makes getting exposure right in the camera much easier, super high burst rates for jpegs gives the editor choices of action images who will receive the images immediately by wired ethernet. I want to go to my family and take them out to dinner after work instead of spending time with lightroom. Very few enthusiasts understand this workflow.
Very impressive camera but the review is so far the most lame I have seen on Z9 . Not bringing appropriate cards is truly embarrassing given that the cards are rate limiting.
what, you don't trust the official nikon buffer specs, you need to see it tested in a review?
i think that it's far more important to see full-size pics out of the camera, in order to evaluate p.q., af performance, etc., as well as seeing the camera in operation and hearing the first impressions.
Very true, I forgot about the 50mm 1.8. There seems to be a pattern here. When its a good but not best in class product like the Z6 /7 he says nice things but its easy to find fault with autofocus etc. However, when its a standout product the assessment is just plain wrong…. I genuinely thought he was better than this. Jordan seemed to like it though, that’s probably why they had two separate videos!
Wow, so many exciting things about this beast! I'm no longer shooting sports (guys, I did really love covering professional soccer games in Spain), so I'm not interested in such a heavy gear, but I hope that all (or most) of its improvements will also be implemented in the next FF high resolution Z camera (Z8 perhaps?), which I'll buy for sure...
I don't know about others, but I always get excited when C/N/S (among other brands) present a new camera with cutting edge tech and/or performance. That just pushes the envelope further and trickles down to lower-end models, which is good for everyone. Plus it pushes the competition to up their game. I never understand why users of a certain brand need to disparage or find fault with another brand's offering. Does that make the equipment they use better? Does it improve the quality of their own work? Were it not for these brands pushing each other, we wouldn't have come so far so fast, so I'm all for competition. I know my Nikon friends will love this new camera, good for them.
If you have a look at this video of Joe McNally using the Z9, there are portions where he shoots an off road motorcycle and gets the camera covered in mud, and of course it works perfectly:
I've never seen shots of that certain brand, that peer that begins with an "S"...where any of their cameras is put to such duress. Why? There are many showing these Nikon pro bodies in all sorts of tough conditions, like e practically buried in snow, in heavy rain, etc. I bet that peer brand with its flimsy battery door couldn't be rested in snow to get a shot of an animal close to the ground.
So sure it's a heavier camera, but it has its advantages, like a nice big workhorse truck.
BTW, those Nikon pro bodies are very well balanced and thus don't feel as heavy as one might think.
Simply because of it having allot and i mean allot of reinforcements, go to their website and there is a 3d image on the frame, it’s a bulky heavy beast, it’s necessary to be so because of it’s seize or it would be extremely fragile to drops. This is far more rigid build then the Canon R3 With a similar design that I would have serious concern over, I personally think the Canon would fracture if dropped as it’s like only a 100g more the the Sony meaning they undoubtedly skipped on reinforcements and build of the frame.
Are we still on that imaginary fantasy, people has used Sony in pouring rain, placed it in snow covered in mud, standing under a waterfall… yeah so please stop with your imaginary fantasies
Let's comment on how impressive Chris and Jordan are in their videos in general, and this one in particular. Balanced, nuanced, experienced, and super high quality.
He also did something I've NEVER seen anyone do: it looks like he rested the camera on the front of the lens, and then leaned his arm on it. Totally disrespectful to the equipment.
Is there a chance that he is indicating that for those with comprehensive collections of the ever popular sd cards, its a no go . I remember buying a minolta meter in the old days that required specialist batteries , I wanted AAAs because on the run I can get them everywhere ! Same with , as someone called it seven 11 SD cards, if all you cards are full and you just need a couple of Gigs of storage , you can get SD cards anywhere at all times of day.
Well, Chris made a rather critical error, which resulted in his disseminating serious misinformation, which has already spread broadly. He came to the shoot unprepared and borrowed a slow Sandisk CFE card. The card he used may be as much as 10x slower in minimum sustained write speed than the fastest available card. The difference can mean the difference between a 2-sec burst at full speed and a minute-long burst at that speed. Other videos informed viewers of the importance of employing fast cards. Here Chris just asserted that the camera has a limited burst rate shooting RAW without stating that the burst rate could be better with a different card. Hopefully, Chris and DPR will issue a correction to this egregious error.
