A lot of changes and improvements crept into the Nikon Z6 III. I’d like to go through some of the most notable here, starting with high-FPS photography.
Continuous Shooting
The Nikon Z6 III can capture even the most fleeting moments thanks to a dramatic improvement in continuous shooting speed. When using the mechanical shutter, the speed is unchanged (14 FPS), but once you select the electronic shutter, you can shoot up to 20fps. That’s the same rate as the flagship Z9!
In the past, shooting fast subjects with the electronic shutter carried the unpleasant risk of a rolling shutter effect. However, this is an issue that the Nikon Z6 III’s partially stacked sensor would help to address. Its readout speed (about 1/70 second) is significantly faster than standard sensors. The electronic shutter on the Nikon Z6 and Z7 series cameras (1/20 second) was almost useless for something like hummingbird photography, where you could expect very distorted images. However, the winners here are still the Nikon Z8 and Nikon Z9 with approximately a 1/270 second readout speed.
In any case, I found that the Nikon Z6 III had a clear improvement where rolling shutter was concerned. I was happy to shoot with the electronic shutter even for fast-moving subjects. Although I still need to photograph some hummingbirds and report back to you, regular birds in flight posed no problems.
To me, though, readout speed is not the only big concern when shooting a fast-moving subject. An even bigger problem is that some cameras have excessive blackout or lag in the viewfinder, making it almost impossible to frame these subjects in the first place. This is one area where the Nikon Z6 III offers a major improvement over previous generations. I found the feel of the blackout-free, lag-free viewfinder to match the Nikon Z9.
Image Stabilization
The Nikon Zf foreshadowed that Nikon has been putting a lot of effort into the performance of their in-body image stabilization (IBIS) feature. Those improvements have now migrated to the Nikon Z6 III.
Namely, Nikon has improved IBIS so that it maximizes the sharpness of the selected focus point, rather than the center of the image. Like the Zf, it is also rated to a whopping 8 stops! I never trust those exact numbers from any manufacturer, but for comparison, the Nikon Z8 is rated to 5.5 stops. So Nikon at least believes that the Z6 III offers some clear improvements here.
When tested with the Z6 III and the 24-120mm f/4 lens at 120mm, I was able to get sufficiently sharp handheld shots with a shutter speed of 2 seconds. In this case, however, I was shooting a static, non-living subject. What shutter speeds did I achieve when shooting live birds with a telephoto lens? For this purpose I worked with Pink-necked Green Pigeon and in the Prague Zoo. Using a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens at 400mm, I achieved sharp photos with shutter speeds down to 1/10th of a second. Not as impressive as 2 seconds, but a very good result for both IBIS and the pigeon.
While don’t think that the Nikon Z6 III represents a full 2.5 stops better IBIS performance than the Nikon Z8. However, I would rate it as about 1 stop better. To me, it felt tied with the Nikon Zf for Nikon’s best image stabilization, which makes sense given that the two share the same technology in this regard.
Battery Life
Nikon claims that you can take between 360 (viewfinder) and 390 (rear LCD) photos with a single battery. As usual, this is a rather pessimistic estimate. Nevertheless, it at least lets us know that the Nikon Z6 III is not much more efficient than its predecessor, the Z6 II.
What does that mean in practice? I set out for a day of shooting at the Prague Zoo with four fully-charged batteries. After ten hours, I had two bars of life left in the last battery and had taken several thousand photos. This is in line with my experience with other Nikons powered by EN-EL15 batteries.
I would definitely take 4 batteries on a wildlife expedition to photo intensive areas like South America or on an African safari. If you’re shooting mostly landscapes, you can probably get by with half that amount.
I think that in order for Nikon to show a serious leap in battery life, they will need to go beyond the EN-EL15 form factor and introduce a new battery design. Of course, that would annoy some photographers who have bought so many EN-EL15 style batteries over the years, so we may not see Nikon take this route.
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