Well, if you own a Canon, Sony, Olympus, Leica, or Fujifilm camera...why indeed.
However, if you own a Nikon camera - or a Nikon lens - the reason you should care is because you are now well and truly back in the game. You might have thought yourself languishing at the sidelines of the mirror-less revolution these last few years but the Nikon people have blown the whistle and booted you off the bench. And this is one of the boots.
The
Nikon FTZ coupler or adapter puts one of the new Nikon mirrorless camera bodies - the Z7 or Z6 - at the back in the new Z-mount and then invites you to clap on one of the millions of Nikon F-mount optics to the front. Then spin the dials and go out and see what your brand new old lens can do.
Call it what you like - old-fashioned, restricted, narrow or whatever, the Nikon F-mount has been a fixed feature of all Nikon SLR and DSLR bodies these last five decades. There are literally millions of Nikon lenses sitting unused...some of them in the CE repair shop. Until the advent of the APS-C sensor and the DX lens they were all designed to imprint a blast of light on a 24mm x 36mm sensor - film. They can still do that - this time on an electronic plate - and with the clever switching and connections of this FTZ adapter, they can do it pretty well as it was intended in the first place. If your old lens was a manual focus, it still is - if an auto-focus, ditto. There are a few exceptions but not many.
This means that even if you were to be silly enough to take out a magnificent new camera like the Z7 or Z6 and not couple it to a
new Nikkor S lens, you would still be able to shoot all day and every day with your stash of Nikon glass.
Even the smaller DX coverage is okay - the camera bodies can be set to recognise the smaller coverage and to use the central portion of their sensors. You are all set up and ready to go! So...what is stopping you from being the kid with the newest camera on the block...with the oldest retro heritage classic lenses? Wait around zeppelin hangers in stormy weather and hope for the worst.