As for Chris's error..... I quote " being the prepared traveller that I am , I brought a couple of very large, very fast SD cards, because I figured every camera on the planet takes an SD card somewhere. Not this one , this takes twin CF Express cards, and it is CF Express B type, so you can use those or XQD." So the point made is that unlike almost every camera on the planet , this one does not take SD .... even Chris's very fast , very large ones.
@New Day Rising: it's a fair question, and I wondered that myself, but he does explain it explicitly and clearly in the video, at this point: https://youtu.be/l5wgMI5fNck?t=718
@New Day Rising: this brings to mind an incident where I (with permission) was voluntarily photographing my young son's rugby team during a game, with a Nikon D3S and 200-400mm lens. One of the other dads snidely remarked that I had turned up the volume of the clicking sound my camera made, just to get attention, LOL.
How about making a stills only version for less money. How many still landscape or wedding photographers really use video and if they do, unless they are making broadcast or cinema quality a much lesser camera would be more than sufficient.
The sensor and processors that make the video possible are also necessary for the fast stills shooting and autofocus, so there's no big hardware savings to be made. So instead you just incur the costs of developing, producing marketing and managing two versions of the product, vs selling a single do-it-all product to the whole audience.
I feel that this could be useful as a sticky comment in connection with all new camera releases. This misconception seems to come up all the time. Well put, Richard.
All true, but here's another way to think about it. Assume that a video-restricted model had identical hardware to the full video-enabled model. A manufacturer could offer the restricted model at a lower price and attract additional buyers who do not value the full video capability enough to justify paying the price of the full-video model. The per-unit margin for the restricted models would be lower, but the total margin for the combined product line would be greater. Also the increased volumes could bring down the per-unit cost for all models. The actual business case depends on the relative sizes of the market segments and the price differences.
Total revenue might be greater but, assuming identical costs for identical hardware, margin would go down unless they keep the photo model at the current price and raise it for video. Not to mention the cost of outraged users who perceive they’re being “taxed” for video on identical hardware.
Great review guys. I'm looking forward to the Battle of the Flagships next year. As for the attitude of competition and the hyperbole of "This is the end of a Manufacturer X!" Talk about an embarrassment of riches. Between all the cameras out right now any camera you get is amazing. This is the golden age of digital photography.
No, the Df was not a significant camera. It's a nice idea. And I certainly like it for a variety of reasons, eg for years it was one of the best high ISO stills cameras available.
But it needed much better AF, a better battery door, and a brighter view finder.
Always amuses me that the announcement post get 1,000s of comments, whereas the post that actually features the experience of people who have used the camera, gets maybe 100. Anyway, good video as always, and Chris showing again that no matter what he uses he creates great images.
Excellent quick review. Re the main "negative", the EVF: did you compare it side by side with the other EVFs, like A1's and R3's. Even if 1/60s seems limited compared to 1/120s, how much that really affects the experience? What about the point made by Nikon re brightness, that this EVF works much better in bright outdoors situations. And the no freezing/jumps seen in other EVFs which supposedly have no blackouts. So, yes, spec-wise it may looks a bit below the competition, but is that really a handicap in real shooting experience, given the two extra specs, real no blackout and extra brightness.
Another issue: how does DPR staff use a less than top grade card to test a camera which was designed for speed and high volume read-write? Pretty bad, they should redo the buffer test.
According to Jared Polin, the auto brightness adjustments are much smoother than Sony's and says NIkon should have called the Expeed 7 processor Expeed Lightning. I think the price is revolutionary. $5500. The R3 is $6K. The A1 $6800 with the grip. Unlide those, the Z is a genuine pro camera with a pro body. The A1 and R3 don't have a sensor guard. The startup time is nearly instantaneous. That lag has been one thing keeping me from going mirrorless. Unlike those other cameras, it has a base iso of 64 rather than 100. In the context of the entire camera, the Z9 specs are very strong indeed.
I thought I would have to keep my D500 for wildlife if I bought a Z camera. The Z9 would do far better with pelicans diving for fish at distance and cormarants flying quickly and erratically toward me and above my head than the D500 did last week. Still $$ especially with two CF Express cards and Z lenses. Selling my D500 and D610 would offset some of the cost. But, enough?
