The Nikon Z6 III has it all – except for high resolution

The first version of the Nikon Z6 already featured a resolution of 24.5 megapixels. That was back in 2018, and a lot has happened since then. Including at Nikon itself. With the Z8, you no longer have to decide whether you want high resolution or high speed – you can have both.

However, cameras with relatively low resolution do have their advantages. And the Nikon Z6 III has really made the most of them.

Handling and feel

The Nikon Z6 III looks almost identical to its predecessor, the Z6 II, which is still available. But there is one major and one minor change. The big one? The screen can now be folded out 180 degrees to the side and then rotated 270 degrees. On the predecessor model, it’s an easy pull-out mechanism you can tilt up or down. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. While the screen of the Z6 II is faster to bring into a position where you can look at it from above, the mechanism of the Z6 III is more versatile and handier for taking videos, especially when you’re filming yourself.

So what’s the small change? Nikon’s swapped the buttons for playback and recording mode. I’m undecided if that’s a good or bad thing. If you’re unhappy with this change, you can reassign both buttons to their previous function. Overall, the camera offers many setting options. Accordingly, its operation is complex. But if you’re familiar with Nikon cameras, you’ll find your way around without any problems.

The camera has all the buttons and controls I could wish for. There’s even an easily accessible miniature joystick. While the mode selector wheel’s locked in place by a push button, you have to pull out the wheel for dioptre correction. Both are secure and comfortable to use. The grip’s large enough for most hands, but the Z6 III is still significantly smaller than the Z8.

The Z6 III also has a new viewfinder. In addition to the rather high resolution of 5.76 million pixels, the brightness is particularly impressive. 4,000 nits mean I’m basically dazzled at the highest brightness level. But only if I set it manually. In automatic mode, your pupils will already be used to high brightness because of the ambient light, so it’s fine. Although this feature’s good, it’s not exactly what I was waiting for. In sunlight, I find the screen more limiting than the viewfinder, which doesn’t stand out from the competition in the Z6 III.

There’s one detail I’m missing in the features. Unlike the Z8 or Z9, the Z6 III has no protective curtain. This means the sensor’s exposed when you change the lens.

New sensor for powerful video function

A moderate resolution can be an advantage for 4K videos, as it requires less data to be read out and calculated. 8K can’t be achieved with this, because this would need a sensor with at least 40 megapixels.

As far as reading out the sensor is concerned, the Nikon Z6 III is the world’s first camera with a «partially stacked» sensor. This means it should be faster than a conventional sensor, but slower than a stacked sensor like the Z8 and some other cameras.

And the fan test confirms this. Fans produce regular movements so fast, slight distortions are still visible even with a mechanical shutter.

With the electronic shutter, there’s clearly visible distortion. Personally, I wouldn’t use it for photography involving movements this fast. For videos, it doesn’t matter because you can’t see the blades at that speed. And with slow movements there’s hardly any visible distortion.

But with a slow sensor, like my Canon EOS R7 has, it’s even worse.

However, the partially stacked sensor doesn’t come close to Nikon’s fully stacked sensor in the Z8 and Z9. There, the readout speed is under 4 milliseconds. According to dpreview.com, the Z6 III has a readout speed of 14.6 milliseconds. In any case, you’re looking at under 16 milliseconds guaranteed. It’s the minimum value required to record 4K at 60 frames per second using the oversampling method. And the Nikon Z6 III is equipped to do this. In other words, 4K60 delivers just as good quality as 4K30. This sets it apart from many cameras, including the predecessor model.

But the Nikon Z6 III isn’t just better when it comes to continuous recording, it can also keep it up for longer. After 43 minutes of continuous recording at 4K60, the camera switches off in my test due to overheating. You can change the automatic temperature switch-off from standard to high in the menu. This will give you even longer recording times. I didn’t test it in «high», as the battery and memory card wouldn’t last that long anyway.

The Z6 III can also record RAW video in 6K and 60p if you prefer. The fact that the HDMI port is full-size and not a fiddly mini or micro HDMI also points to higher standards. The microphone connection can also be used as a line-in.

Continuous shooting function without the fine print

The Nikon Z6 III also delivers high speeds when taking photos. 20 images per second with tracked autofocus with electronic shutter, to be precise. The figure in the specs matches my measurements. And the specifications make do without any footnotes, unlike the previous model. There, the maximum speed’s only achieved with reduced, 12-bit RAW. This is no longer the case with the current model – RAW is 14 bits by default. In addition, the speed’s neither affected by the compression level set for the RAW format nor whether JPEGs are saved.

The buffer memory’s sufficient for 43 RAW images. With a fast CF memory card (1,785 MB/s in my case), the camera saves the photos so quickly that the buffer’s never full. If the camera still stops after 200 images, this is due to the settings. The maximum size of an image series can be set there. You can also set this value to «infinite».

Thanks to the partially stacked sensor, the electronic shutter works well in most situations. For extremely fast movements, such as the fan above, there’s always the mechanical shutter. With this, the camera achieves 14 images per second, a value I also achieved in the test.

Outstanding image stabilisation

I tested the camera with the 24-70mm f/4 lens. It doesn’t have an image stabiliser. This means stabilising is the camera’s responsibility.

The CIPA value for the stabiliser’s performance is eight exposure stops. A very good value, identical to that of the Nikon Zf. I find the stabilisation feels very similar to what I tested with the Nikon Zf. Even with an exposure time of half a second, there’s still a good chance you’ll take a sharp photo freehand at a wide angle. Both cameras are probably helped by the fact that with 24 megapixels, not even the slightest blur becomes visible.

The stabiliser is also useful for videos. It doesn’t replace a gimbal, but if you stand still, you can shoot a shake-free video without a tripod. At wide angle, you can even pan the camera carefully. Here’s a comparison of two shots with a focal length of 70 millimetres with and without the stabiliser.

Noise and dynamic range: good as always

I can’t take precise measurements of image noise and dynamic range, but I don’t think it’s necessary. The sensors reached a quality plateau in these areas years ago and won’t be getting much better than this. In this regard, the Z6 III is probably very similar to its predecessors – and the Zf.

Here’s an example. This photo has 11,400 ISO. The noise is only disturbing when I enlarge a section.

At 100 ISO, you can heavily edit the images without them looking noisy. This is by no means the case with all cameras.

Speaking of which, highlights and shadows can be corrected to a large extent, which points towards a high dynamic range.

Autofocus: nothing to complain about

Nikon specifies a sensitivity of -10 EV for the autofocus. This means the autofocus should still work even in very low light. My impression is that this is true. For a game test my colleague Domagoj carried out, I took a hundred shots in a darkened room using the interval timer. The autofocus never failed in any of the shots. What’s more, I never encountered any other problems in low light either.

The face and eye recognition always worked in normal everyday situations. According to Nikon, we’re at a 78 level here. In any case, the autofocus is a clear improvement on the Z6 II.

If there are several people in the picture, the camera recognises all the eyes and you can switch between the faces and individual eyes using the control pad. This works really well. The Z6 III also recognises cat and duck eyes without any problems. For the video function, you can adjust the sensitivity and speed of the autofocus. Because overly hasty changes make the video choppy.

Not tested: Nikon Imaging Cloud

When you buy the camera, you get access to the Nikon Imaging Cloud (page in German). It offers automatic firmware updates and unlimited photo uploads. However, this service wasn’t yet available during my test period, so I couldn’t test it.