Nikon Z System Thoughts
Looking to buy into this new system from Nikon?
My advice is simple – save your money, because the Nikon Z system appears to have ONE MASSIVE Achilles Heel.
It’s only provisioning you with one – YES, 1 – media slot.
That means you have ZERO storage media redundancy.
It doesn’t matter how quiet the new Nikon Z system Silent Shooting is, if you shoot a wedding on one of these cameras then you had better be carrying some hefty Liability insurance.
Do a corporate shoot and then try explaining why you need to do a re-shoot – you’ll never get your bill paid or work for them again!
I haven’t shot without backup ONCE since I bought my Nikon D3 11 years ago.
Leaving the photographer open to the vagaries of card failure without recourse to a redundant backup is the single biggest fubar any camera manufacturer can make.
And in this day and age it’s one that’s pretty much unforgivable in my opinion, especially when the purchase price of the Nikon Z cameras is so high.
The Sony fan club must be having a field-day with this.
For those of us who know what we’re talking about and are used to the way Nikon operate, it’ll be obvious that the Nikon Z cameras will be upgraded before too long.
And I’d bet that one feature of the upgraded models will be twin media slots!
Storage media doesn’t fail very often any more, but shooting to a single card is still a massive risk – one Nikon is in fact forcing upon you.
Nikon Z System Fallacy
Popular YouTubers like that idiot from Philadelphia have today stated that the wider 55mm Nikon Z mount lets in more light than the traditional 46.5mm F mount, and he goes on to quote Nikon as saying it lets in 100% more light.
Let’s get one thing straight – it doesn’t and they didn’t!
The amount of light falling on the 36×24 sensor stays exactly the same.
If you look at a scene through a 4 foot square window, then switch to an 8 foot square window onto the same scene does the light from the scene go up? No of course it bloody doesn’t!
What the 55mm Nikon Z mount does is give Nikon lens designers the ability to make lenses with WIDER internals – wider aperture holes/f-numbers.
So we can now design a lens with an aperture of f0.9 or f1.0 as opposed to f1.4 – which will indeed ‘transmit’ 100% or more light – f1.0 is 1 whole stop wider than f1.4.
But bare in mind that we are talking f-numbers here, and they actually have no true correlation with the real light output of a lens – for that we need T-stop values, and nobody’s mentioning those!
In Conclusion
It’s your money guys ‘n gals, so if you want to buy one then please feel free!
But just make sure you are aware of THE FACTS and are not being sold on THE HYPE.
Mirrorless cameras have a lot going for them – one would certainly agree with me when it comes to astro landscape photography that’s for sure.
But if I could afford to buy one just for astro then I wouldn’t touch one of these with a 10 foot pole – I’d be off down the Sony shop for sure!..and I can’t believe I just said that!
And that’s simply because of NO MEDIA BACKUP – WTF were Nikon thinking??
Z7 or D850? D850 all day long – after all it’s got two card slots!
Agree a bit but one card slot is not a deal breaker as card failure is a very small percentage wise as I have not seen a lot compared to the amount I have sold over the years Andy
Trick is to put lower gb cards in and carry plenty of them rather than put a 128gb card in an fill it.
Personally I have never had a card failure myself since the time I started digital shooting which goes way back to the beginning lol in around 1987/8
One card slot is a major potential problem Andy if you’re shooting a wedding – you can’t make the vicar do it again matey!
Back when I used to do them on film I had an assist shooting a second camera right next to me.
It might not be a deal-breaker for some, but the principle of a £3000 plus camera body in 2018 having only 1 card slot is a major short-comming.
And I had a Lexar XQD failure last year!
But you’re a charmer Andy, so you having no failures comes as no surprise whatsoever matey!
Also I have come across a much worse problem than card failure on Sony cameras which would worry me more
A huge sensor problem with dirt
I entirely agree.Not having redundancy at card level at this age and price bracket is not a good design decision.And when that deficiency is corrected in future models,the buyers would surely regret their hasty decision.
Doesn’t using both slots in a camera slow the camera down to the slowest card performance .
Yes, that’s why mixed media slots piss me off. But on weddings, events and corporate jobs shooting to two cards really does cover your arse and negate risk – which is more important than buffer clear speeds Malcolm!