I think Nikon will eventually come with an aps-c version of the Z9, as the D500 was to the D5. Price would be about 1/3 of the Z9's, much larger market. I could reconsider my intention to move to FF Z if that was the case.
Hard to know but wish it will be so! I think the price would be around $2500 for such a camera keeping it in a different niche than the Z6 and Z7 and still under what a Z8 might cost. Fun to speculate. I may not want to wait. The price is way above what I ever thought I would spend, but the benefit of having this quality now and for the next year or so instead of waiting for it may be worth the extra $$.
The tendency by Nikon has been to price similar cameras (to similar dslrs) lower, think the Z9, Z7, Z5, Z50. The lack of mirror and, now, mechanical shutter only make things cheaper. That's why I find strange Canon's pricing policy, but it seems they can get away with murder.
I see how the Z9 compares to the D9. That is 1:1. What dlsrs are directly comparable to the others? Maybe I am pricing a Z900 too high. But, since it may never come, I might not have to worry about being proven wrong!
The AF focus tracking boxes seem just as laggy and un-sticky as the current Z7II and Z6II. Certainly they aren’t anything like the smooth AF tracking boxes Nikon showed in it it’s pre-launch teasers!
it was reported by multiple places that the Z9 AF teaser had the AF tracking box added in via post production, hence why it was so smooth.
Initial video shows a much different AF tracking box experience by pre-production Z9 cameras. I'll bet this will be fixed in actual shipping production cameras. It has also been said that even though the AF tracking box is jittery it is still hitting focus, way better than the Z7II.
I remember someone did some analysis of the shoot-out video Polin did some years ago pitting Canon, Sony and Nikon AF against each other. The Nikon was the much lambasted Z7. Again, the Nikon AF box jumped all over the place whereas the Sony was locked on.
A third party did some analysis of actually reviewing each file and found that the Canon was first, Nikon second and Sony last in terms of number of focused images. Yes the AF box is not so sticky, but it produced more focused images than the legendary Sony which totally locks on in the EVF.
I used to own a Sony. The green AF box would lock onto my kids' eyes. Yet when I reviewed the image, so often it had front focused on the fringe - especially with my blue eyed child.
My Nikon Z6ii AF box leaps about, yet it gets the eye in focus.
Sony has an incredible AF box in the EVF. In practice, I doubt there is much difference with the end product.
@TomCody: these "youtube" reviews are totally flawed, one needs to really work hard to have an AF test done right, not many places do that. Setup, repeatable/controlled situations, comparable settings, etc, then actually looking at images. The Nikon Dx series always won those tests among dlsrs, this is well-known. Likely the Z9 will do well again, this is the Dx line AF plus ML advantages and newer algorithms.
@TomCody, would you mind sharing a link to this "third party"? I trust scientific objective analysis over anecdotal. Hopefully it's not an anonymous user on reddit.
You should check the videos showing AF being tested, like Matt Granger's and others. Pretty amazing, totally unlike the ones in Z6/7 lines and better than D6's, which, until yesterday, was the industry's benchmark. Will it be better than A1, A9 or R3 re continuous AF? Possibly, but we have to wait actual head-to-head well-performed comparisons. My bet is that is will be a bit better than the current ones, even if by a slim margin, they are all extremely good.
Matt Granger only compared the Z9 against the old D6. I’d suggest Jared Polin’s AF comparison is more comprehensive as he’s evaluated both the Canon R3 and Sony A1 prior to testing the Z9.
In his assessment the Z9 AF is much improved and now reliable enough to use, but he definitively states that it is still a notch behind the best-of-class AF seen in from both Canon and Sony.
@fPrime, even Jared Polin said if you've only tried Nikon you don't know what you've been missing. He also said the z9 AF was a zillion times better than the Z7, but just behind Sony and Canon.
