Video Performance of the Nikon Z6 & Z7

Our colleagues Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake from DPR recently looked at the 3 Full Frame leading mirrorless entry-level cameras – the Z6 vs. the EOS-R and the Sony A7III. On this follow-up, Jordan Drake looks specifically at the Z7 and Z6 Nikon cameras and their advantages and disadvantages in terms of video shooting.

Jordan covers different aspects of using both Nikon cameras for video work including design and ergonomics (generally very good including the buttons and screen although sadly no flip screen on both units), image stabilization (surprisingly good), AF (usually very good in decent lighting but much worse when light is weak), manual focus (very poor due to the lens design – you won’t be able to do repeatable focus pulling with the Z lenses), audio quality (still very poor pre-amps) and more.

The bottom line is this – as a first real attempt of making FF cameras capable of decent video capabilities – something that Nikon has relatively little experience with (apart from the 1″ line) the Z7 and especially the Z6 is quite respectable and even surprising (especially when it comes to things like the image quality and stabilization).

On the downside, the Z7 doesn’t use the entire sensor and has a lot of over-sharpening which doesn’t look good so from this perspective, it seems that the Z6 is just the better video camera (plus it is significantly cheaper). At the end of the day, the Z6 is a capable video camera but not a best in class however if you have a lot of high-quality Nikon glass and you want to use it to shoot video – the Z6 might be a good option.

You can find many more previews and reviews on our Photography review section here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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