http://www.digitalcameraworld.com
The S1R wins here, but tests are conducted with
all image enhancements disabled. Enable Nikon’s
Active D-Lighting, and the Z 7 gets a big boost.Panasonic’s full-frame sensor is clearly at the cutting
edge of sensor performance. Even so, real-world
differences are more subtle than the graph implies.Both cameras are capable of resolving even
the finest detail on our resolution test chart
throughout the majority of their sensitivity scales.The switches and dials are responsive
and of excellent quality, and the whole
package feels solid and robust.
The S1R appears to have taken its
styling cues from a building brick and
takes robustness to another level. It’s
the hero of its very own action movie,
‘The Ultimate Resistance Test’, available
on YouTube via http://www.bit.ly/dc219s1r.
Highlights include the S1R getting
sand-blasted, frozen in an ice tank,
having water sloshed over it and ending
up on the receiving end of a flame-
thrower (don’t try this at home, kids).
Give it a vest and call it Bruce Willis.
The S1R’s tank-like build results in a
very different shooting experience. The
Z 7 with its retractable 24-70mm zoom
lens feels small and light enough to take
pretty much anywhere and everywhere.
The S1R and its bigger 24-105mm
standard zoom weigh in at 1.7kg.
That’s 45 per cent heavier than the
Nikon kit, and it feels like a much
more cumbersome combination.
Both cameras are designed to
cater to enthusiast and professional
photographers, so both have a good
range of dedicated, direct-access
controls for important shooting
settings. Both have dual control dials
front and back, two customisable
function buttons on the front, a
joystick-style focus lever at the
rear, and a number of other controls.
The S1R goes further, however, with
dedicated buttons and dials for the likes
of white balance, drive mode and focus
modes. Panasonic has achieved this
without making the S1R feel more
cluttered than the Z 7, thanks to having
more surface area to play with. Another
nice touch is that when you press the
backlight button for the top screen,
some of the control buttons light up
as well, making it easier to find your
way around the camera in the dark.
The Z 7 has a highly impressive
electronic viewfinder. The 3.69-million-
dot display is highly detailed and
remains pretty jitter-free during
panning. The S1R does even better,
with 5.76 million dots in its display,
almost matching an optical viewfinder
for clarity and giving remarkably
little lag or smearing when panning.
Around the back, both cameras
feature 3.2-inch, 2.1 million-dot tilting
touchscreens. The image quality and
clarity are very similar, but there’s
a notable difference in the tilting
arrangements. In the S1R, the screen
has a tri-axial hinge that enables it to
rotate either up to 45 degrees to the
right, or by 45 degrees downwards and
90 degrees upwards. The Z 7’s vertical
tilt range is about the same, but it
can’t flip out to the side.
Another similarity between the
cameras is that they both feature an
XQD memory card slot. This relatively
new type of memory card offers
excellent performance for read/write
speed, and is particularly durable and
reliable. However, the Z 7 has been
criticised for not having dual card slots.
Many of us prefer the safety of being
able to make instant backups of our
files on a separate card, while we’re
shooting, or the versatility of shooting
one type of file on one card and another
on a second. The S1R obliges by
featuring a secondary SDXC card
slot, with a fast UHS-II data bus.
Compared with most DSLRs,
mirrorless cameras have notoriously
poor stamina. Sure enough, you can
only expect around 330 or 400 shots
with the Z 7 from a fully charged battery,
using the electronic viewfinder or rear
screen respectively. The S1R does
slightly better with its 360/380-shot
battery life, but its battery is much
bigger and bulkier, with a capacity
of 3,050mAh compared with the
Z 7 battery’s 1,900mAh.
For increasing stamina and
improving portrait-orientation
ergonomics, Panasonic offers a
DMW-BGS1 battery grip (about
£300/$350). This gives you double
the shooting life – but the S1R becomes
even bigger and heavier, turning into
a proper whopper. Nikon’s battery
grip for the Z 7 is still a work in
progress. Genuine additional
batteries cost around £70/$60
for the Z 7, £80/$90 for the S1R.
How well a camera handles has a lot
to do with personal preference. Typical
of high-end Nikon cameras, the Z 7 has
an almost endless Custom Settings
menu, broken down into no fewer than
seven sub-categories. The S1R alsoٹ ȒɎǝƬƏȅƺȸƏɀ
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Nikon Z 7 vs Panasonic S1R HEADTOHEAD
LAB TEST COMPARISON