I have mentioned before that I have purchased a Nikon Z 6II and an accompanying NIKKOR Z 50mm f/1.8 S. I bought a Z mount lens because a Nikon user (who photographed my house so that I could put it on the market) mentioned it was a lens that was so much faster than with the FTZ Adaptor. This post is NOT about the comparison of the speed of the lenses and adaptors.

This post is comparing, at a high-level, my respective cameras (Z6II and D610) with their respective 50mm lenses. I set up a tripod a few centimeters from a Japanese maple tree that I have on the balcony and set the mounting brackets on the bottom of the cameras and took the photo. Full disclosure: the D610 had a Hoya CPL filter on it and the Z6II had a Gobe CPL filter on it. My previous analysis indicates that the performance of both of the filters are comparable and therefore not an item to worry about.

Before putting the brackets on, I decided to photograph the cameras with their lenses and weigh them individually (as seen below).

The camera at the top is the D610. As it is possible to see, the D610 itself is a bit bulkier than the Z6II, but the lens is significantly smaller. That makes the D610 as a whole much more compact.

The two photos below show the weight of the cameras (both have 2 adaptors for Peak Design neck/wrist strap, so that did not give either cameras any advantages).

It is clear to see that the advantage that Nikon advertises about mirrorless cameras being lighter than F DSLRs might be true in the pure sense of the camera body. When taking into account the weight of the lens that goes with the camera, it makes carrying the Z6II slightly heavier.

NOW… in all fairness, the Nikon Z6II is an overall better camera than the D610 because:

• It takes more continuous shots before it needs to slow down due to buffering
• It provides higher ISO capacity without introducing so much noise to the photos (to be addressed in another post)
• Has a wider set of options for focusing: single-point AF, dynamic-area AF, Wide-area AF (small), Wide-area AF (large), Wide-area AF (large for people), Wide-area AF (large for animals), Auto-area AF, Auto-area AF (people), Auto-area AF (animals)
• Touch-screen monitor that has adjustable position

These are the items that come to the top of my head, I’m sure there are other things that I use (just not as much) that makes it a better camera.

I still have not bought any CFExpress Type B memory cards for it, as this is a significant investment (see these two cards – SanDisk and ProGrade) starting at $160 for 128 GB plus I would need to buy a reader which starts at $88 (Lexar). CFExpress Type B cards have a standard read speed of 1700 MB/s, while the SDXC UHS-II goes to read speeds of 300 MB/s. I currently only have SDXC UHS-I that reads up to 200 MB/s.

Proceeding now to comparing the photos. Remember: they were taken with the tripod at the exact same place with comparable lenses. I put the ISO at 400, f/9 and adjusted the shutter speed to fit the light meterage. For the Z mount, the shutter speed was 1/500 and for the F mount, the shutter speed was 1/320.

It is very interesting that, despite being at the same place and having the same focal distance, the Z mount camera and lens captured a wider angle than the F mount and lens. The brightness difference between the two photos is solely because the Z mount had a shutter speed of 1/500 as opposed to the D610, which had 1/320. No brightness or color adjustments were made in either photos (I photographed with Neutral color adjustment).

All-in-all I love my new camera and can’t wait to buy the FTZ II adaptor to start using my old lenses on my new camera. I have definitely made a good purchase and am happy with the results.