Nikon Z 7 First Impressions Review

By fady ali

Nikon Z 7 First Impressions Review

The Nikon Z 7 is the company's first full-frame mirrorless camera: a 46MP, 4K-capable machine built around a variant of the D850's BSI CMOS chip, but with the addition of on-sensor phase detection. It's designed to offer an experience familiar to existing Nikon DSLR shooters in a smaller, lighter camera. The Z 7 is based around the all-new Nikon Z-mount but an adapter is available for use with existing Nikkor F-mount lenses.

We were lucky enough to get our hands on a pre-production camera before launch and we're impressed, despite the model we used running very early firmware. The build quality is great and the interface is responsive, while JPEG images show pleasing color and good detail. From our initial impressions of image quality it also seems that the camera balances noise and detail retention well as light levels drop.

We have a few reservations regarding the autofocus interface on our pre-production camera (though its accuracy was quite good), but overall, the Z 7 we used felt very polished. This is all the more impressive given that the Z 7 is Nikon's first entrant in the full-frame mirrorless space and the company is clearly aiming it at the higher-end of the market.

Key features:

• 45.7MP BSI-CMOS sensor with on-sensor phase detection
• In-body 5-axis stabilization (rated to 5EV)
• 493 PDAF points with 90% horizontal and vertical coverage
• ISO 64-25,600 (expandable to 102,400)
• Up to 9 fps shooting (JPEG and 12-bit Raw)
• 3.69M-dot OLED viewfinder
• 2.1M-dot tilting touch LCD
• OLED top plate display
• Single XQD card slot
• UHD 4K capture up to 30p
• 10-bit 4:2:2 N-Log output over HDMI
• Up to 100Mbps H.264 8-bit internal video capture
• SnapBridge Wi-Fi system with Bluetooth, including to-PC transfer

Pre-production sample JPEG. ISO 64 | 1/500 sec | F7.1 | Shot using the the Nikon Z 24-70mm F4 S lens at 51mm Photo by Wenmei Hill

We see the Z 7 as not only a 'D850 without a mirror', but also (perhaps more) 'a D850 with a more consistent stills/video experience and greatly improved video AF.' And straight out of the gate, that makes it a pretty well-rounded do-everything camera.

Three 'Z-mount' lenses will be available initially: a 35mm F1.8, a 50mm F1.8 and a 24-70mm F4. Nikon has also announced it is developing a 58mm F0.95 'Noct' lens and has published a roadmap to show how it plans to expand the system. A battery grip will also be available at some point, but a release date hasn't yet been set.

Three Nikkor S (for 'silver') lenses will be available for the Z-mount initially: a 50mm F1.8, a 24-70mm F4 and a 35mm F1.8

Nikon has also released an F-to-Z mount adapter (formally known as the FTZ adapter) that will allow the use of F-mount lenses on the new cameras. This has a mechanical aperture lever built in, allowing full use of AF-S and AF-I lenses. Older AF-D lenses will offer auto exposure and AI lenses will have full metering. There's no aperture tab for use with 'AI' or older lenses, though.