Introduction
Your new Nikon Z6 has to be one of the top photographic bargains on the market today. Although priced at an affordable $2,000 for the body alone, the Z6 has all the killer features found in its upscale mirrorless sibling, the Z7, at less than 60 percent of its price. And the trade-offs go both ways: while the Z6’s 24 megapixels don’t match the 46 megapixel resolution of the mirrorless flagship Z7, your camera can capture sports and action sequences at 12 frames per second, rather than the 9 fps available with its high-end counterpart. If you’ve been delaying your jump to the mirrorless world waiting for Nikon to introduce a worthy offering, your wait is over. For most of us on a budget, the Z6 is the dream mirrorless camera we’ve been hoping for.
Despite what you might read elsewhere, the Nikon Z-series cameras are not the first mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras Nikon has offered. That distinction belongs to the company’s Nikon 1 product line, a series of consumer-oriented cameras that were truly small in size, and which used small 1-inch sensors. Those cameras, targeted at amateur snapshooters, allowed Nikon to develop considerable expertise in mirrorless technology. Your Z6 builds on what the company learned in carefully designing a new platform that fully meets the needs of a much different group: dedicated photo enthusiasts, semi-professionals, and professional photographers.
With the Z6, you’re not giving up much, other than a mirror and a pentaprism/pentamirror optical viewfinder, and the extra weight and bulk found in traditional dSLRs. Indeed, the Z6 is Nikon’s affordable mirrorless “do-everything” camera. It has enough resolution—at 24 MP—guaranteed to satisfy the needs of landscape and fine-art photographers. It can capture action at up to 12 frames per second and has a 1.5X “crop” mode that make it an excellent machine for sports photographers. Its built-in intervalometer effortlessly captures the beauty of an unfolding blossom, and can shoot time-lapse movies with up to 4K resolution in the camera (or faux 8K video using a video editor) to track the progress of a construction project. The new N-log gamma option will make this camera prized by those assembling and editing serious video productions.
You may be asking yourself—how do I use this thing? Nikon’s manual is mind-numbingly dense, and online YouTube tutorials can’t cover all these features in depth. Who wants to learn how to use a camera by sitting in front of a television or computer screen? Do you want to watch a movie or click on HTML links, or do you want to go out and take photos with your camera?
The included manual is thick and filled with information, but there’s really very little about why you should use particular settings or features. Its organization makes it difficult to find what you need. Multiple cross-references send you searching back and forth between two or three sections of the book to find what you want to know. The basic manual is also hobbled by black-and-white line drawings and tiny monochrome pictures that aren’t very good examples of what you can do.
I’ve tried to make David Busch’s Nikon Z6 Guide to Digital Photography different from your other Z6 learn-up options. The roadmap sections use larger, color pictures to show you where all the buttons and dials are, and the explanations of what they do are longer and more comprehensive. I’ve tried to avoid overly general advice, including the two-page checklists on how to take a “sports picture” or a “portrait picture” or a “travel picture.” You won’t find half the content of this book taken up by generic chapters that tell you how to shoot landscapes, portraits, or product photographs. Instead, you’ll find tips and techniques for using all the features of your Nikon Z6 to take any kind of picture you want. If you want to know where you should stand to take a picture of a quarterback dropping back to unleash a pass, there are plenty of books that will tell you that. This one concentrates on teaching you how to select the best autofocus mode, shutter speed, f/stop, or flash capability to take, say, a great sports picture under any conditions.
This book is not a lame rewriting of the manual that came with the camera. Some folks spend five minutes with a book like this one, spot some information that also appears in the original manual, and decide “Rehash!” without really understanding the differences. Yes, you’ll find information here that is also in the owner’s manual, such as the parameters you can enter when changing your Z6’s operation in the various menus. Basic descriptions—before I dig in and start providing in-depth tips and information—may also be vaguely similar. There are only so many ways you can say, for example, “Hold the shutter release down halfway to lock in exposure.” But not everything in the manual is included in this book. If you need advice on when and how to use the most important functions, you’ll find the information here.
