Trips, commitments, and some family issues I had to deal with made it so that I didn’t quite get to my full Nikon ZR coverage very quickly. Usually I have a review and book ready within a couple of months after a new camera is introduced, but this time I lagged. My apologies, but I have a present for those of you who waited.
Nikon emphasizes the ZR as a video camera. Virtually nothing in their marketing materials even talks about possibly using it for still photography. Yet at its core, the ZR is just as good and (mostly) as customizable the very customizable Z6III. A number of people actually photograph via the Rear LCD these days, and prefer it, so I don’t understand Nikon’s lack of still marketing for the ZR.
Hey, I know marketing, maybe I should step in ;~).
But first, let’s deal with the camera fully. My review of the Nikon ZR is now published, and it’s a long screed, even without example images yet. If you’re the type that just wants the bottom line, the ZR is recommended, but conditionally. If you’re doing grab and go video, I’d say there’s no condition (unless you absolutely require 8K instead of 6K). For stills it gets a little trickier, as there is no viewfinder option, so you really have to be ready to compose via the Rear LCD. The good news is that Rear LCD is the best, by far, Nikon has put on a camera. You can definitely use it for still photography, but that works a little differently than with the DSLR-like cameras, and some won’t like that.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time now with the ZR, so I’ve come to grips with it. You’ll find how I did that in my new book Configuring and Using a Nikon ZR for Still Photography. This book checks in as 450+ PDF pages (it also comes in ePub format), and when I say “configure” I mean configure, because Nikon seems to have mostly punted on default choices for still photography. The good news is that you can configure the camera the way you want it to handle, though Nikon did once again forget to let you do a couple things that would have been useful.
I promised a present, so here it is: Mark Comon (Creative Photo Academy) and I are going to give a free online presentation on using the ZR as a still camera. This is scheduled for July 28th at 5pm Pacific Standard Time (8pm EST). Mark’s been using the ZR as his primary still camera lately, and I’ve got the technical side covered, so by the end of the presentation you’ll not only have seen how good the ZR is, but how I came up with the best configuration to use it for that. I stuff 24 important settings to buttons your fingers touch, and leave the rest to touching the screen. What Mark and I have done is what Nikon’s marketing department should have done, had they not been busy at the Sake bar every night.
Those who sign up for the presentation (it will be recorded for those of you who can’t make it at the time we give it) will get a quick configuration cheat sheet, one will win a Smallrig set of hardware additions for the ZR, one will get the Special Edition Grew Up Photographic T-shirt, and two will get a free copy of my new book (if you’ve already purchased it, I’ll refund the price to the winners). What did you get from Nikon marketing about stills? [silence]