Is Nikon hiding the Nikkor Z 600m f/4 lens from us? The Big N has caused a bit of a stir within the photographic community in a recent, hastily edited post across its social media channels.
It started out as a smiley story about how Nikon is celebrating its extended partnership with The Open Golf Championship. And what better say to mark its 150th year than to share a few images taken with the Z9 from pro golf photographer Matthew Harris, captured on his Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 600mm f/4 lens.
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Yes, you read that right. Well you would have if you saw the post before Nikon changed it at 09:21 the next morning to read "AF-S Nikkor 600mm f/4E FL ED VR lens". Was this a simple typo or is Nikon hiding the truth?
As you can see from the image above, the original Facebook post (for which you can see the edit history, by clicking the three dots at the top-right) on Nikon's main account clearly states that a Nikkor Z 600mm f/4 was used to take the photos when it was posted on 19 July.
This might have been a simple mistake from Nikon, or its social media team. But when you have a Nikon Roadmap that clearly states a Nikkor Z 600mm f/4 will be coming to the pro prime lens line-up, its hard to believe that this was just an error – and more like a technical blunder that needed to be resolved quickly.
After all, what better way to test out a new Z 600mm f/4 lens than at major golf tournaments around the world? I am not saying that Harris is necessarily using the new Z telephoto-prime, but we know for sure that these types of lenses are tested to the limits at major events – and mounting it to a Nikon Z9 and tracking top tier golf swings sounds like a viable option to this old sports photographer.
We tried to do some digging into the images' EXIF data, but sadly this was all wiped clean before the images where posted. And Nikon quickly spotted the blunder and fixed it the next morning (but not for a while across all its channels), which leads me to think that the inside talk from Nikon is about this new 600mm f/4 – otherwise I am sure that this mistake, typo, blunder, whatever you want to call it would have been spotted before posting.
I could be wrong, but that's just my two cents on the matter!
