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Nikon Z9 first impressions from a long-time Nikon shooter

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In all my years in photography, I don’t think any camera has had as much buzz leading up to its release as the Nikon Z 9. There were many reasons for that, both good and bad, but now that the camera’s here, does it live up to the hype? After one week of using it, I think so. (Disclaimer: I taught Nikon School for Nikon – as a contractor – from 2002 to 2018, and was paid to moderate one of their Facebook groups for the past three years. At this time, however, I have no connection with them.)

I received my Z 9 the evening of Dec. 29, and spent that and the next night working my way through the camera’s 900+ page “Reference Guide” PDF, Thankfully, as a life-long Nikon user, most of the controls and menus were familiar to me. So what I was looking for were the new things, or improvements to current features. I found plenty of those, some of which I’ll be using right away, some occasionally, and of course, some never (because the camera’s not made just for me).

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Nikon Z9 v1.10 firmware update massively boosts continuous shooting buffer performance

Nikon has released a new v1.10 firmware update for the Nikon Z9 mirrorless camera. An already-impressive camera, the new firmware extends the performance of the buffer allowing you to shoot 20fps stills at full resolution for continuously for a whopping 8 seconds (160 images) instead of the previous 3 seconds (60 images). For photojournalists, sports and wildlife shooters, this will be a big bonus.

Not much has changed besides that, save for a couple of bugs, but if you’re one of those lucky early adopters who’s managed to get their hands on their Z9 already, you’ll want to update to take advantage of the improved buffer.

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Nikon Z9 flagship mirrorless camera not expected to ship until October 2022

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The global silicon shortage has hit all industries hard, and the camera industry is now feeling it pretty hard. New cameras and lenses have often had delays, historically, but usually not more than a couple of weeks. Then the Pocket 4K came, which had a 3-6 month waiting list for the first 18 months of its release. It was the exception, though, and not the rule. Now with the silicone shortage, it’s the other way around.

And now Japanese camera retail giant Yodobashi says that the Nikon Z9 isn’t going to start shipping out again now until October 2022. Now, we all know Nikon’s struggling generally in the camera market, but this isn’t a problem for just Nikon. Both Canon and Sony have had to massively cut down on production with newly announced items seeing delays of unknown duration.

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Nikon begins releasing video guides on how to use the Nikon Z9 mirrorless features

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Whenever you order a new camera, you’re always anticipating how its new features will work. Not just how well they’ll work but how easy and intuitive they are to operate. How smoothly they’ll fit into your existing workflow. Often, we’ll jump into the camera and try to figure out those features ourselves, forgetting that our camera actually came with a manual. Sometimes, we won’t figure it out and we’ll still forget we have a manual, so we turn to the Internet for help.

Well, if you’ve pre-ordered a Nikon Z9, it looks like Nikon’s got your back. They’ve started posting some videos on how to use some of the Z9’s new features on their Digitutor channel. It’s a smart move from Nikon, given the fact that almost nobody still has one in their hands, so they can’t rely on users making educational content for each other this time!

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Ten things you may not like about the Nikon Z9

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The Nikon Z9 was officially launched in late October and on paper, it looks fantastic. It’s still only available for preorders, but Matt Granger got his hands on a pre-production model to test it out. Even though the camera comes with a bunch of excellent features, there are some things that you may not like about it – and Matt guides you through ten of them in his latest video.

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Nikon releases fourth Z9 teaser – confirms official release announcement tomorrow

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Well, it looks like we won’t have to wait another week between the final teaser and the official announcement for Nikon’s upcoming new Z9 flagship mirrorless camera. The fourth and final teaser just went live and Nikon has also posted an official Z9 launch event, which will apparently last the entirety of October 28th, starting at 8am Eastern.

The fourth teaser hints at both the speed of the camera as well as its potential slow-motion video capabilities. Other than that, though, it doesn’t reveal much else. But, we don’t have long to wait now.

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Nikon India accidentally leaks Nikon Z9 promo video – confirms 8K at 60fps and raw stills at 20fps

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The Nikon Z9 is expected to be announced this week and we all suspected that there would probably be at least a couple of leaks leading up to the official announcement. What probably none of us expected is that it would be Nikon themselves who leaked it. But that appears to be exactly what’s happened.

Nikon India accidentally posted the Z9 promo video a little early. It’s since been removed, although it’s been downloaded and reposted in a bunch of locations and it confirms some of the specs for the upcoming camera.

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Nikon’s third teaser focuses on speed and eye and object recognition tracking AF

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Nikon released its third Nikon Z9 trailer recently, which focuses on its object tracking and Eye AF capabilities, along with a hint about its burst mode speed towards the end. The video shows off vehicle recognition – something we first saw from Canon with the EOS R3 – which appears to track both cars and motorcycles.

We also see some of the Eye AF performance, along with a pretty rapid burst shooting mode at the end that sounds very quick indeed. For reference, the Nikon D6 shoots 14fps with its mechanical shutter.

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Nikon’s second Z9 teaser shows no 8K record limit and possible first look at Nikkor Z 100-400mm lens

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After releasing the first teaser for the Nikon Z9 last week, Nikon has now released another, showing off its wildlife shooting capabilities. And while the teaser doesn’t really reveal any specs about the new camera, it also seems to possibly tease the anticipated Nikkor Z 100-400mm lens that’s expected to be announced this year.

One thing we do see in the teaser, though, is that there’s no 30-minute filming limit, and the video suggests that there’s no overheating issues, either, showing video capture with the Z9 shooting 4320p (that’s 8K) for up to an hour and twenty minutes – which is pretty impressive in the middle of what looks like sub-Saharan Africa.

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