Stephen do you think this video is going to get me in [Music] trouble Jared Poland fronos photo.com and this is a preview of the brand new Nikon z63 now let me just say something that Nikon told us it's not the zspace 63 it's officially the z63 now that we got that really important news out of the way we went Hands-On with this camera in the real world for 2 days what did I photograph we went out to a Muay Thai boxing gym to get some of those boxers training took it out to a park with permission to photograph two kids running around and of course took it out to a Philadelphia Phillies game which so happened to be in the rain to see how the camera handled there and if it can handle autofocus in that Pro situation then Nikon might have a winner on their hands but you'll have to stay tuned till we get to the autofocus section to see how well it did now keep in mind that we're using a pre-production camera Nikon says that it has pre-production firmware even though when I looked at it it said 1.0 they still say that it may still be updated but this is not a review because of that we will get to a review later down the road when we get actual production units in our hands now a few more housekeeping notes before we get to the actual specs of the camera the outside and the inside all b-roll that you're seeing out on location was shot with the z63 now what you're seeing here in the studio since we don't have a z63 in hands anymore is being shot with the Canon EOS R5 which is what we've been using for years in the studio with fantastic results you're also going to see exactly what I saw when I look through the camera because we are able to record the electronic viewfinder and on top of that I am able to open the raw files in Adobe Lightroom already so I could see the raw files I'm not allowed to share them with you because Nikon won't let us but I was able to open them and edit them which is much better than shooting jpegs now let's start with the outside of the camera the shape of the camera is very similar to that of the z62 but it is slightly thicker now it does mimic the Z8 more so than the Z6 Mark II it has a smooth shape of an evf and just like the Z8 it does have a z on the front of the camera it doesn't say Z6 3 but the z63 is on the top of the camera now the back of the camera is nearly identical to the z62 there's pretty good parody across the board between the z6s and the z7s and the 8 and the z9 it is all very similar when you look at the back of the camera now moving on to the evf Nikon says that it is the world's brightest electronic viewfinder the specs for it are 5.76 million dots it's an OLED display that gives you 120 frames per second refresh rate and it is 33% brighter than the z9 the z9 has 3,000 nits of brightness and this camera 4,000 nits of brightness it was so bright that Steven almost needed to wear sunglasses when he was shooting with it uh and to put that into perspective Sony's a74 only has 700 nits of brightness it's like darker cuz you know 4,000 is greater than 700 cuz cuz of math now with the Z 62 when you would go to shoot vertical and you're looking through the electronic viewfinder the information would not rotate it rotated in the Z8 and the z9 and it now rotates in the z63 that's not like a major thing but when you get used to the info rotating and you don't have to look at it vertically on your camera it really comes in handy so that is a nice little addition in terms of the LCD screen you have a 3.2 in vary angle screen which is very similar to what you find in the Nikon ZF but it is not flush to the back of the camera I'm still not a fan of this when I'm trying to shoot high or shoot low and you can see why it doesn't get flushed to the back of the camera meaning it's on some sort of angle which makes it much more difficult to get your line straight when you're holding it above your head because it's off to the side it's very similar to what the issue is with Canon I'm not a big fan of that I would like to see something similar to what the z9 has because that can flip down or flip up and still get your lines straight with that being said I did use it when I was on the ground in the Muay Thai gym but it was easier to do it vertically than if I tried to do a horizontal so there's that flipping it out that way worked for vertical now one thing that we did notice is there was a slight color difference between the electronic viewfinder and the LCD screen so if that's going to be in the final production models you just need to be careful when you're setting your white balance if you're shooting video and you're using the evf or you're using the LCD SC screen just notice they might be slightly different at least in the versions that we were using the z63 now incorporates a full HDMI port which is much nicer because it doesn't feel like you're going to pull out that HDMI cable when you're out shooting vers the old one that the z62 had now what this camera doesn't