Nikon Z6 Field Test

Introduction
Ah, behold the sportier, more affordable brother to the Z7! The new Nikon Z6 is practically identical to the Z7, particularly from the outside. The body design is the same, the weight is the same, the buttons and the controls are all identical between both cameras, too. It's on the inside where the big differences lie...

Instead of the Z7's impressively high-res 45.7-megapixel full-frame sensor, the Z6, rather, offers a more reasonable 24 megapixels of resolving power. For me, 24MP is more than enough resolution for detail-rich images and a decent amount of cropping potential. Unless you need to create massive photo print installations or produce images that require tons of super-fine detail, 24MP is plenty for most photographers. Plus, I enjoy the much more manageable, space-saving 24MP files compared to the 45+ MP images of higher-res cameras. I tend to shoot a lot of images, and with RAW enabled, all those files add up quickly! Furthermore, the Z6's 24MP sensor gives this camera a little performance boost when it comes to continuous shooting. Videographers will also enjoy the addition of full-pixel readout using the full sensor width for 4K video shooting (in other words, no pixel binning or line skipping, and no 4K crop!).

In this second Field Test, I will be looking at the Z6 as a wildlife and landscape camera, including considering how the FTZ adapter works on the Z6 and what type of image quality you can expect from its 24-megapixel sensor in low light situations. I will also look at how the camera's raw files handle extensive edits during raw file processing.

I know that the design of the Z6 (and identical Z7) camera bodies has been discussed here previously, but I wanted to touch on a few aspects of the design which I really like. First, the electronic viewfinder is excellent. With 3.6 million dots and a 0.8x magnification, the EVF is large, sharp and very easy to use. While there is some blackout while shooting at its fastest speeds, the EVF works well for tracking subjects while shooting. The only aspect of the EVF I don't like is that I found that the eye sensor was a bit inconsistent, and I occasionally found myself accidentally turning off the rear display because the camera thought I was looking through the viewfinder. You can change the EVF mode to deal with this, but this means losing the automatic switching which, in many cases, works well.