David Busch’s Nikon Z6 Guide to Digital Photography is aimed at both Nikon and dSLR veterans as well those who have used other mirrorless cameras and those who are total newcomers to digital or mirrorless photography. Both groups can be overwhelmed by the options the Z6 offers, while underwhelmed by the explanations they receive in their user’s manual. The manuals are great if you already know what you don’t know, and you can find an answer somewhere in a booklet arranged by menu listings and written by a camera vendor employee who last threw together instructions on how to operate a camcorder.
Family Resemblance
If you’ve owned previous models in the Nikon digital camera line, and copies of my books for those cameras, you’re bound to notice a certain family resemblance. Nikon has been very crafty in introducing upgraded cameras that share the best features of the models they replace, while adding new capabilities and options. You benefit in two ways. If you used a previous Nikon camera prior to switching to this latest Z6 model, you’ll find that the parts that haven’t changed have a certain familiarity for you, making it easy to make the transition to the newest model. There are lots of features and menu choices of the Z6 that are exactly the same as those in the most recent models. This family resemblance will help level the learning curve for you.
Similarly, when writing books for each new model, I try to retain the easy-to-understand explanations that worked for previous books dedicated to earlier camera models, and concentrate on expanded descriptions of things readers have told me they want to know more about, a solid helping of fresh sample photos, and lots of details about the latest and greatest new features. Rest assured, this book was written expressly for you, and tailored especially for the Z6.
Who Am I?
After spending many years as the world’s most successful unknown author, I’ve become slightly less obscure in the past few years, thanks to a horde of camera guidebooks and other photographically oriented tomes. You may have seen my photography articles in the late, lamented Popular Photography magazine. I’ve also written about 2,000 articles for magazines like Rangefinder, Professional Photographer, and dozens of other photographic publications. But, first, and foremost, I’m a photojournalist who made my living in the field until I began devoting most of my time to writing books. Although I love writing, I’m happiest when I’m out taking pictures, which is why I spend four to six weeks in Florida each winter as a base of operations for photographing the wildlife, wild natural settings, and wild people in the Sunshine State. In recent years, I’ve spent a lot of time overseas, too, photographing people and monuments. You’ll find photos of some of these visual treasures within the pages of this book.
Like all my digital photography books, this one was written by a Nikon devotee with an incurable photography bug who has used Nikon cameras professionally for longer than I care to admit. Over the years, I’ve worked as a sports photographer for an Ohio newspaper and for an upstate New York college. I’ve operated my own commercial studio and photo lab, cranking out product shots on demand and then printing a few hundred glossy 8 × 10s on a tight deadline for a press kit. I’ve served as a photo-posing instructor for a modeling agency. People have actually paid me to shoot their weddings and immortalize them with portraits. I even prepared press kits and articles on photography as a PR consultant for a large Rochester, NY company, which older readers may recall as an industry giant. My trials and travails with imaging and computer technology have made their way into print in book form an alarming number of times, including a few dozen on scanners and photography.
Like you, I love photography for its own merits, and I view technology as just another tool to help me get the images I see in my mind’s eye. But, also like you, I had to master this technology before I could apply it to my work. This book is the result of what I’ve learned, and I hope it will help you master your Nikon Z6, too.
Some readers who visit my blog have told me that the Nikon Z6 is such an advanced camera that few people really need the kind of basics that so many camera guides concentrate on. “Leave out all the basic photography information!” On the other hand, I’ve had many pleas from those who are trying to master digital photography as they learn to use their Z6, and they’ve asked me to help them climb the steep learning curve.
Rather than write a book for just one of those two audiences, I’ve tried to meet the needs of both. You veterans will find plenty of information on getting the most from the Z6’s features, and may even learn something from an old hand’s photo secrets. I’ll bet there was a time when you needed a helping hand with some confusing photographic topic.
In closing, I’d like to ask a special favor: let me know what you think of this book. If you have any recommendations about how I can make it better, visit my website at www.nikonguides.com, click on the E-Mail Me tab, and send your comments, suggestions on topics that should be explained in more detail, or, especially, any typos. (The latter will be compiled on the Errata page you’ll also find on my website.) I really value your ideas, and appreciate it when you take the time to tell me what you think! Most of the organization and some of the content of the book you hold in your hands came from suggestions I received from readers like yourself. If you found this book especially useful, tell others about it. Visit http://www.amazon.com/dp/1681984687 and leave a positive review. Your feedback is what spurs me to make each one of these books better than the last. Thanks!