After years of playing third fiddle to Sony and Canon, it looks like Nikon is ready to once again compete at the forefront of high-end consumer cameras. At least, that’s the message we’re getting from the Nikon Z9, a new full-frame mirrorless camera that, on paper, seems like the single best model in the entire category.
The outfit’s newest mirrorless flagship, it feels very different compared to the outfit’s releases in recent memory. While previous drops made it feel like Nikon was keeping up with the league leaders in the category, this one feels like the kind of thing that finally puts them on top. Suffice to say, it will be interesting to see how Sony and Canon work to keep up for a change.
The Nikon Z9 is equipped with a 45.7-megapixel stacked CMOS sensor that’s paired with an EXPEED 7 image processing engine. This combo allows for very fast readout speeds that allow it a flash sync of up to 1/250th of a second, leaving the outfit so confident in their electronic shutter that they ditched the mechanical shutter entirely. That’s right, this is one of the few, if any, professional-grade mirrorless cameras without a mechanical shutter. According to the outfit, it can even avoid distortion when shooting at 1/32,000th of a second, making for a great camera to use during sports and other fast-paced, high-action events.
It can perform burst shooting at up to 30 fps for JPEGs and 20 fps for RAW photos, with much improved buffering allowing you to capture up to 1,000 frames at once. Want even more frames to get every single split second of a scene as possible? Not a problem, as it can go up to 120 fps if you lower the resolution to 11 megapixels, allowing you to capture motion in a way that even the human eye cannot replicate. You can do all this shooting with a better in-body stabilization that allows for up to six stops of shake compensation.
The Nikon Z9 has an all-new autofocus system that allows it to track nine types of subjects, namely people’s faces, people’s bodies, dogs, cats, birds, planes, trains, motorcycles, and bicycles. There’s also no need to tell it what you’re shooting, as the AI can figure things out on its own, although you can still manually specify the subject if you’re shooting a more crowded scene. They even brought in the 3D Tracking feature found in their DSLRs, which pairs with the subject tracking to keep a fix on fast and erratically moving subjects, as well as a “Starlight” mode that enhances the ability to focus down to -8.5EV to make it easier to frame your subjects in the dark.
For video, it can shoot in 8K at 30 fps and 4K UHD at up to 120 fps, all of which can be stored at up to 10-bit H.264 or H.265 formats. You can also record with ProRes 422 HQ compression, in case you want an easier time during post-production. Other features include a multi-directional tilting touchscreen LCD, a 3.69-million dot OLED viewfinder, a battery rated for 700 shots, and dual CFExpress Type B slots.
The Nikon Z9 comes out end of the year, priced at $5,500.