Sony A6400 or Sony A7iii

m11rphy

So just been to JL and they had the body only to play with have to say it felt very nice and more premium than the Sony

snerkler

Which kit lens, the 28-70mm? Not a great lens that, and even the Zeiss 24-70mm f4 is supposedly not that great and not worth the price tag.

m11rphy

Yes the 28-70 variable aperture. The Nikon kit lens looks much better 24-70 F4

Johnmcl7

I wouldn't mind the single card slot on the Nikon if it was SD but when I was toying with a Z6 and looked at XQD prices they were rather a lot more expensive than I thought.  I knew I wouldn't be able to use my existing Sandisk Extreme Pro's but a pair of 128GB XQD replacements would be just under £400.  I realise they have much higher write speeds but I don't find that a limitation on SD cards even on the very high speed Sony's.

I've almost been tempted to give a Z6 a go since they have the free adapter offer as I could use the Nikon lenses as a stopgap but having to fork out £400 for memory cards is a real deal breaker.

doug56hl

That is an understatement...
See Question - lens quality issue - is this acceptable?
To update that thread the lens was then repaired by Sony. The returned lens is little better which means they consider that an acceptable result

snerkler

XQD are extremely expensive, but then so are UHS-II SD’s, I don’t think there’s much in it. I wish they would do some more ‘budget’ versions of XQD’s with say 80-90mb/s write speeds. I was lucky and got a 128gb 440/150mmb/s XQD at a ‘reasonable’ price but haven’t seen them at that price since. I was hoping Lexar would come out with a cheaper option but it doesn’t appear so. I’m not sure if CFexpress will be any cheaper?

Johnmcl7

Yes but you don't have to buy the UHS-II's at all, it doesn't limit any of the camera modes and at least if you do want to absolutely hammer the burst mode on the camera then you not only have the option to do but it's likely you can make use of the SD cards elsewhere.

I could understand if the Nikon Z cameras required an ultra high speed card to function, the high speed Sony's are crippled unless you have a decent speed SD card (no 1000fps, no high burst modes, no high bandwidth video etc.) but that's not the case with the Nikons at all.  You'd think if they're going to use a comparatively rare format that's not well supported they'd start it as a secondary slot first.

m11rphy

Ok despite the memory card debate, it the Nikon a good alternative to the Sony or should I just accept the Sony is the best camera? It just seems when you factor in the lens and build quality the Nikon is a bit special

snerkler

TBH I was kind of agreeing with you, I was just stating that IF you want the fast speeds then XQD aren't really more expensive than comparative SD. TBH with Sandisk Extreme Pro 95mb/s buffer is limited on the D850 using 14 bit raw so I do see the need for faster cards, however as I mentioned above it would be better if you also had a cheaper alternative if you don't need a large buffer. At least the D850 does have an SD slot that you can use as the primary if you wanted. Which then goes back to the bizarre omission of a second slot with the Z models. OK ideally you want two the same, but if you had one XQD and one SD like the D850 and D500 at least you have a choice.

TBH there's no such thing as the "best" camera, there's only the camera that is right for you. For example I'm lucky enough to have the D850 and EM1-II. There's no doubt that overall the Nikon is the better camera in terms of performance, IQ etc, but I actually prefer using the EM1-II and am tending to use this for most things these days.

IQ wise there's not much to choose between the Sony Mark III's and the Nikon Z's, although I personally prefer the output from Nikon. Where the Sonys have the Nikon nailed is frame rate, especially if you don't want fixed AF and AE. Also, if you want to to a real time view in the viewfinder of the Nikon you're limited to 5.5fps. Apparently the Sonys trump Nikon is ultimate AF speed but when I tried the Nikon Z7 is didn't feel lacking to me. One thing to note is that the viewfinder in the A7III is not as good as the A7RIII or the Nikons.

What you also need to consider is the lenses. Sony's system is far more mature and there's far more selection, plus you can use Canon lenses with an adapter. Nikon only has 4 native lenses at the moment, but with more on the way.
Updated Nikon Z mirrorless lens roadmap (a total of 23 Z lenses by 2021) - Nikon Rumors

Of course, you can use Nikon F-mount lenses with an adapter and of course there's just about every lens you can imagine. However, some will say doing this you're buying lenses from a 'dying' system. I can't see DSLRs disappearing anytime soon though.

snerkler

I think there’s not much talk about XQD rather than SD because XQD, and more so CFexpress is seen as the future of memory cards and so you could argue that Nikon are future proofing. TBH I can’t see SD going out of fashion anytime soon and I’d rather have something more suited to the here and now, especially as tech tends to have a relatively short lifespan.