@Kona Mike - Yes, I think we agree on what Jared said. My only point here was to challenge the suggestion by rhlpetrus that the Z9 might outmatch Canon‘s or Sony’s AF in a h2h test. Based on what we’ve seen in DPReviewTV’s video and Jared’s evaluation I think that’s now highly unlikely.
i would focus on the images that result from sticky AF instead of the box in viewfinder…of course, it will be reassuring to have a reliable box in the evf tho… check this video out around 40:30 mins.. its a burst of 480 jpegs - normal at 120fps.. this is one of the most difficult CAF scenarios for any autofocus system where the subject is moving towards you and the photographer is struggling to keep it in frame…. shot on fmount glass with an ftz adapter; imho- impressive
Um, no. The buffer is being emptied as it is being filled. Hence as long as it is emptying faster than it is filling you can shoot longer or perpetually...
Excellent video as always. I'm so intrigued by the two weaknesses I can see - EVF isn't impressive (not bad, but not impressive) and the buffer isn't what I expected.
And can you do the D5-era AF trick of assign an Fn button to a different Area + ON together?
A camera from Nikon that puts them firmly back in the game and not a moment too soon.
I'm convinced that a sensor cover that automatically protects the sensor when the lens is removed will become standard on all mirrorless camera bodies. As far as having a grip for both landscape and portrait orientation, surely this is retromorphic (yes, I just made up that word, but you get what I mean). It makes more sense to use a square sensor so that the change of orientation may be selected electronically, instead of having to turn the body around physically and then reset the LCD if you're using it in the wrong orientation. And, of course, carry the extra heft around in the first place. Perhaps this will come when the chip supply issues ease.
A square sensor would make the sensors almost big as an MF camera and very expensive ..a fuji MF sensor is 1440 mm2 and this sensor of yours would be just under 1300mm2 as it would need to be 36mmx36mm instead of 36mmx24mm ..you would effectively be using it in crop mode and wasting a lot of the sensor...but the elephant in the room is the lens image circle won't be big enough if you wanted to make use of all the sensor in a full square mode ..if you had a square sensor in the existing image circle the 3x2 crop will have to be smaller than that we have now..the only advantage would be if you used a square crop you would use slightly more of the sensor than we do now
@davev8 - The cost of any silicon is related directly to manufacturing volume. 20 years ago the idea of a full-frame chip as a standard offering was ridiculous. You also need to consider that the extra cost of manufacturing the dual grip will be saved and that's a much higher cost than making a bit of extra silicon once you're set up for it.
As for square mode, you're right that there would need to be an in-camera crop setting to remove corner crimping, although top-end lenses might be designed to not require this cropping. A good reason Nikon and Canon might want to go in this direction is that Sony would need to develop a new mount and lens system to follow suit because the Sony E mount is already maxed out with its existing FF sensor.
No doubt YouTube influencers will be saying that EVF MPs and refresh is THE most important thing ever in cameras and the Nikon is a huge FAIL and Nikon will be out of business in a month.
Didn't Canon have a helmet and visor recognition in their autofocus on the R3 , seems Nikon could add something like this for helmet wearing sports. Otherwise a powerful camera launch by Nikon ! Not sure I am that much of a fan of the "look" of the jpegs shown .... but it is early days and I am sure the "look " is configurable.
I'm a Sony shooter (two A7r3) and I say well done to Nikon. Too bad I'm already invested in FE glass. I would also prefer a smaller body with the same specifications (future Z7III?).
Chris Sigma was first and correct with electronic shutter only cameras. Both the Fps are missing the mechanical shutter. However, Nikon with stacked sensor looks to avoid the issues that the slower sensors in the Fps have. I hope Nikon can get a fast stacked sensor at 24Mpixels to update the Z6 line and be electronic shutter only as well.
Other camera's apparently drop the EVF frame rate when using AF, so if you use continuous AF in those cameras and they do that, then do they have a advantage, if you are just looking through the viewfinder without using AF then yes you get a better frame rate. In sports you pretty much use continuous AF all the time.
I have an e-mail from a senior technical engineering liaison at Nikon saying 60fps.
