DP Review is one of the largest English speaking photography websites and forums in the world. Before Youtube became so important for camera discussions, it was DP Review that was the place to be to talk about it. And it's still is a vibrant and influential forum today. The site usually has access to preproduction cameras of all major brands and they usually publish their initial impressions and mini reviews right on the launch day, and the real review several days later. I wanted to see how much has changed between 2018 and early 2019, when Nikon launched their first generation Z6 and Z7 and 2020, when they released the second generation with the Z5, Z6 II and Z7 II. I went to the official review, and selected the Top Comment, that is the comment with most upvotes by the forum members. This should give us a little indication about the sentiments back then and how they have changed, if any, in 2020.
NIKON Z7 Review (4476 comments, link)
Date: 5. November, 2018
NIKON Z6 Review (1163 comments, link)
Date: 14. January 2019
Definitely the classic Sony fan boy comment that gets challenged by a reasonable comment, but both get a lot of votes, and both have valid points. Nikon gave its critics fodder to attack by omitting a few hardware decisions such as a dual card slot, and a fully fledged battery grip, even though I felt these are non-issues, and not deal breakers for otherwise fantastic first generation cameras.
Now let us look at the reactions in 2020:
NIKON Z5 Review (981 comments, link)
Date: 21. July 2020
NIKON Z6 II Initial Review (353 comments, link)
NIKON Z7 II Initial Review (479 comments, link)
Date: 14. Oct 2020
Definitely much more positive, which shows that Nikon really improved in merely 1.5 years and delivered solid updates. In addition, they now have 18 Z lenses, when they launched the Z6 and Z7 they had only 3. That's a huge difference in the appeal of the system, and with all the software and hardware updates potential customers who were holding out have much less reason to do so now. And the Sony and Fuji trolls are having it much harder in 2020 to stir Nikon discussions into the negative (and you can be sure they are trying. In fact they are trying very hard).
The more desperate and ridiculous the critics seem, the more confident I am about Nikon's long term success, and market share gain.
Nikon has been on a tear since 2018. I'm a long term DSLR shooter, I don't remember when was the last time the produced so many bodies and lenses at once. Look forward to 2021.
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