I recently jumped on the Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera (MILC) bandwagon and my photographic (+) world will never be the same again! For several (camera) generations these small, tech-heavy machines have mostly been seen as advanced toys, but not ‘serious tools’ for capturing images that meet clients’ briefs.
Years of development have, however, caught up and the big players have all released camera systems aimed at working pros. ‘Serious tools’ but with the size/weight and technological benefits inherent to MILCs.
And so… one day in the height of summer 2019, and with an upgrade due, I purchased one of Nikon’s latest MILCs, the Z6. In a word it has been a revelation. As expected, the size and weight savings are very significant, and it has been a joy to delve deeper into video production with its amazing 4k footage.
What has been unexpected is that it is superior to my traditional cameras in almost every other way too. The autofocus is so much more accurate, and has effectively given every single lens I own (mounted via adapter) an upgrade. It even has an ‘eye autofocus’ mode which is brilliant – seeing a little box appear on, and move with, a subject’s pupil gives such great peace of mind and ‘feedback’ in the shooting experience.
Then there’s the noise – or lack of it. In taking a photograph traditional cameras have to first flip up a mirror *clack*, draw back the shutter curtain *clack*, close the shutter curtain *clack* and then flip down the mirror again *clack*. Four *clack*s. By taking out the mirror MILCs immediately eliminate two of these. The Z6 further augments this by having a whisper-quiet shutter and even offers a silent mode (with some image quality trade-off). Given that I regularly shoot events, weddings and portraits, using a camera that emits a light *click* rather than a chorus of *clacks* is an enormous benefit and can be much better for the client!
As a modern camera it also sports WiFi connectivity. At a recent event I took some pictures of a session and was able to transfer these same images, via a quick edit on my phone, to the client whilst the speakers were still on stage. What fantastic service, even if I do say so myself!
All these wonderful innovations have allowed me to develop my existing services and even create new packages for clients, including *drumroll* video production (just static voxpops for now, but watch this space!…)
Below is an unintentionally Hamilton-oriented gallery of him sniffing, running and being a very good boy in general, all shot with the Z6.
