Nikon D6 Shortfall

If you have make it to the last page of my D6 review, you would definitely wonder why are those only all the positive features? Is there any area that was shortfall of? Yes definitely! That’s where I’ll be sharing my opinions below on areas which it could have done better.

Frame rate per second in flagship camera have been very competitive among other brands competitors in the recent years. Having to skip the D5s model and jump straight to the D6 model, I was honestly a little bit disappointed to see only 14fps. 

In real shooting condition in sports action, 14fps will most likely be enough for most professional photographers. In challenging sport like Archery to capture the arrow in mid flight where high fps would be much appreciated for higher hit rate. Wildlife photographers might also desired to have more fps to capture their subject peak moment such as bird diving into water for fishing.

My guess was in reality, higher fps could resulted in shorter life span of the shutter mechanism due to the mirror have to flip faster. In order to maintain the 400,000 shutter count lifespan, Nikon decided to fix it to only 14fps.

This was another area which I felt the more the better! Having more megapixel could help in cropping the image tighter in post processing. However there is a relationship between resolution size and high ISO, higher resolution is more prone to have more noise in higher ISO range. 

This was pretty clear, the resolution size remained same in order to perform well in high ISO range which I have tested in the review earlier. D6 did showed slightly better performance in high ISO than the previous D5. I do wish Nikon will find a way to maintain low noise in high ISO while having high megapixel in future flagship. I’m just thinking out loud that’s all. 

When the D780 announced earlier than D6, it’s live view autofocus was upgraded to hybrid AF system like the Nikon Z6 with 273 phase-detect points. I have to admit that I was disappointed when I saw the D6 didn’t have any upgrade on the live view AF. I mean the D6 is Nikon flagship camera, shouldn’t it be having the same or even better upgrade than D780? 

Although there are some shortfall of the new D6, overall I really love the enhanced workflow and some new features. The camera still remains as a strong rivals in term of still images for fast action with it’s new AF system. 

I understand there were a lot of people who complained on the slight improvement in term of spec against other brand competitors. I guess those were not Nikon targeted market for this D6. With those enhanced workflow features added to D6, the targeted market are those professionals with a large collection of Nikon long telephoto lens and wired photo agency for their photographers usage.

Those features such as Kensington lock slot, built in WiFi and GPS I don’t really see most normal consumer will be using them if they are just shooting for leisure. So it’s all point down to the needs of the photographers whether this D6 is what they looking for.

For myself as a D5 user, I’ll definitely go for this upgrade in time to come. The improved AF system, built-in WiFi and GPS are some of the useful features that trigger me for the upgrade.