Review - Nikon Z 5 Mirrorless By Paul Whitham LPSNZ
IT IS HARD to believe that two years have gone by since Nikon introduced their first full frame mirrorless cameras. In August this year they announced a new addition to the range, the Z 5, which many commentators refer to as their entry level full frame mirrorless camera. Through the support of Lacklands and Nikon New Zealand, I was loaned a Z 5, along with a 24-50mm lens and the FTZ mount adapter. The mount adapter retails for $538.20 and enables you to use all of your existing Nikon lenses. As I found with the December 2018 review of the Z 6, the mount adapter works extremely well, and I did not notice any loss of performance when using it. I was fortunate enough to have the camera for a fortnight. That gave time to use it in a number of situations, as well as giving me time to become familiar with the various settings that I could tweak. Having said that, it is entirely possible that some of the issues I found (particularly the autofocus) may be the result of me not choosing the most appropriate setting for the circumstances. This review is about how the camera performed in real life situations, and I am not going to go too much into the technical details
The table below shows how the Z 5 fits in with its stablemates in terms of megapixels, storage, frames per second and price. Slightly confusing is that both the Z 6 and Z 7 have now received upgrades, but you can still purchase the original model.
First impressions If you have not seen the Nikon Z range before, the first thing you will notice is that the camera is much smaller than the equivalent entry level DSLR. Initially I thought that it was smaller than the Z 7 but when I got one to compare, discovered that it is exactly the same size. At first appearance the Z 5, Z 6 and Z 7 are identical, apart from the top. The Z 5 does not have a digital display on the top of the camera, and the select wheel is on the other side. The lack of this quick display is a major change to all of the Nikons I have shot with in the past and took a little getting used to.
Model
MP
Cards
FPS
Z5 Z6
24.3 24.5
2 x SD UHSii 1 x XQD/CFExpress
4.5 12
Price (body only)1 $2,877 $3,190
Z 6ii
24.5
14
$3,798
Z7 Z 7ii
45.7 45.7
1 x XQD/CFExpress 1 x SD UHSii 1 x XQD/CFExpress 1 x XQD/CFExpress 1 x SD UHSii
9 10
$4,980 $5,795
1 All prices obtained from PhotoWarehouse website on 1 November 2020
50
or pixel peeping, as there are plenty of reviews about that.
