Nikon Z5 II review: A really capable, responsive mirrorless camera that can capture shots with plenty of details
Nikon recently launched its mirrorless Z5 II camera in the Indian market. The camera is aimed as a big jump from the old Z5 for both outdoor and indoor photoshooting. It's priced at Rs 1,49,990 for the body, let's try and see what it can bring to the table.
The camera is based on a 24.5MP full-frame (BSI) CMOS sensor with dual UHS II card slots on the right side, and mic plus audio jacks on the left side, alongside mini-HDMI and USB type C 3.2 gen 1 ports. The camera weighs about 700grams and has a familiar and tested ergonomically body in place that doesn't feel daunting to use on the go. The control joystick and control buttons are accessible comfortably, while the 2280mAh 16Wh 15c battery is not too bad either.
The Z5 II has a bright and sharp TFT viewfinder for a camera to be used under direct sunlight without much trouble, which is nice to have. The monitor, too, can get quite bright after adjusting the settings.
The camera is equipped with the Expeed 7 processor and full-frame sensor size of 35.9mm x 23.9mm. Coming to the photos, the highest resolution supported is 6048x4032 (6k) with the video resolution reaching 4032x2268 at 30FPS with support for 12bit N-RAW and 10bit log format. The camera excels in the autofocus department - be it indoors or outdoors. It really did well in subject detection, people, animals, birds or vehicles. You can set different subject detection modes for different types of subjects.
You get familiar Nikon colour rendition, that those who have used Nikon cameras might well be aware of, and it's a good thing to have in terms of how well it captures a range of colours together in a single shot. I tried the camera without any tripod and took most shots in the default ISO 6400 setting. Shooting in low-light conditions, with -10EV focal locking, the camera is more than capable of producing great detailed shots with good dynamic range. For videos, I found it to handle still subjects or slow-moving shots quite well with sharpness and colour depth for 4k 60FPS or 30FPS but for fast-moving subjects, it can struggle in capturing.
The camera also does 1.5x crop when shooting in 4k 60FPS so that's something to be aware of while shooting. For continued high-speed shots, you can capture as many as 200 shots in under 30 seconds. Having two cards is a really handy feature for backup or for using one for storing RAW shots and the other for JPEG photos at the same time, though this can't be done for videos.
All in all, the Nikon Z5 II is a really capable and responsive mirrorless camera that can capture shots with plenty of details and colour depth paired with something like a 35mm f/1.4 lens for starters at a pretty decent price combination.
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