There was a development announcement a while ago but now the Nikon D6 specification, price and release date has been revealed.
As expected, the new camera is aimed at profession sports and news photographers and it’s designed for ‘absolute reliability’. It features a 20.8Mp full-frame CMOS sensor and Nikon’s Expeed 6 processing engine.
There’s a 180K-pixel RGB sensor for metering and a sensitivity range of ISO 100–102400 range, which can be expanded to to ISO 50 to an incredible 3,280,000.
The Nikon D6 also features the company’s most advanced autofocus system to date along with fast in-camera connections for speedy image transfer. The aim is to enable professional photographers to capture and share their images quickly.
Nikon’s Most Advanced AF system
According to Nikon, the D6 features a new autofocus (AF)engine that is ‘faster than ever before’. It also has 105 cross-type AF points, which are all individually selectable. This means that the D6 has 1.6x denser coverage than the D5, boosting the tracking performance and making it easier to pin-point a subject.
There’s also a greater range of Group-Area AF patterns available for selection.
Furthermore, the central AF point is sensitive down to -4.5EV while the other 104 points are sensitive to -4EV.
Nikon is also claiming that the improved scene recognition system enables ‘next-level subject acquisition’.
Helpfully, it’s possible to set the starting point for the focusing in Auto-Area AF mode and focusing can be set to prioritise a subject’s eyes in Auto-Area AF or 3D tracking mode.
This focusing specification is backed-up by continuous shooting rates of up to 14fps with continuous AF and metering, and up to 10.5fps with AE tracking in Silent Photography mode. The latter could be very useful sporting events like tennis and golf tournaments.
These fast rates demand fast storage and the D6 has dual card slots that accept XQD and CFexpress cards.
Tough Build
Like the D5, the D6 is built to survive life in the hands of a professional photographer, so it’s robust and weatherproof. It is also compatible with Kensington locks
Naturally, being a DSLR, the Nikon D6 has an optical viewfinder, but it has OLED elements. There are also roll and pitch indicators visible in the viewfinder to help keep horizons straight.
On the back of the D6 there’s a 3.2-inch touch-screen which has a higher resolution than the D5’s monitor.
In-camera connections
Built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, plus the D6’s 1000BASE-T standard wired LAN (which enables around 15 % faster communication than the D5), allow pro photographers to share imaged quickly.
The D6 also has more ways to select and prioritise the most important images for transfer.
Nikon D6 Price and Availability
The Nikon D6 is priced at £6,299 / €7,499 and goes on sale this spring. That should give professional photographers plenty of time to become familiar with it before the summer Olympic Games.
Nikon D6 Sample Images
Follow the link to browse and download full-resolution images. These images were supplied by Nikon
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