Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z 40mm f2.0
I've been trawling through my post archives looking at some of my previous thoughts on Nikon Z as a system and some of its challenges.
It's no secret I think Z had significant issues early on due to the poor mid-range decontenting decisions that have plagued Nikon starting with the D7500 (arguably with the Df) and continued up through the Z6/Z7 at least (and arguably somewhat still on the Z6II/Z7II), only truly ending with the Z9's arrival and subsequent saner choices in decontenting in the newer Z8, Zf and Z6III. I'm still very strongly on board with that take on the system. These aren't bad bodies at all, but Nikon shot themselves in the foot with some poor decision making and pricing.
My second beef was the poor choice to use XQD (later CFe) as the primary storage on the Z6 line in particular. Only the Z5 and ZF have used UHS-II SD as primary in the FX lineup to this day. The two early Z6's should have been fast dual-SD setups. The original Z6 in particular doesn't exceed UHS-II write speeds in the first place, so the very expensive and hard to get cards were a poor choice back then. Today things are different, though CFe is still significantly more expensive than SD aside from the very fastest SD cards, you can now reliably get CFe cards for $100USD or less, making them much more viable than cards which cost 10% or more of the body cost as things were when the Z6 first shipped. Frankly, today SD is largely a dying format kept alive by the lower end of the stills camera market, with the rest using either CFe or MicroSD, so while Nikon certainly paid a serious price for moving too early and too low in the lineup on the Z6, they are now in a better position and one of the main blockers on buying into the Z6/Z7 used is largely gone. You still need new cards, but you aren't spending the cost of a lens on a card + reader unless you really want to. The card cost issue has blocked me from buying a Z6 or Z7 several times prior to my final acquisition of one last week (along with a $130CAD 128GB CFe card, a very reasonable price for the performance and capacity)
The third was the utter lack of 3rd party support for Z early on, with RF getting 3rd party lens support first. Oh how that changed in 2020/2021 when Canon locked their mount out and Nikon became the default second mount for lenses (except for Sigma, who continues to prioritize L mount as their second mount and only dabbles in Z). Canon has started to open things up again, at least for RF-S, but still lags massively (and for the widely available manual uncoupled lenses, Nikon's far better implementation of the support UI remains a major advantage).
The fourth is one that has both been addressed and certainly remains. That's the Z5's pricing problem (which also affects the Zf to an extent as that's now Nikon's other real 'entry level' FX body offering SD cards, 24MP and a $2000USD or less price). While the 28 and 40 muffin lenses, and the newer 35/1.4 and 50/2.4 mostly address this for the normal to wide prime range, the zoom issue remains. Nikon NEEDS a good consumer UWA zoom (replacement for the under-appreciated 18-35G) and a consumer grade 24-85 zoom to slot in between the small but limited 24-50 and the more pricey and huge 24-200, or just a fair bit more expensive S-line 24-70/4. It's simply very difficult for a budget-oriented user of the Z5 to put together a zoom lens kit that is workable and isn't just a single super-zoom (albeit the 24-200 is remarkably good at what it does). The Tamron 70-300 covers the consumer telezoom needs just fine. Nikon also needs 1-2 smaller, slower telephoto primes to round out the inexpensive line (I'd say a 105/2.5 in the Muffin line along with an 85/1.4 to match the 35 & 50) and also UWA options, maybe a 20/4 muffin and 16 or 18/2.8 in the bigger but not as expensive as S line series (can't see this being f1.4). A 24/1.4 in the f1.4 line would be nice too. Although to be honest, the Viltrox 16/1.8 really covers the need for a good AF UW prime in the 15-16mm range for reasonably money.
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