When Profoto and Nikon announced that they would be collaborating in a vague press release back in November, in my mind it made a lot of sense. And now with the latest announcement that the Nikon Z9 is fully compatible with the Profoto AirTTL products it would seem that Nikon won’t be bringing out a dedicated flash unit for the Z9 camera.
The last high end Speedlight Nikon launched was the SB-5000 which was announced on the same day as the D5 in January 2016. There was no Speedlight for the D6 camera. Which was probably the first sign that Nikon was moving away from creating in house flash units for their cameras.
My experience with the Nikon Speedlight range has been disappointing since using Profoto equipment. I have said in the past that the colour accuracy of the Speedlights I own hasn’t been great.
Seeing other photographers choosing the Profoto A series units over the SB-5000 it really is the right logical move for Nikon to stop research and development into a product line that would always come in second place to Profoto.
I don’t own any Profoto A series units so I can’t tell if there has been a firmware upgrade for them to work with the Nikon Z9. At the time of writing, there is no firmware upgrade for my Air Remote TTL-N for Nikon. I can only speculate that Nikon made sure the Z9 worked fully with it before shipping the Z9 out.
I really am excited to see what new things this collaboration brings in the months and years ahead.
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