Why I choose the Z 9

"Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First we make a choice, then our choices make us."

-Ann Frank

I was in my car heading to New York to take pictures of my sister-in-law's new baby girl, Gwendolyn. I had one our 2 Z 6iis with me. An excellent camera and a lot of fun to shoot with, I don't know why, maybe because it's small and light and you can wield it around so easily. Anyway, the Z 9 had been out for almost a year and I coveted it. It was the latest flagship and the first of Nikon's mirrorless flagships. Part of me wanted it solely for that reason. I had never had a flagship camera and I had worked, studied and practiced hard this past year to improve my photography skills. I thought I really deserved this fantastic machine. One by one my comrades in photography were acquiring it. They all talked about how it was the best camera ever made. I really needed this in my life.

There were two things stopping me from getting one. For one thing the Z 8 had been rumored for over a year and was due to come out in a few months. The Z 8 was supposedly just as good of a camera, in a smaller body, without a built in grip and for a $1,000 less. The second one was that the Z9 was backordered just about everywhere. Nikon USA, Amazon and just about everyone else I had checked with.

As for the Z8 being just as good of a camera as the Z9, this was a bit of speculation because Nikon had not officially released the specs and over the months, the story changed and the release kept getting postponed. When it would finally get released, there was no guarantee you could get your hands on one. For some reason, Nikon has a habit of releasing gear before they have enough units on hand to meet demand. This of course creates higher demand because everyone wants what they can't have. Then there's the inherent bugs that come with new gear and the subsequent firmware updates to fix them. By the time all of that got worked out and I had a good version of the Z8, it could be another year. I really couldn't wait that long. My D810 was on it's last leg. It was going to die any day now. Also, I like to have a grip on my camera and usually buy one while is $400-$600, that takes a bite out of the price difference.

There was some other issues going on with the Z 9 as well. It was reported that there were some tracking issues with the focus system and a few other bugs that did give me pause. They all had been addressed with the latest firmware update at that time.

So here I am driving to New York to meet this new member of our family and provide her with her first photo shoot. The GPS redirects me off of the highway somewhere in Virginia. This is completely unknown territory to me. way back country roads and I am on them for a long long time. Then I get stuck waiting for a train. A train that stops right in front of us and then decides to back up a bit, then forwards again. My thoughts wander to "how great it would be to have a new camera for this occasion." Then I realize that I am heading to Queens and have to pass right in front of the biggest camera store in perhaps the world, B and H. I decide that if they have the Z9 in stock, I stop by and pick it up. A quick web search showed it in stock and that was that.

The Z9 was mine and the rest history!