Nikon Z fc
£899/$959
It’s back to the future for The Big N, and this throwback to the classic film camera aesthetic is bursting with the latest tech
Nikon’s first retro-themed Z-mount camera
ith the likes of Fujifilm, Olympus and Leica cashing in on the retro camera style for years, the time has come (again) for Nikon to follow suit, this time in the form of the Nikon Z fc.
We say ‘again’ because it wasn’t so long ago when Nikon tried the same thing, with the Df in 2013. However, while the Df was was a full-frame DSLR camera, the new Z fc is an APS-C Z-mount mirrorless model. The Z fc is also specced to be a better all-round camera than the Df ever was, in an effort to make it just as versatile as its conventionally styled rivals, only with more visual appeal.
Anyone who remembers the Df will spot similar styling cues on the new Z fc. It takes the iconic and achingly handsome looks of the Nikon FM series of 1980s 35mm film SLRs, and wraps them around its latest APS-C
Wmirrorless camera technologies. That’s not to say the Z fc’s tech is all new, though. This is more of a re-skin of Nikon’s existing Z 50 – although that isn’t necessarily a bad thing: the Z 50 is a great camera in its own right.
Key features
The result of sharing the Z 50’s tech is that the Z fc packs the same 20.9MP APS-C CMOS sensor with low-pass filter, and the same Expeed 6 image processor. That’s around 3MP less than the 24MP sensors in most APS-C rival cameras, while the likes of Fujifilm and Canon offer even higher megapixel counts in some of their mirrorless models. Even so, 20.9MP is still more than enough resolution, while the larger sensor photosites should, in theory, improve the Z fc’s low-light performance and dynamic range.
The Z fc also gets the Z 50’s excellent 209-point hybrid AF