Nikon D6 formally announced by Nikon

[MFloyd]

Following your test with great interest.

 Thank you for sharing your work!

Thx Paco  In two weeks from now, back to the racetracks, Circuit Paul Ricard, in the south of France. We will then see how the very promising new AF performs...

[Bent Hjarbo]

Looking forward to see some images 

[MFloyd]

Looking forward to see some images 

Sure. I’m member of a Danish team, High Class Class Racing, from Aalborg 

[CS]

Like Bent, I'm anxiously awaiting the results from your new D6 action work.

[MFloyd]

Like Bent, I'm anxiously awaiting the results from your new D6 action work.

Hi Carl, don’t be anxious. I can already say now that what I have read and viewed from professional click-baiters is complete b..shit. The acid-test is for within two weeks. But I’m feeling very confident. 

[CS]

Hi Carl, don’t be anxious. I can already say now that what I have read and viewed from professional click-baiters is complete b..shit. The acid-test is for within two weeks. But I’m feeling very confident. 

I've not read any of that stuff, but, I have full faith that you will deliver excellent imagery!

[John Geerts]

Very interesting. Please show more of your results with the latest 'monster' 

[chambeshi]

Hi Carl, don’t be anxious. I can already say now that what I have read and viewed from professional click-baiters is complete b..shit. The acid-test is for within two weeks. But I’m feeling very confident. 

Thanks for sharing your findings.

Here's some recent feedback on the D6. A review by sports pro, Andy Chua in Singapore. He includes some testing of Nikon's completely new AF system, "Overall I was really happy with the improvement from the new D6, I would rate it as 15-20% improvement in tracking reliability from the D5..."

https://www.andychuaphotography.com/nikon-d6-review/nikon-d6-autofocus/

and there's more...

[MFloyd]

John, thank you for this review. I’m eager to read it. 15 to 20% improvement is more than I would have hoped for. 

[Ilkka Nissilä]

John, thank you for this review. I’m eager to read it. 15 to 20% improvement is more than I would have hoped for. 

That's amazing. I find the D5's focus reliability excellent already, but it is straightforward to come up with a difficult enough scenario where some shots in a series turn out slightly out of focus (i.e. lit from the back, dark subject, fast movement, detailed background, lens wide open etc.)

[chambeshi]

I'm not sure how a 15-20% difference translates in practice. Unless one does replicated tests. However, this young chap obviously knows what he's talking about judging by his status and portfolio etc, and central experience with the D5.

According to the author's testing on flying birds: "....Although the camera might have maintain its focus sometimes its not 100% tack sharp in the previous D5. I was amazed in the D6 3D tracking reliability that all my shots in that sequence were tack sharp right in the eye of the bird."

The official documentation from Nikon of the D6 has said very little, if anything, about the new eye-recognition in the AFC. What might be going here is the 3D-tracking is working together with eye-recognition to tighten on a subject's eye. This is only my hypothesis, but it's testable on flying objects with/without eyes :-)

[Ilkka Nissilä]

Well, there are other reasons why it might be able to keep the eye in focus than eye-recognition algorithms, if the photographer initiates the 3D tracking by pointing the initial point on the eye, pattern recognition may be able to do it well enough, depending on depth of field and such things. And as the electronics gets faster, and you have fewer gaps in the focusing array, 3D tracking should work better than it has in previous implementations.

If it did actually do animal eye-tracking, they'd no doubt say so. I suspect it's not doing that.

[MILLIREHM]

So far I did not consider 3D-Tracking AF  to be useful for Birds in flight. Maybe the D6 is going to change that?

[Ilkka Nissilä]

How is the D6 testing going on? Any remarks on real-world action performance (AF)? :-)

[MFloyd]

Last week I was covering the Official Training Sessions of the European Le Mans Series in the south of France, at the Circuit Paul Ricard, Le Castellet.

During the two days I made about 2’000 pictures, of which a number at the end of the Mistral Straight where the cars are over 300km/h. Taken from the front is quite challenging for an AF system. The new AF system gives me indeed a 15 to 20% improvement compared to the D5. Something I never expected. Only for this sole element the D6 is worth of it’s number and is definitely not a D5s.

Hereunder à brief portfolio. You will notice a high number of pictures of the Number 20 of the Danish High Class Racing Team, but this is the team I’m part of....

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPwYum2

There are a lot of other features of the D6 which I would be happy to share in another post.