RED-Powered Nikon ZR Soars to the Top of Japanese Sales Charts

The Nikon ZR is an excellent video-first hybrid camera, as customers in Japan can attest. The Nikon ZR has topped Map Camera’s list of best-selling new cameras in October, which is a spot very rarely held by a camera that prioritizes video nearly as much as the Nikon ZR does.

Map Camera’s monthly best-selling camera breakdown, as spotted by Digicame-Info, offers an unusually good look at new and used camera sales. While it accounts only for sales at Map Camera, Map Camera is a significant photographic retailer in Japan, and its sales data often strongly correlates with sales at other Japanese retailers and global customer preferences.

As Map Camera writes, the Nikon ZR was only released on October 24 at Map Camera, so in just one week, it rocketed to the top of the sales charts. The Nikon ZR is an especially compelling camera for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is Nikon’s first camera to fully implement RED cinema technology. There have been firmware updates to bring RED-designed LUTs to other Nikon Z cameras, but the ZR is the first Nikon camera to truly fuse Nikon and RED technologies into a single product.

Nikon is highly confident in the ZR, arguing that it is versatile enough to serve both content creators and professionals alike. There is also the price factor. In the United States, the Nikon ZR is just $2,196.95, which is an extremely aggressive price, and significantly less than the $2,899 Sony FX2, the $3,998 Sony FX3, or the $3,899 Canon EOS C50. While these cameras don’t directly compete against each other in all facets, they are well worth comparing, and the ZR’s value proposition is impossible to dismiss.

“We really want the ZR to cover uses from a RED camera B-cam or C-cam as well as offer a camera to content creators who really want a cinema quality. So the coverage of the ZR is really wide,” Hiroyuki Ikegami, Senior Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Imaging Business Unit at Nikon, explained in an interview with PetaPixel at the IBC Show in Amsterdam in September.

Map Camera adds that its preorders for the Nikon ZR opened on September 18, shortly after Nikon unveiled the ZR, and that Nikon’s first shipment last month covered the initial preorders. However, the orders have continued rolling in, and the ZR is now on backorder.

“Nikon has always seemed to be ahead of its competitors when it comes to videography, but with the ZR, it may suddenly rise to a leading position in the industry,” Map Camera writes.

As for the rest of the top 10 best-selling new cameras, there are a lot of familiar and expected faces. The Sony a7C II in second place perhaps seems a little surprising at first, but there was a cashback campaign in the first half of October in Japan that Map Camera believes drove sales considerably.

The Ricoh GR IV landed in third place, which is not surprising at all. Since its release in September, Map Camera has closed preorders, allowing photographers to order only once Map can confirm stock is available. Once orders open, they sell out immediately.

“It’s obviously incredibly popular,” Map Camera says of the GR IV.

In fourth place is the Fujifilm X-E5, with the Ricoh GR IIIx landing in fifth spot. While the X-E5 is new, having launched over this past summer, the GR IIIx is over four years old, but still maintains a spot on Map Camera’s 10 best-selling cameras almost every month. The rest of the top 10 is available on Map Camera’s website, and includes a few more Fujifilm and Nikon cameras, none too surprising.

Map Camera also tracks and shares the best-selling used cameras each month. In October, the Sony a7 III took the top spot, followed by the Ricoh GR III and Nikon Z50 II. There is one somewhat surprising inclusion on the list: the Fujifilm X100VI in 10th place. People are still trying to get their hands on new X100VI cameras, as it is routinely backordered and sold out. It’s a bit odd that photographers who no longer want the X100VI are trading it in versus selling it privately. At least on eBay in the U.S., used Fujifilm X100VI cameras are selling for between $1,500 and $1,800, depending on whether they include extra accessories. That’s not far off the camera’s brand-new list price of $1,799.

Image credits: Nikon | Elements of header photo licensed via Depositphotos.