In 2024, the world will watch as the Olympics converge on Paris, France. It’ll fascinating to watch amidst the protests and all that have been happening there for quite a while now. Photographers will be using Canon, Nikon, and Sony gear to document it all and tell stories as they unravel. We’ve heard a lot about Canon and Sony — but Nikon has been very quiet. The company, which launched its very good Z9, has been steadily improving it with lots of firmware. Then they delivered the smaller version, the Nikon z8. But isn’t it time that they deliver something on a much higher end? Perhaps the Nikon z9s could be on the way.
New Firmware to the Nikon Z9?
Nikon has been bringing a steady stream of updates to the Nikon z9. But could that mean that we’re going to see something really major? If that’s the case, what could it be? Could the Z9 get an even faster frame rate with a majorly revamped autofocus performance algorithm? As it is, the Nikon z9 is one of the best autofocusing cameras on the market now.
It still isn’t able to fully take on the Sony a1 or the Canon EOS R3. While the a1 does lots of megapixels at a super fast frame rate with great autofocus, the R3 does it really fast with fewer megapixels. The Nikon z9 has almost the resolution of the Sony a1. But if you’re shooting the Olympics, why would you choose Nikon over Sony?
The truth is that I’m not very sure. Even with the addition of pre-release capture mode with the Nikon z9, it only saves the files as JPEGs. If it allowed you to save the files as RAWs, that would be a major reason to get it instead of the Sony a1 or even the Canon EOS R3.
A Nikon Z9s?
We have a theory that the Nikon z9s could be coming — which would follow what the brand did during their DSLR days. This could be a faster variant of the camera that shoots at a lower megapixel count. But more importantly, it will shoot at a lower megapixel count but also have continuous tracking throughout the range.
This could be possible with a 33MP camera of some sort — which is what Sony is using for the a7 series of cameras right now. That’s around the 8K video range as well. If Nikon could find a way to shoot 33 megapixels at 60 frames a second or even 120 frames a second, they could probably be onto something very big.
It’s likely that Sony might release something like this in the form of their new Sony a9 III that will sport a 33MP sensor and be able to shoot all sorts of 8k video options. But it will also be more than enough for sports shooters. I’d just hope that Nikon does more than copycat Sony in this case.
All Those Lenses…
Nikon now has a ton of great lenses to support their z9 and shooting both sports and wildlife. So with that said, we truly hope that we’ll see something special from them before the 2024 Olympics. Truly, I don’t think that the silent, shutterless feature of the Nikon z9 would necessarily help it all that much. Instead, it needs to do something else that isn’t really possible or seen before. Perhaps multiple exposure modes with RAW files the way Canon does? When the Canon 5D MK III was reviewed on our site, we did just that. It would be so nice to get that again.