Nikon Working Full-Frame Action Flagship Mirrorless

2021.03.10

Nikon is proud to announce that they are working on the ultimate Mirrorless Digital Camera to be launched this year. In a brief press release this morning, Nikon revealed that the professional grade Nikon Z9 is in the works with the goal of exceeding the performance of their current D6 flagship DSLR and Z7 II flagship mirrorless.

The upcoming Nikon Z9 will be built around a Full-Frame Stacked CMOS sensor and will use the Z-mount platform with its large throat-diameter and short flange-distance that allows improvements in lens design. Having a stacked design allows extremely fast read-out which makes many new features possible. None were specified but this certainly means fast continuous shooting, low-latency live-view, short blackout and possibly quick image analysis to perform tracking, scene recognition, HDR among other features.

The only specified feature in the press release is that the Z9 will capture 8K video. If is a rare feature with limited use at this time but is expected from a flagship product as the age of 8K is starting with TV and Displays already available yet at extremely high prices.

From the single image shown of the Z9, it will be a large mirrorless with dual-grips and at least dual control-dials for each grip. It appears to have an exceptionally large viewfinder, ports for flash-sync and writed remote and a dial similar to the D6. There is a hint of a top status display and the absence of a mode-dial suggest its interface will mimick the D6, allowing custom modes to change the Exposure-Mode. The integrated grip means much more room for batteries to allow longer battery-life than most mirrorless digital cameras. This is particularly crucial for high-speed models since they can capture a tremendous amount of images in a short period.

Pricing and availability have not been disclosed yet.

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