In the press briefing for the freshly announced Nikon Z50II, Nikon made great pains to point out to the assembled journalists that its new baby was to be called the Z50II, and not a Z50 Mark II. "There's no 'Mark' in the name, so please do not write it into your stories," we were all instructed.
Right you are. But then on reading through the wodges of press information, I noticed that the new camera name had consistently been written as Z50II, rather than Z 50II – which has been the official nomenclature for all Z-series cameras previously. Was this a slip-up on the part of the marketing department? Surely not: it was the same on every bit of documentation I read, in every single instance…
Okay, so it's no big deal, but having worked for many years as a journalist where house style is all important and it's drummed into us that the devil is in the detail, curiosity got the better of me and I just had to ask my contact at Nikon whether the space after the 'Z' was really no more?
And indeed it appears to now be the case: "The official naming convention (passed on from Japan) is that we're moving away from the spacing after the Z. Therefore, all of our mirrorless Z range will now be referred to as 'Z50', 'Z30', rather than 'Z 50' or 'Z 30'. So the correct naming for the new camera is: 'Z50II'."
And to be honest, it's no skin off our noses on Digital Camera World: We have been referring to the Z-series range in exactly that way since the beginning. Even if it wasn't the 'official' way, it just seemed to make more sense. After all, in Nikon's DSLR naming convention, it was the Nikon D850, not D 850 (that looks really odd, you have to admit).
But not only that, in the online world where search is all-important, no one ever bothered with putting in the space when hunting for information about Nikon products. We got far infinitely more hits referring to the first Z-series camera as the 'Nikon Z7', rather than 'Nikon Z 7'.
But we do insist on a space between the camera name and any Roman numerals to signify its iteration. To us, the Nikon Z50 II reads so much better than Z50II, no matter what the official line might be.
And when Nikon gets around to releasing an updated Zfc (which must surely be on its way), we reckon it might well change its mind again: Nikon ZfcII looks like my cat has walked across the keyboard.
Space or not, you can pre-order the Nikon Z50 II now!
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