First teased during the Nikon Z6 III announcment, Nikon Imaging Cloud excited viewers, offering a brand new and entirely free cloud service for Nikon creatives. Now officially unveiled by Nikon, we have more details about the service and it's certainly doing its best to make Nikon cool again!
Nikon states that Nikon Imaging Cloud is 'your new creative partner', creating a connection between the cloud app and the best Nikon cameras. At present, this entails three main functions - cloud storage, firmware updates, and most anticipated, exclusive image recipes.
Above: The Nikon Imaging Cloud announcement video
Nikon has been winning back fans of late with some fantastic award-winning releases, and appealing to the younger generation with its retro-inspired Zf line. This looks likely to continue with the inclusion of what Nikon calls 'exclusive image recipes', which are essentially custom LUTs or film recipes.
Nikon Imaging Cloud enables users to recreate their favorite film stock, preset, or experiment with a library of existing recipes from Nikon Creators, and upload it to their camera as a color profile. Up to 9 recipes can be uploaded directly from the cloud to a Nikon camera, providing endless creative freedom and experimentation.
This will be music to retro camera fans' ears, as similar film simulation features like those on Fujifilm cameras, emulate shooting analog without the expense and hassle of using film. With Nikon's great dynamic range performance, I can't wait to see a Kodak Tri-x-inspired recipe!
In addition to being used as film simulations, the image recipes can also be used as LUTs for previewing color-grading on video-dedicated cameras. We have seen a successful example of this in Panasonic's Lumix Lab app. After Nikon acquired RED, we may start to see improved video features in future camera releases, and the option for LUTs via Nikon Imaging Cloud would be a very welcome one.
The second feature of the Nikon Imaging Cloud service will enable the user to automatically upload images from the camera to the cloud over a Wi-Fi connection. This works in three ways. It can auto-upload to the cloud enabling safe storage of your images even if your equipment gets damaged or lost, secondly, it can act as a vault for storing images for up to 30 days in the cloud, and lastly, it enables direct upload to third-party platforms such as Lightroom and Dropbox via Wi-Fi.
The third major feature of the cloud service is firmware updates. Users are given an option for automatic or manual firmware updates, but gone are the days of downloading to a storage device, as it can now all be updated directly to your camera via a Wi-Fi connection. If you do opt to manually update the firmware, you will be notified of an update with a small yellow dot next to the tool icon in the camera menu.
The Nikon Imaging Cloud sounds like a fantastic addition for Nikon creatives, particularly the introduction of image recipes which will be a huge hit with the younger generation looking to emulate film.
Nikon Imaging Cloud is available now for free, however, it is currently only available for the Nikon Z6 III. It is scheduled to be rolled out to other Nikon mirrorless cameras in due course, but no specific release date has been announced.
You may also be interested in our guides to the best Nikon camera, the best Nikon lenses, and the best retro cameras.
