This Nikon Z6 III world-first gives you a great reason to upgrade
6K recording in-camera, from a compact body
They might be as potent as any DSLR when it comes to stills shooting, but mirrorless cameras usually have to make a few sacrifices on the video front – unless you’re paying flagship pricing, anyway. The new Nikon Z6 III thinks otherwise. A new, ‘partially-stacked’ full-frame sensor gives this compact cam impressive movie making abilities, at a prosumer price point.
As well as a faster, cleverer CMOS sensor, the Z6 III (£2500/£2699 body-only) also adds better autofocus and impressive stabilisation to take on the likes of the Sony A7 IV, Canon EOS R6 II and Panasonic Lumix S5 II.
By shifting the sensor circuitry closer to the sensor in a stacked design – but not as much as the fully-stacked Z8 and Z9 – Nikon has sped up the readout significantly. That means it can manage 6K shooting at 60fps in 14-bit RAW. Rivals can either only manage 4K, or have to rely on an external recorder hooked up over HDMI; here everything is done in-camera, in a weather-sealed body that weighs just 750g sans lens.
That rapid readout translates to a whopping 60fps burst shooting for JPEG stills, too – or a monstrous 120fps if you don’t mind cropping the 24MP sensor down to 10MP. Pre-Release Capture means the camera can also start buffering frames before you press the shutter button. A native ISO range of 100-64,000 can be expanded to 50-204,800.
It’s packing the same Expeed 7 image processor as the top-tier Z8 and Z9, with equally zippy autofocus including 3D Tracking and subject recognition skills that can detect animals and vehicles as well as people and faces. 8.0 stops of in-body image stabilisation promise steady shooting even when working handheld, and the focus system can get a lock as low as -10 EV in both still and video modes.
Other upgrades include a sharper 5.76M-dot electronic viewfinder and fully articulating 3.2in touchscreen – a big improvement over the tilting panel found on previous mid-range Z cameras.
The Z6 III is first in line for Nikon Imaging Cloud, a new free tool that’ll let you upload images directly from the camera to the cloud, and send firmware updates straight to the camera rather than messing about with memory cards. Speaking of, there are slots for two: one for UHS-II SD cards, and another for CFexpress Type B or XQD cards. It should manage around 360 shots on a full charge, which is bang on the class average.
It will be landing in late June for £2500/£2699 (body-only).
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Tom Morgan-Freelander
Deputy Editor 