The key thing is that the resolution never drops and the lag seems very low, so it feels really smooth and makes it very easy to follow the action. Turns out frame rate isn't the whole story.
i would also like to point out the frame rate and refresh rates are 2 different things ..Apple will tell you the iPhone has a 120hz display but slow-mo footage of the screen clearly shows that data is only updated once every 4th refresh so, in reality, the iPhone is only a 30hz display..whether it appears to be smother to the eye i don't know but you are not getting anything displayed faster with the iPhone with 120hz as opposed to 30hz ...i suspect its the same for cameras ..maybe DPR could stick a phantom camera in the EVF of the camera to see what's happening in reality ...or a collab with Gavin at the slow mo guys...it would make an interesting artical
Is the Z-9 perfect? No, but I think Nikon did a great job hitting the ball out of the park. As a former Nikon film cameras user, I have a great deal of sentiment for this venerable brand. I'm glad they answered the call in spades and hopefully stem the bleeding and regain some of the lost market share. A truly professional entry from the big N.
By slowing down after only 40 shots in lossless compressed, as demonstrated in this video starting at 10:07. That's with a CFE card that can do 1.2 GB/s.
They mentioned card speed matters and if you watch the whole video they didn’t have the fastest cards. I’m not convinced DRAM speeds or chip shortages matter at all lol.
Yes, but they also said you can use faster cards. I’m not convinced you know how dram impacts the pre production camera you haven’t used lol. I’ll just trust DPreview for now.
Indeed Chris said you can use faster cards but there is no evidence such cards would materially improve the Z9's buffer depth from what was observed in the video. As for knowledge of how DRAM size and card speed impacts buffer depth, you can read my treatise on the matter here:
Matt granger compared 2 different CF express cards and it made a huge difference. The more expensive and on paper Sony CFexpress had no where near the buffer of the Pro grade.
@horshack see the comment above. Matt seems to have shown something which contradicts your assumptions. ram is much faster in most systems than cards or usb. Anyways, take care and I look forward to actual performance reviews from DPreview and others.
@TheBest, RAM is indeed much faster than flash media but it's not the speed of the RAM that's the concern here - it's the amount of RAM, since that determines how large the camera's internal buffer is. The speed of the flash media (and the PCIe interface to the media inside the camera) determines how fast images can be moved out of RAM, making room for more incoming exposures. The inflection point of running out of RAM is observable when the camera drops below its continuous shooting rate (stutters), which in Chris's video was just 2 seconds, which is 40 images. There are no assumptions in my comments other than that the camera has a very small RAM buffer, an assumption that doesn't change if the camera can sustain burst shooting for more than 40 images with an even faster card. The RAM buffer size can be established by using the slowest card available, so it's likely the Z9's buffer is actually smaller than 40 images since the card used in the video does 1.2GB/s.
@Vince, Thanks for the link. Found Granger's video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRZxoE28QaU - he starts talking about buffer depth at 16:06. He got 3x the buffer depth with the ProGrade vs the Sony cards. It's not clear where the 1.2 GB/s Sandisk will sit relative to those. Also, he shot in the Z9's lowest-Q High Efficiency raw mode, which yields images that are 1/3 the size of losslessly compressed, which is what Chris shot in this video.
@Horshack Memory card speeds are not absolute, they're "up to, at burst levels, given compatible writers". That is why you can't stare blindly at the sticker, because it actually doesn't say much about real life performance (as with _every_ camera out there). You repeating "the card does 1.2GB/s" shows you have very little understanding about both marketing and actual performance characteristics of memory cards.
@tozz, Real life performance is determined by a combination of the card's internal SLC cache (max rated card speed to cache incoming data) and/or the number of parallel write NAND channels within the card (which is why higher-capacity cards have higher rated speeds - more parallel channels possible from more chips), net of any page management within the card. At least that's how I remember it from my 25 years of being a storage firmware engineer :)
The Z9 stuttered just 2 seconds into the burst. If the Z9 has an internal RAM buffer depth of even just 20 raw images, then the camera stuttering at 40 images would mean the Sandisk is dropping below its rated write speed at just over 1GB of data (20 images @ 60 MB/image image for 45MP lossless compressed). That would mean the card couldn't maintain its rated write performance for a single full second.
It wouldn’t surprise me, Sandisk cards are usually quite mediocre. On the other hand this is making a hen out of a feather since 1 the firmware isn’t final and 2 Nikon has already acknowledged the lower than expected long burst performance and will improve it.
Just got off from Ricci from Nikon UK He has done a lot of testing. It varies a lot according to the card and GUARANTEED minimum write speeds. not up to, Prograde Cobalt and Delkin black are the best they have tried (About 1400 MB/s) and give about 100 frames. He said Lexar and SanDisk are the worst in his TESTS giving 40-50 frames..