have is a digital hot shoe I'm not sure what Nikon is doing here because the z9 doesn't have it and just about every consumer camera in this day and age from Canon and Sony incorporates a digital hot shoe is it a deal breaker the answer is no but when it comes to shooting video and being able to put a microphone right on the camera and have it digitally pass the information through and not use a cable well that makes it much easier so I'm not sure why they still haven't gone with a digital hot shoe let me jump in here real quick and say would you like me to send you a free guide to capturing Motion in low light situations well if you said yes just look for this orangebox over on fronos photo.com put your name email address in it hit send it and I'm going to send you that guide from for free now let's get to the inside of the camera which is really what matters and let's start with the image sensor we have an allnew 24.5 megapixel partially stacked sensor Yes you heard that correct it is a partially stacked sensor it's not Z8 and z9 which is fully stacked which gives you all of those fast readout speeds and faster autofocus but with this they were able to use a partially stacked design even though it's 24.5 megapixels which is the same as what you found before it's different because it's a partially stacked sensor and because it's a partially stacked sensor Nikon says that it has the fastest scan rate of a full-frame camera under $4,000 they say that it's 3 and 1 12 times faster than that of the z62 which was at 39 milliseconds so 3 and a half times faster of a readout speed is a big deal when it comes to shooting with the electronic shutter in being able to almost freeze a ball or a swinging bat or a golf club the faster the readout speed the closer you get to what a regular shutter is capable of doing the z9 and the Z8 they're exactly the same so fast that you really don't see any issues and the fact that this one is the fastest of any camera under $4,000 is a pretty big deal and that's why it's cool they put a partially stacked sensor to put it into even more perspective and to compare it to some Canon cameras the R8 and the r62 have the same exact sensor and that has a 14 millisecond readout speed which is fully usable and I've used it in a lot of sporting situations but you will get some Boe of a ball coming in at 14 milliseconds well the z63 is faster than that so when you're shooting action at 20 frames per second with the electronic shutter you have less of a chance of getting warbled backgrounds or Bowing in the images that you're capturing now when I say 20 frames per second that's 20 frames per second with the electronic shutter shooting Raw it's not limited to just jpeg so you are squeezing out a ton of frames per second with the electronic shutter with not a lot of rolling shutter going on there now you can max out at 116,000 of a second which is better than 1 18,000 I would like to see it go to 164,000 of a second but the fact that you can do 116,000 of a second is nice that it's there you also have high frequency flicker reduction as an option inside of this camera which you didn't have that in the z62 you have it in the Z8 and z9 now that would have come in handy in this situation where the Phillies put a big board all the way throughout the Outfield which does wreak havoc on electronic shutters now I didn't dial in the flicker control there if I if I was to do that then we would have been able to get rid of that flicker all together now in terms of the mechanical shutter you can get 14 frames per second so that's not bad at all you can get 14 with mechanical which means you're going to get no Boeing or rolling shutter you got this picture of Kyle schwarber swinging the bat's not bowing and the ball isn't bowing or warping at all but that is with a mechanical shutter now there's no sensor shield in this camera I like sensor Shield it's in the Z8 and the z9 but it is not in this camera but you do have an speed 7 processor just like the Z8 and z9 now guess what that means 20% faster autofocus than the z62 in my experience using this camera the z63 is closer to the Z8 and z9 by far than it is to the z62 or the Z6 this blows the z62 so far out of the water in terms of Auto aut Focus that it's actually usable cuz it's closer to the Z8 and z9 which are fantastic when it comes to autofocus not the best on the market but extremely competent and very good in most situations so remember all of those years where people yelled at me saying that firmware updates will fix any autofocus issue that the Z6 and z7 had and I said that's not how it works here's proof of that you needed to change the hardware in order to get the better autofocus and not icon has done that and they have much better autofocus now with that being said you still do run into the autofocus issues that I find with the Z8 and z9 where I'm locked on with iaf and face tracking and I'm trying to capture a subject that's boxing