The Nikon Z9 is the company’s most powerful camera yet, competing with the Canon EOS R3 and Sony A1 for the full-frame mirrorless camera crown. It’s a camera that has it all; 45.7MP stacked sensor, 20fps bursts with continuous 3D tracking AF and unlimited JPEG buffer, plus 8K video recording. Yet there’s one thing the Z9 doesn’t have – a mechanical shutter.
For all its razzle and dazzle, we’re particularly intrigued by the Z9’s sole reliance on an electronic shutter. After all, other mirrorless and DSLR cameras (barring video-centric models like the Sigma FP) all include both mechanical and electronic shutter types. Is this an inspired and progressive design choice, or a potential catastrophic error?
To find out, we spoke to Nikon’s product specialist Dirk Jasper and quizzed him about why Nikon’s so confident in the Z9’s new tech and what it means for the future of both shutter design and cameras.
Before we find out if the Z9 really does spell the beginning of the end for mechanical shutter, though, let’s unpack what camera shutters are for and why most cameras pair them with an electronic shutter.
Curtain raiser
What exactly is a mechanical shutter? In a digital cameras, it both protects the image sensor and opens to accept light and create your photographs.
Originally used in film cameras, then DSLRs and mirrorless models, there are two main types of mechanical shutter; focal plane and leaf. A focal plane shutter has two metal ‘curtains’ that allow and exclude light, while leaf shutters have a circular arrangement of overlapping blades with the less ‘aggressive’ shutter action of the two.
Most cameras also feature an electronic shutter, which has no moving parts but instead ‘turns on and off’ for image capture. This shutter type can be used for both photography and video. Until now, both mechanical and electronic shutters have featured in most digital cameras, but the Nikon Z9 is the first pro camera to go electronic-only. So why has Nikon done it?
The obvious answer is because it can. As Dirk Jasper told us “The Z9’s sensor design and the supporting processing via Expeed 7 allow for the first time to have a mirrorless camera without the need for a mechanical shutter. By removing the shutter, we can enable technologies not being possible by using a mechanical curtain in front of the sensor,” he said. As always, there’s a bit more to it than that.
Mechanical vs electronic
More on the those ‘technologies’ later, but first let’s dig into the relative strengths of mechanical and electronic shutters. As its name suggests, a mechanical shutter features moving parts and therefore its performance is limited.
Its shutter speeds max out at 1/8000sec, while frame rates appear to have peaked at 16fps, as seen in the Canon EOS 1DX Mark III. There’s also an audible sound and vibration during shutter-action, plus a shutter-action life expectancy. That said, only the most trigger happy image makers are likely to wear out a shutter and incur a costly replacement.