Nikon Z7 impresses with excellent capture details and intuitive handling

Nikon Z7 walkabout: Images from Nikon’s latest MILC

Finally a heavy duty mirrorless camera from Nikon! This isn’t the company’s first foray into mirrorless cameras, as it had a line of CX-format Nikon 1-series cameras from as early as 2011. At the time, the focus was very much on speed and portability. However, the line was officially discontinued this year after three years of stagnation, so the new Nikon Z series cameras literally bring with them years of expectation.

The new Nikon Z7 answers years of requests from photographers for Nikon to release a “serious” mirrorless camera, and comes with a 45.7MP BSI sensor. It also has a 493-point Hybrid AF system, giving it more than three times the number of AF points as the flagship D5.

The shooting experience

The new Z7 weighs about 675g (body with battery and memory card only) and measures 134 x 100.5 x 67.5mm compared to the 1005g and 146 x 124 x 78.5mm dimensions of the D850, so it’s quite a bit lighter. The handgrip and layout of controls also seem to be fairly well thought out, though long-time Nikon users will have to get used to only having buttons on one side of the rear LCD.

Paired with the new Nikkor Z 24-70mm F/4 S, the camera remains light enough to manipulate with one hand, and the new lens features a locking mechanism that keeps it from extending while not in use. The combination offered pretty fast focusing, and we were quite impressed by the tracking capabilities too.

One minor gripe, however, would be the sensitivity of the EVF. As with all interchangeable lens cameras (ILCs) these days, a sensor is employed to switch between EVF and the rear LCD. We found that this would tend to activate prematurely when we flipped the LCD up to shoot with the camera at low angles, leaving us with no view of what we’re trying to frame with the camera.

Autofocus 

Focus is certainly very speedy, though we found that the AF system tended to give greater weight to the brighter parts of the frame, which may lead to you missing your actual subject. Pinpoint focus works very well now that you can literally touch to focus on almost any point in the rear screen, saving you multiple joystick nudges just to get it where you want.

Focus tracking seems pretty good too. We tried it with moving traffic and the AF system locked on to and held focus well once we defined the subject to start. (By placing the AF point over it and half-pressing the shutter button.) A sample clip is attached below, though you'll need to view it in HD to see the details. 

One thing we do wish Nikon would do is to allow for the camera to jump straight to movie recording by just pressing down on the record button. As it is, the camera has to be switched to video mode (via the photo/video selector) before that button will work. It’s an unnecessary step that can certainly lead to missed captures, so we’re struggling to see the logic when both modes have their own shutter buttons.

In-body retouch

It’s interesting that Nikon has included an in-camera picture adjustment system (Picture Control) that allows you to apply mid-range sharpening to your images as you take them, reducing the post production work.

Without sharpening

With sharpening applied

As you can see, the images with mid-range sharpening applied have slightly more contrast in addition to better sharpness.

Built-in HDR

The Z7 also comes with a built-in HDR function that can be enabled for either a single (i.e. the next picture you take), or a series of images (everything until you go back in and disable the function). It seems to work fairly well, but you do have to take note of ghosting from moving objects in the frame (as in the example below).

It seems that High ISO performance on the Z7 is similar to that of the D850, meaning noise is well controlled up to ISO 6400. At ISO 12,800, noise is fairly significant, though we do think that the smudging is slightly better controlled compared to the D850, speaking to a less aggressive noise reduction algorithm. 

More sample images

The following sample photographs were shot with the Nikon Z7 in JPEG format, and are copyright to SPH Magazines. These photographs are provided for your reference only and we ask that you do not reproduce them elsewhere. Because of the large size of the full-resolution JPEGs, 100% crops have been provided instead of links to the full-resolution images.

Closing Thoughts

As you can see, colors captured seem to be slightly subdued, though the images show good sharpness and detail at the lower ISO settings. Auto White balance proved to be accurate despite the changing weather conditions of the day, and on the whole straight-out-of-camera  JPEGs are very usable.

From our brief time with the camera, it seems that image quality isn't significantly better than that of the excellent D850, (we'd say they're about on par) but the camera itself is certainly a very capable one that's close to the excellent options from Sony in terms of responsiveness. Additions of in-camera retouch and the ability to assign custom functions to the control ring on the new Z lenses do add something different to the mix as well. 

If this is a sign of things to come, then we're certainly intrigued to see what else Nikon has in store. Hopefully, they'll work out a way to add dual card slots, with one supporting SD cards so that the rest of us can hop on to the system a little more effortlessly. Meanwhile, we're certainly looking forward to testing out the speed of the Z6 next!

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