@Vince, Thanks, that's useful information. Sustained/minimum write speeds are certainly important for buffer depth @ sustained continuous shooting. In Chris's test the burst was only 2 seconds before stuttering (effectively 1 second @ card when combined with camera's internal buffer), so I don't expect the card's sustained rate to be a factor in this specific case since the card's SLC cache at these payloads should be enough to absorb more than 1 second.
A depth of 100 with the best card Ricci has doesn't sound all too promising. Prograde quotes sustained 1.4 GB/s writes for their Cobalt...The average lossless compressed size for 45MP images on Nikon's Z7 bodies is 60MB - should be the same on Z9. So 60MB x 20 fps burst = 1.2 GB/s. If the camera were able to saturate its CFE interface then the achieved buffer depth should be significantly more than 100 images on the Cobalt, even with some overhead for filesystem metadata writes. Esp when some RAM frame buffering is considered.
@tozz, Depends on the detail and noise in the image. I based it off a few raw images I pulled from the Z7 II dpreview gallery, most of which were in the mid-to-high ISOs and weighed in just around 60 MB. YMMV. For image sequences closer to 50MB then the 100 buffer depth quoted by Ricci makes the Z9 fare even worse since the rate necessary to sustain the burst drops to 1 GB/s relative to the Cobalt's ability to do 1.4 GB/s.
Which is fine, I mean we’ve gone from 2 seconds to 5 seconds in this guessing game in less than 12 hours, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be a QVL for long burst times in the end, sustaining 1+GB/s is not trivial.
@tozz, Agreed, sustaining 1 GB/s is tough, and not just for the data path between DRAM and CFE but more so for the demands it places on Expeed to actually generate 1 GB/s of processed image data. The original Z's were severely bottlenecked by Expeed's processing throughput, as described here: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63645424
Which makes it all the more important for flagship sports/wildlife cameras to have ample internal DRAM buffers, rather than relying on the throughput of their media interfaces to stream the throughput. We're not talking about an insane amount of memory either. An internal 100 frame buffer for holding 45MP sensor readouts (uncompressed data) should take around 8.5 GB of memory for the frames, plus additional memory for the intermediate buffers needed for Expeed processing on those frames. 32GB of DDR4 runs around $100 @ retail right now, so significantly less for Nikon.
I would assume Expeed is not a complete SoC with onboard ram though and 32GiB of DDR4 actually takes up quite a lot of physical space. Not necessarily a showstopper but also not a trivial problem to solve. LPDDR4/5 would be an option but I guess pricing would be an potential issue and Apple buying it all for M1 😅
@photography-lover, I can see how some people will buy this and love it.
However, I don't see any real innovation, it has crept the current specs up a little in a few areas. just a little incremental improvements in a few areas. It has no groundbreaking new features.
No way on earth you can say "Most innovative camera in the past 10 years.." Absolutely no way.
I think you are talking about what you dont understand well. And any innovation is an improvement of current technology. Of course if sony does same thing it is an innovation. Any dog knows that.
@StoneJack said "And any innovation is an improvement of current technology.",
What a low bar! with your definition, I guess the Nikon Z9 is a super "Innovation" over the Z7II, not so much of an "innovation" against the competition.
Eye control AF is an innovation. IBIS was an innovation. in lens IS was an innovation. replacing film with a sensor was an innovation. CMOS over CCD was an innovation. BSI sensor was an innovation. stacked BSI sensor was an innovation. Duel pixel AF was an innovation. AI AF tracking was an innovation.
better FPS is not an innovation, a bigger buffer is not an innovation. slightly better noise is not an innovation, etc. Those are just normal progress.
Kona, you are absolutely right, Z9 is a worst camera in a history of humankind. It is not made by Sony, it doesn't have a Sony logo, it is not worth existing on planet Earth. it should be destroyed and erased altogether.
@pantherfan no mechanical shutter, Flash sync with only electronic shutter, virtually no rolling shutter, lag free evf, 120 fps burst mode at 11MP JPG., just to name a few..
