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Nikon D6 with the Nikkor AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF ED VR lens
Today, Nikon discontinued the D6, their flagship DSLR camera. This leaves the D7500 (crop sensor), D780 and D850 as their only DSLR cameras available to purchase.
It was only last week that Nikon issued a firmware update for both the D6 and the D780. Very strange that they would pull the camera so soon after the new firmware updates were just issued a few day ago.
I owned the D6 and I can honestly say it was one of the best cameras I have ever used. I would have never changed over to mirrorless if the D6 worked out for me. So, what was the issue that was the deal breaker? It had fantastic autofocus, excellent image quality, great high ISO performance. So, what could have been the issue with the D6? The loudness of the shutter! (see my article on Nikon DSLR shutter noise levels at https://www.robertallen-photography.com/blog/how-loud-are-nikon-dslr-camera-shutters ).
As a professional event photographer, when shooting in a quiet room when someone is making a speech at the podium, believe me, you don’t want to be shooting with the D6! Prior to changing over to mirrorless, I used the D780 as my main event camera, mainly because it had a mirrorless mode on it. With the D780, if you shot with the rear LCD panel, it essentially became a mirrorless DLSR since it used the same autofocus system employed in the Z6 when shooting using the rear screen.
OK, back to the D6. It was a fantastic body and really eclipsed all of their other flagship DSLR cameras. I shot a total of 9,979 photos with the D6, according to my Capture One library. Not a lot of photos by my standards (especially considering it shoots at 14 frames per second) but again, I didn’t own it for very long due to the shutter noise.
Here are a few photos shot with the D6 with an assortment of lenses. These are from a mixture of paid and personal assignments. Let me know in the comments below if you owned the D6 or if you have any questions about the camera.
With yet another Z9 firmware release (ver 5.32), I thought I would put together a comprehensive guide to all 17 of the Z9 firmware updates to date. This also serves as a historical record of how far the Z9 has come, starting with its firmware at birth with version 1.00 upon release.