at me the focus should stay locked on the eye or the face and not be distracted by balls or things flying in front of their face it shouldn't be distracted this camera still gets distracted like the Z8 and z9 is that a deal breaker the answer is no do I wish that it worked like Canon's R6 Mark I and R8 the answer is yeah because those stay sticky on the face or the eye even if distractions do fly out of the way or fly in the way the other thing that I noticed is it's still a little bit of a fight deciding on what mode you should use should you be in Dynamic area AF should you be in 3D tracking it's still a fight because none of them are perfect for every situation where when you use a Canon and you use a Sony you just set it to that one setting and it just works I know this for a fact because I use all of these cameras and anybody that has picked up a Canon or a Sony does notice the same difference so you do have to fight it when you are deciding on what mode works I also noticed shooting with the 85 1.2 and 135 1.8 trying to shoot fast action it had a harder time keeping up with it and getting Sharp Images time and time again but with that being said the 70 to 200 2.8 Nikon fast as could be didn't miss anything that kept up with anything that I threw at it now in terms of subject detection modes you do have the same nine that you find in the Z8 and the z9 but it's enough of me talking about it let's run you a little Montage here showing you the autofocus in action [Music] che che [Music] che come on [Music] come on come on [Music] [Music] come come on [Music] come on come on come on so as you can see the autofocus is pretty good but you can see that it gets caught up in certain situations let me cut in here real quick because I want to show you this photo taken with an Nikon z63 and edited with fro Pack 4 starting with blu's Clues followed by Brooklyn c41 copper tone High sea Kaleidoscope saltwater taffy thick tin type and wet Hot American Summer but my alltime favorite from fro Pack 1 with one click is Skittles and we go boom but check this out all new and exclusive to fro Pack 4 is X1 X2 X3 and X4 these are custom adaptive Lightroom presets that are going to enhance your photos quickly and easily so look if you want to speed up your raw workflow give yourself a great starting point or you're just tired of other people's presets sucking ours don't suck we created 14 allnew custom Lightroom presets that you can check out right now now at fronos photo.com fropack 4 while you're over there you can play with the sliders to see the befores and The Afters and if you decide to pick them up right now they are currently on sale or if you want to get the Grand Slam bundle that includes FR Pack 1 2 3 and four and of course Skittles you can save even more now let's get back to the video in terms of iso you can go from 100 to 64,000 natively I shot in the Muay Thai gym at 4,000 ISO for most of it to give me a faster shutter speed and those files look really nice the files off of the Nikon sensor are fantastic love the colors love the tones they seem very realistic when you compare them to say the Canon or the Sony's they just seem to be slightly easier to get more natural looking colors I've always been happy with the results that I've gotten from Nikon cameras in terms of image quality and this is no exception to that rule you do have dual card slots one CF Express B one UHS 2 SD card slot you do have pre-release shooting but in jpeg only not sure why they can't activate that for raw that's still a pain in the butt but you can do 1 second of pre-buffering for you jpeg Shooters you do have your C30 and your C60 for shooting 30 and 60 frames per second remember that's jpeg only full frame and you do have c120 which is a cropped mode gives you 11 megapixels but you do get 120 frames per second there for those who want to use pixel shift you have a 96 megapixel pixel shift option now here's something we couldn't test out just yet because it wasn't ready at the time we were testing the camera is that you have a new camera to Cloud connectivity where you can upload jpegs and raws while you're shooting as long as you have a good Wi-Fi connection right to dropox or Google photos this is really good to have and I think a lot more cameras are adding it as they come out now Nikon is doing something here that you do need to have Nikon NX software to do you can upload image recipes to this camera think of them as presets that you can build outside of the camera in the software to then put into the camera and just have right there on your jpegs but I still think that you're better off tweaking your files after the fact and not baking anything in to the JPEG files now let's move on to the video features which are actually pretty good now keep in mind that there is nothing from red camera inside of this z63 so when Nikon bought red it was after this camera was probably already fully developed so you don't see anything