New Firmware for Nikon Z series – Update

For the Nikon Z6/7 there’s new firmware expected within the next few days – it’s supposed to further improve the auto-focus performance. Coming after the November ’19 update, also principally aimed at the same area, it’ll be interesting to see what improvements have been made.

It’s also likely that the new firmware will include the addition of software to recognize a larger range of CFexpress cards than is currently possible. Since the first firmware update that allowed these cards to be used, only a small number of SONY CFexpress cards (Sony Type B) could be used by the Z series cameras.

The CFexpress cards are new, and still VERY expensive (considering there’s no licence to be paid to SONY as there is for the XQD format…) for what they are. The main advantage, over existing XQD cards is their read and write speeds – the form factor is identical. I can’t help thinking that people will rush out to equip themselves with something only really useful in the higher pixel density cameras shooting long ‘rafale’ as this would really be the only time when 800mb/s could possibly be useful for writing to the card….

And how many of us shoot at this speed for extended periods of time? I don’t… I’m more interested in getting more reasonably priced memory cards.

Well the updates have just been released (18.02.2020) and the rather suprising thing is that Nikon consider adding eye detection AF for animals as being the key element! (Adding updates for CFexpress cards etc. was a fairly minor thing apparently…)

Thank God for Nikon Rumours…

Well ok, they’ve added support for ProGrade and Lexar CFexpress cards(what adout Sandisk??) too, but this pales almost into insignificance compared to animal face recognition…wtf