Does it all really matter?

Hello again – we’re currently in our second week of our second season of lockdown, or ‘confinement’ as it’s called here in France. It’s not as restrictive as the first ‘season’ in that people who simply cannot work from home, are allowed to go into work.

We had a monster server crash at work, and so the past few weeks have been unusually busy for me, as in addition to a new server, we changed all of our computers – for the first ime since I took over control of the IT here, we all have machines using the latest operating systems.

Nikon have been busy too – a few of the previously announced lenses have finally begun to arrive on dealers shelves, and the ‘what’s next’ guessing-game was interuppted with the announce of the Z6ll and Z7ll mirroless camera updates. The bodies are essentially the same, with the addition of a second card slot and various software tweaks. Possibly the only really usefull addition was the new battery grip which is a real one this time, with buttons etc.

Nikon Z7 at left, Z7ll at right

Going back to the title of this article, « Does it all really matter » – does it? Will it make me a better photographer if I buy an updated camera body?

Er….no – oh sure, there are certain features which make the experience possibly more comfortable – a second card slot for the 5% of people who saw this as a HUGE ommision, a one-stop increase low-light focus performance…

For me , the most useful new addition is the new battery grip, the NB-N11 – however, while we thought the existing ‘battery box’ the NB-N10 was expensive at 199€, adding a thumb wheel and a couple of buttons has increased the price by 200€ to 399€ – yeah right on Nikon!

I realise that their financials are not exactly wonderful at the moment, and they’re not selling as many mirrorless as they had predicted, but if they think they will increase their market hold with overpriced accessories…

Don’t these people EVER do market research?