In the automotive world the pursuit of speed is an expensive exercise. There’s a lot of physics working against you which is why the 400 km/h Bugatti Chiron – powered by a quad-turbocharged W16 engine, by the way – cost in the region of $4,000,000 when it was launched. Getting more speed out of an imaging sensor is similarly challenging – there’s physics to overcome here too – and consequently the solutions are all costly. So, if you really want to shoot at 30 fps or even faster, you’re going to have to pay for it. Not surprisingly, a lot of work is going into finding out if there are cheaper options.
The stacked sensor was devised to enable a much faster read-out of the imaging data, but these are complex components and consequently expensive to manufacture which is why, so far, they’ve been limited to higher-end mirrorless cameras with higher-end price tags. Yet the performance advantages are undeniable, not just in terms of shooting speeds, but also faster video frame rates at higher resolutions. Nikon’s solution is an all-new type of “partially stacked” CMOS sensor which is cheaper to manufacture, but still delivers some significant performance enhancements due to a faster readout.
The world’s first partially stacked sensor makes its debut in the Nikon Z 6III which, while quite a lot more expensive than its predecessor, is also a whole lot more capable in many areas. The third-gen Z 6 also inherits a number of features from the top-end Z 8 and Z 9 models, and obviously it’s significantly cheaper than either of these models.
The key design aspect of the new sensor is that the read-out and analog-to-digital conversion circuitry – along with an integrated memory – are arranged along the top and bottom edges of the chip rather than in a separate layer, but the read-out speed is still a significant 3.5x faster than that of the Mark II’s imager. A full sensor scan is completed in 1/70 second.
The Z 6III also steps up to Nikon’s the ‘Expeed 7’ generation processor which subsequently delivers maximum-quality JPEG shooting at up to 20 fps, large/normal JPEGs at up to 60 fps and 14-bit RAW capture at up to 20 fps. Shooting in the ‘APS-C’ (a.k.a. ‘DX’) cropped format, JPEGs can be fired off at 120 fps. ‘Pre-Release Capture’ is now available with all three of the JPEG-only ‘High-Speed Frame Capture’ modes and not just the ‘C30’ 30 fps setting as was the case previously. It can be set to 0.3, 0.5 or 1.0 seconds of buffering prior to full shutter release (i.e.
