No, the two are not related!
First up - Nikon have announced the Z6 III and it looks FANTASTIC! It does what I need of a commercial camera, because it does everything my mk II does but much, much better. I am waiting to see the dynamic range results come out and some comparisons but if they are as big a leap as rumour has it then this is an absolute belter.
So am I buying one?
Nope. At least… not yet.
There are a couple of reasons that I am not at the front of the pre-order queue. First up is the obvious one, I am wanting a 24-120 f4 lens as and when I buy my next body, the combo is in the order of £3,500 and until business really starts to pick up that kind of spend is just not going to happen particularly in light of reason 2. The mk II I use is still going strong - it has a high shutter count, it looks somewhat “used” too… but it is still putting out great results that my clients are loving. Will the mkIII make me any more money then? No, not really. So why take finance out on it? When the Z6 II is starting to fail then yes, this will be the top of my shopping list. Until then I can wait. Which also ties in with point 3 - the initial launch usually has slightly buggy software that is fixed with firmware updates over the first few months, so waiting is no hardship.
I do like a shiny new camera as much as anyone, but I am also trying to be much more pragmatic these days! That said, I do actually have a business need for another body for elevated work and I am still trying to work out what that should be and what kind of budget I should be trying to put aside for it keeping in mind that for the next 12 - 24 months at least things will be tight as we continue work on the huts.
All of this makes it even more annoying to discover that one of my photographs has been stollen to sell a house. It was a photograph I took for another client a few years ago (and got paid pittance for) and has become a widely circulated and a very “known” image - so using it again was a brave move. We shall see how this all plays out next week!