@StoneJack, All I said was that it is an incremental improvement and has crept the specs up, that it is not the most innovative camera in the past 10 years. Yet you cry like a baby that I'm a sony fan. I didn't say it is bad, I didn't say it is the worst camera. I never mentioned sony. I'm sorry your feelings were hurt, but don't lie and make up things that I didn't say.
@photography-lover, no the removal of he mechanical shutter isn't a Nikon innovation in my book.
I applaud Nikon being first in full frame to release a camera without a mechanical shutter, but there are many cameras with e-shutter only.
It was inevitable and predictable since the first e-shutter cameras appeared that full frame cameras would go shutter-less. As each camera's sensor readout speed has increased over the past years, the viability of e-shutter only has increased.
Will the first Sony, Canon, or Nikon with computational photography abilities be their innovation? No, it will happen, they are all working towards that and as processing power increases, everyone will have it. Did Sony, Canon, or Nikon invent computational photography, no. I will applaud whichever does it first, but it won't be their innovation. It will be them applying existing tech.
Things I cite above: eye control, IBIS, lens IS, etc are innovations in my book. They dreamed it up and made it happen.
It very much feels like you definition of innovation was designed to support your view that Nikon isn’t an innovative company.
Well, in case you didn’t know, Nikon invented lens VR.
More seriously a dramatic change of architecture such as the removal of the mechanical shutter is clearly and obviously a dramatic innovation. Even if, like most innovations, it’s the result of previous steps leading into it.
@photography-lover, you are so wrong. The innovation belongs to Panisonic.
Dr. Oshima (Panisonic) started working on image stabilization in 1981. The basic technology was complete in 1983, and panisonic had a working optical image stabilization system in a video camera by 1998.
If you want to consider Nikon and Canon:
Nikon had a compact 35mm film camera (built-in lens) with optical image stabilization in 1994. Canon had the EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM in 1995. Canon's then released the big white 300 f4, 300 f2.8 and 600 f4 all with IS before Nikon released it first interchangeable lens with VR in 2000.
I reserve the word "innovation" for major developments, not incremental changes. OK, I guess you use it differently.
The team that develops a new coating for lens elements might make a great discovery and get patents and help improve a sensor's performance. I see that as normal tech progress, coatings are a way of life and will continuously get better...
...I see most of the tech on the Z9 as incremental and not an innovation. That is not to say that the Z9 isn't a very good camera. It is a very good camera, just there wasn't anything unexpected or completely new developed for it.
Sure there is a new Expeed 7 that processes images fast. To me that is to be expected over time as computing power increases and is not an innovation.
The same can be said with the sensor readout speed. Good job Nikon on the fast sensor readout speed, but that "innovation" ship sailed years ago. Don't get me wrong, the Z9 fast readout is good, but that is par for the course now, every manufacturer is trying for that, it isn't anything new or unexpected.
... It was inevitable and predictable since the first e-shutter only cameras appeared years ago that full frame cameras would go shutter-less. As each newly released camera's sensor readout speed has increased over the past years, the viability of "e-shutter only" full frame camera has increased. Good job for Nikon for being first! whoo hooo! yeah!
I still don't see that as an innovation, just the normal tech progression. Feel free to disagree and call it an innovation. At the end of the day my and your opinions don't really matter.
I believe that the CFExpress card they were using was not performing as it should.
Also, the Z9 had been rumored for weeks if not months to have CFExpress only, how could the good folks of DPreview not know this and show up without best in class CFExpress cards???
@panther fan I feel a bit disappointed as well. There are great features like super fast read out, robust body, and AF but having a low spec EVF on a high end expensive camera feels super lame... especially when you can get an X-T3 for 1/5 if a money..
EVF seems like a smart choice (consistency over everything else), I've looked through the A7SIII and see very little difference from my Z7II, there's so much more about the EVF than pixel count, the low refresh rate is however a bummer (reports seems conflicted here, some say 120, other say 60).
One thing is certain, it's not a low specced EVF, I would bet money that people who claim it is wouldn't pass a blind test comparison.
Sony maybe, but not canon. After all the R3 is not the R1. So canon doesn’t even have their official flagship out yet. So depending on what canon had planned they might be thinking about making changes. Or they already have something close to, on par or exceeding the Z9.
Either way, I do think that canon needs to reconsider their pricing.
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