Old Dog, New Tricks NIKON Z 7
FROM THE EARLY 1970S onwards, Canon and Nikon have dominated the professional camera market, establishing a duopoly which has resisted all attempts at wresting away some significant market share. Over the decades there have been creditable attempts by Olympus (undoubtedly the most successful with its OM System), Minolta, Pentax, Leica and Contax. More recently the major challengers have been Fujifilm, Sony, Panasonic and Olympus (again), all promoting mirrorless camera systems as the brave new world of professional photography… while the top guns have doggedly held onto the D-SLR.
One of the reasons for this is that, quite simply, they could. When you control as much of this market sector as they do, you can call the shots. Initially at least, there were plenty of good reasons to keep buying D-SLRs (among them superior viewfinders, superior autofocusing and superior speed), but latterly, the case for the mirrorless configuration has become harder to ignore and yet the pro market has remained a hard nut to crack. This is undoubtedly down to long-held loyalties to either Canon or Nikon allied with significant investments in equipment, particularly lenses, which again have proved difficult to penetrate. It’s undoubtedly one of the key reasons why Canon and Nikon have been able to take their own sweet time developing a high-end mirrorless camera system (confident that defections would be few), even if time was definitely starting to run out. Now that the cork is out of the bottle, there is, of course, the risk that faced with making the change to mirrorless (and, potentially, having to invest in a new lens system), photographers might also consider switching brands as well. It’s possible, of course, but here again, you’d have to think that brand loyalties will come into play and, as far as the camera we’re reviewing here is concerned, Nikon has really thought about what it needed to do in terms of balancing the future (and all that it might hold) with the 60-year history of its F mount.
Right from the start then, the Z 7 and Z 6 benefit because they’re Nikons and it’s not just about the badge on the front, but the intrinsic design DNA which comes from thinking like a photographic company or, perhaps, thinking like a company that has been making pro-level cameras for a very long time.
Traditional Feel
While the flagship Nikon Z 7 (yes, there’s deliberately a space in the model designation) is being compared to Sony’s A7R III – which is mostly valid on paper – the two cameras embody very different design philosophies which manifest themselves in a variety of ways. Consequently, the Z 7 is actually better compared with the EOS R so here we are again… the same, only different. But this is where both Canon and Nikon can confidently expect to quickly make up some ground on Sony, Panasonic, Fujifilm and Olympus.
