Image Quality
In recent years, I feel that the main battle in camera development is no longer being fought in the area of image quality. Rather, development has focused on other areas such as video capability, autofocus, and speed. It is as if a “good enough” standard has already been reached, or that the camera companies have hit something of a technological wall. So I guess it’s not surprising when I write that I found the image quality of the Z6 III to be excellent, but also no better than that of the Nikon Z6, Z6 II, or Zf.
There have been mentions that Nikon has paid for the speed of the new partially stacked sensor with a worse dynamic range at base ISO. While this may be true in the lab, my impression of the sensor’s quality is very good, regardless of ISO. I certainly did not feel like the dynamic range was lacking, and if anything, the high ISO performance felt a little better than I’ve experienced in the past.
For the new model, Nikon has even increased the maximum ISO from 51,200 to 64,000. Personally, I reserve these extreme ISO values for occasions like photographing the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (or the Loch Ness Monster). In other words, I only go that high when the subject is rare enough to warrant it.
For more casual subjects, I usually settle for ISOs of 16,000 as my maximum. For my test of the Z6 III, however, I set the limit to ISO 25,600 and found the results surprisingly usable. And I didn’t denoise the photos you see in this article in any way, which is something I usually do, and which would improve the performance further.
I don’t have lab tests to confirm, but my experience with the Z6 III lends me to believe that it is Nikon’s current low-light king. It may share this crown with the Nikon Zf and perhaps the older Nikon D6 and Df DSLRs. In any case, for photographing in dim environments, this is as good as I’ve seen before.
We will have more detailed lab tests for you of dynamic range and high ISO performance in a later update to this review. But for now, my impression was a lot more positive than I had expected given the chatter related to the partially stacked sensor. Even if those differences exist in the lab, they are not something worth worrying about for any practical, real-world photography.
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