from Red incorporated into this camera but Nikon threw a lot of video features at this camera now we shot everything in 4k 24p which is oversampled from 6K you can do 6K up to 60p in NW video which is only compatible with da Vinci resolve so you can't edit it with anything else as of right now you can do 6K up to 30p Pro res raw you can do 5.4k up to 60p in the 4K modes that are all over sampled you can do up to 60p you've got 4K 120 keep in mind that has a DX crop and you now have a 1080 at 240 frames per second which is a 10x slow motion and looks a little bit like this clip right here now unlike the z62 you can shoot any log internal now this is still kind of weird that they throw so many video features at this and I don't consider this to be like the video Centric camera but it is pretty video Centric with the features that they added there's five AIS VR ibis with up to eight stops now in terms of overheating we had no issues with overheating and we didn't see any warnings pop up on the screen for the two days that we were shooting with this camera now something that Nikon still doesn't do is allow you to do video redundancy so recording the same Clips to both cards they still don't let you do that now in terms of autofocus for video it was very good but you still run into the same issues that we've run into in the past where we've got some of that hunting where you can see the autofocus does this little hunting pulsing type of thing and also sometimes you get sticky on the background and if it's sticking to the background it doesn't then find the subject that is right in front of you I noticed that with Stills again but this is just the nature of the Nikon system and one other thing that Nikon added here is a line in input so if you're recording from a soundboard or you're one of those religious groups and you're at church and you want to put the audio right into the camera you can now do that directly from a soundboard and now let's talk about the price the z62 when it came out was $2,000 and this is now $500 more the z63 is 2500 bucks and that is not bad for what you are getting in this camera it offers you so much that I already mentioned keep in mind firmware updates aren't the thing that will make your z62 any better if you want to get that really good autofocus that's very similar to the Z8 and z9 you're going to need to upgrade your z62 to get the z63 because firmware will not fix that ever remember that never let me jump in here real quick and let you know that this video is brought to you by Squarespace if you're looking to build your very own online portfolio use what I've been using for my personal website at Jared poland.com for well over 10 years because it's simple easy affordable and I don't need to know any coding I guarantee you you can have a website up in 30 minutes or less and out into the world to get your 14-day free trial head on over to squarespace.com fronos photo if you decide that it's for you use the code fronos photo at checkout to get 10% off your first order now let's get back to the video so if you have a z62 or an original Z6 and you don't need 45 megapixels from a Z8 or z9 and you don't want to drop that money 2500 bucks to stay in the system for a very competent camera autofocus much better than the z62 image quality fantastic great video features if you're looking to shoot weddings this camera is going to do it for Stills it's going to do it for video I could see this as a quasi professional camera for someone who doesn't want to dump $4,000 or more for a Z8 and a z9 this camera does a great job now if you're trying to decide between a Canon or a Sony that's in the same price range we're going to do a comparison video in the future to talk about those but this Falls very nicely I think that the z63 is a better option than Sony's a74 which has a really slow readout speed which gives you a lot of warping is basically useless when you're shooting with the electronic shutter at only 6 frames a second raw you're going to get massive warping with that camera I think the autofocus is also better on this camera the R8 and the R6 Mark II I still love the Canon system and I love the autofocus I like those cameras a lot but this z63 is much closer to those than anything that Nikon has produced in that price range before now right before I sign off don't forget we're going to run a slideshow at the very end of this video so you can see the images that I captured and in the not too distant future we're going to roll out a few more videos about the z63 like an autofocus review so you're going to be able to see the autofocus working longer than we showed you here as well as some raw file reviews in Adobe Lightroom thank you guys very much for watching Jared poen fronos photo.com see you [Music] che check che [Music] che come on come on [Music] come [Music] [Music] on come on come on [Music] hey come on [Music] [Music] come on [Music] hey come [Music] on kick me