: Thanks to COVID, it’s been a very long while since we last spoke, and a lot has happened in the meantime. The release of the Z 9 was probably the most significant event though; it seems like a real breakthrough for the Z-system and Nikon itself more broadly. Have its sales met, been below, or exceeded your expectations? Have any trends emerged, in terms of the types of users buying it? : I truly appreciate your high evaluation of the Z 9, Thank you.
More and more people are choosing the Z 9 for their video needs, and particularly, it has been very well received by small-scale production sites for its ease of handling, image quality, and varied format options. Examples of usage include the shooting of music videos, as well as use in TV broadcasting stations.
While Nikon has had very competent face- and eye-detect autofocus systems for some time, the Z9 marks the first time they’d applied AI “deep learning” technology to recognize and track a wide variety of subject types, including people, dogs, cats and birds, cars, motorcycles, trains, airplanes, and bicycles.
The explosion of online video content creators has created huge market for capable “hybrid” video/still cameras.is aimed squarely at these users, with features and ergonomics tailored to their needs. Their “Creator’s Accessory Kit” adds a nifty combined handgrip/tabletop tripod/wireless remote and an external camera-mounted microphone for convenience, ease of use, and higher-quality audio recording.
Content creation is becoming more and more accessible, especially on social, and the demand for video, especially among young people, is steadily increasing. The boundary between video and still images is disappearing, and the Z 30 is being adopted not only for video shooting but also for still/video hybrid shooting.
It’s very encouraging to see Nikon licensing their mount and lens/camera communication protocol to third parties, but the progress to date has seemed half-hearted, at least when it comes to autofocus lenses, with just two Tamron zoom lenses and three Sigma primes available as I’m writing this in late August 2023. It’s good that Nikon has allowed at least that number of third-party lenses on their platform, but I don’t think it’s enough for photographers to feel that the platform is truly open.