That's swell, Jeremyrh.
I migrated to m43 six or so years ago, first to the Panasonic GX7 since I liked what I was getting with my LX5 high-end point-and-shoot. I still kept my Nikon system for much of my commercial work and still do love its image quality.
Sure, the image quality wasn't as good, but for travel I gained a lot, smaller, lighter, quieter, less threatening. It was liberating and I could accept the loss in resolution and the noise while shooting at outrageous ISO numbers. When I won an Olympus EM-5 mk II, I liked the images even better, color was better as was the video quality.
The lenses I have are superb and the pixel-shift on the Oly using a circular fisheye nearly met the image quality of the larger, heavier Nikon. All was well. But then Nikon came back into the scene... A little bit bigger bodies, a little bit bigger and heavier lenses and much, much better video with just a little bit of muscle-memory training from the DSLRs I still used.
When the 14-30 was available, it was time to make the upgrade. Besides, last year I killed one Oly stepping off a curve (along with tearing up a knee and bruising my thorax). Another body bit the dust and now the Oly repair estimates cost twice as much as I can find on eBay.
I gained a little more bulk & weight, but shed a lot of processing effort on the files, gained a couple of stops for my low-light shooting, shed a bunch more $$ for the upgrade, including the usual "hidden taxes" of needing new readers and cards, but now quite happy with the files and the video I'm getting. Most of the work are with a pair of lenses, the 14-30 & 24-70 along with the FTZ for the fisheyes, 70-200 and all the other legacy lenses. It's working. I didn't go the the Z7 since my D800s still produce lovely files just a little larger. My fingers seem to hit most of the right buttons now, too, and it didn't take too long.
I came close to doing the upgrade earlier this year but figured I take my own advice and not do it a week before a major trip across the pond and I'm glad I did. The transition to the Nikon Z is now about 15,000 images along and so far, everything is looking good.
While I was on the road, the man I mentor took his "beast" 850 & lenses to France. What he found was he wasn't wide enough and took a look at a Z7 in a Paris shop. He was hooked. When he got home with several hundred images, he too the plunge to a Z7, 14-30, 24-70 and now likes what he has. I don't think he's ready to pass along his 850 since he really likes his longer zooms with it, but now he can shoot in tight places like what he's seen me do for many years now.
He's in his late-mid 70s and so I think he'll be very please with the reduction in weight during his international travels so that's another bonus for him. For me, the Z is less intimidating looking than my the rest of my FX Nikons, just as silent as the Panasonic and Olympus m43 and the image quality and ease of processing the files well worth the upgrade tax.
Another little bonus is that with another cheap adapter, I can use my collection of Leica M lenses and one of my favorites is a Summarit 50 1.5 with lots of fog and decaying balsam between the elements. It puts a nice glow that can't be duplicated in PS. Some of my other 1980s vintage M lenses are also quite nice. The only issue is that with the cheap adapter they still only focus to about 3 feet. Otherwise, it's sort of fun to use these on a new digital platform without paying the price of a hefty down-payment on a used car.
