Nikon Patent Shows How the Z6III and Z8 Blend Power Zoom With Hi-Res Zoom

Some patents predict a product. These two explain one that already shipped. A pair of Nikon applications published in the US in August 2026 lays out, step by step, the feature that lets a power zoom lens and the camera’s digital crop zoom act like one long zoom. Nikon owners already know it as Power/Hi-Res Zoom Collab.

The filings are US 2026/0235926, “Imaging apparatus,” which covers the camera side, and US 2026/0238886, “Interchangeable lens and camera body,” which covers the lens side. Both trace back to Japanese applications filed on October 6, 2023. The feature itself reached the Z6III and Z8 through firmware in February 2025, working with the NIKKOR Z 28-135mm f/4 PZ.

Hi-Res Zoom in one paragraph

Hi-Res Zoom is a crop that doesn’t cost resolution. When you record 4K on a camera with a much bigger sensor, the camera normally gathers pixels from the whole frame and squeezes them down. Crop in, and it can read a smaller area at full pixel density instead, still ending up with 4K. The patent uses exactly that example: 4K output from an 8K sensor. At the halfway point, the camera reads about 6K worth of pixels and scales them to 4K. Image quality stays put as long as there are spare pixels to spend.

That gives you a second zoom on top of the lens. The question Nikon’s engineers tackled was how to drive both from a single control.

Extend or synch

The camera patent describes two ways to combine them, and they map directly onto the two options in the cameras’ menu.

The first is called the extend type. The lens zooms optically to its long end first. Keep turning the ring or pressing the lever and the camera carries on with Hi-Res Zoom, so a 135mm lens behaves like a longer one without a break in the move. The manual warns there can be a brief pause at the handover point.

The second is the mixed type, which the menu calls On (synch). Here the camera moves the optical zoom and the digital crop at the same ratio, together, from the start. Nikon’s manual pitches it as the smoother option. The patent’s first claim is about exactly this: varying the size of the sensor area being read in parallel with varying the lens’s magnification.

Who’s in charge, lens or body

The lens patent handles a quieter problem. A power zoom lens has its own zoom ring and lever, and normally the lens drives its zoom motor itself. In synch mode that can’t work, because the body has to coordinate both zooms. So the lens reports what you’re doing with the ring to the body, and the body sends back a signal that says whether the lens is allowed to act on its own. In mixed mode the body takes over and the lens just reports.

It’s plumbing, but it’s the plumbing that makes the zoom ring feel normal while two separate systems respond to it.

Why a patent on a shipped feature is worth reading

Nikon’s manual tells you what the two modes do. The patents tell you how they work underneath. In extend mode one system hands over to the other at the long end, which is where the manual says a pause can happen. In synch mode the two move together the whole way, so there’s no handover at all. And in both, the zoom speed comes from the power zoom settings, so one speed setting drives both.

It also shows how Nikon thinks about video zooms. A 28-135mm with Hi-Res Zoom in extend mode covers the long end that a run-and-gun shooter keeps wishing for, with one hand on one control. Phones have blended optical and digital zoom for years. Nikon’s filings show a careful way to bring that to interchangeable lenses without giving up 4K detail.

If you’re weighing the bodies, our Nikon Z6III review and Nikon Z8 review cover the rest of their video feature sets.

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