So, after being issued a mixed kit of old and new Nikon DSLR full frame gear, for me not an enticement, the powers that be at the paper have now relented and decided we need…….Z9’s!
Big news for me, this is the camera that will fix my editorial needs, but for sport I will stick with my M43 stuff. The main reason for that is my weight and reach options and the fact I have two very reliable EM1x bodies and good glass (see my recent article on full frame superiority).
What may happen though is the Lightroom processing stream will be fine for most stuff, meaning I will use my gear for some jobs, the Nikon and Lightroom for others, but the bulk of my own gear can now stay at home (to do what, I am not sure, but hopefully something).
Looking at the Z9, and being aware it sits at the top of the Nikon tree, I am happy to use it as much as possible, but the same things I have said before hold true to some extent. The weight of the camera and a standard lens are still a consideration when I can use other gear with perfectly good results (45mp FF is overkill for a newspaper, but the D6, which the other togs wanted, are nearly impossible to get).
A Z9, 24-70 f2.8 and 70-200 f2.8 will come in somewhere near 3.5-4kg. I can carry two bodies and several lenses with a wider range to that or a lot less. I will however really appreciate the quality of the Z9 for editorial work, especially its ability to shun flash, crop heavily, process easily and use the super shallow depth of field when needed using relatively average lenses*.
Not overly worried about quality, but nice to be using gear supplied, not my own.
At 149x150x91 and 1350g compared to the EM1x at 144x147x75 at 997g means it is not much bigger than an EM1x, until you put a lens on that is. Having said that, I would not be interested in an EM1x for editorial work, as I feel it would be overkill.
Bags, my other hobby, will be interesting. I am thinking the F-2, F802 or F804 for the Nikon, the PC10 for M43 kit. It may be the other way around or the whole thing may just go wrong. I have tons of bags, so I am sure something can be found even for the large Z9 body, but no more bags!
*M43 gains the benefit of about 2 stops of extra depth of field at the same taking aperture as a full frame because the lens used to match the same magnification is half as long (M43 45mm = FF 90mm etc so f1.8 looks like f2.8-ish). The Nikon Z mount uses such a wide mouth, that it actually looses a stop of depth at the same aperture as other full frame lenses (f4 = f2.8 DOF). This means that in effect the Nikon Z mount looses 3 stops of DOF when compared to M43 a bit like a small medium format camera, which for me will give me (1) lots to remember and (2) strong tools to use in tandem.