First Setup
What should you change on a brand-new Nikon Z6 III before your first shoot?
Format both cards in the camera
Formatting builds the folder structure the camera expects and clears a card that has lived in other devices. This body has two slots that take different cards: one accepts a CFexpress (Type B) or XQD card, the other an SD card — UHS-I and UHS-II SD cards are both supported. Format each card in its own slot. On a CFexpress card, highlighting the slot and pressing 2 offers a Full Format — the option Nikon recommends when a card's read and write speed seems to have slowed.
Make the second slot a backup
Set Secondary slot function to Backup: every picture is recorded to both cards at once, so a failed card is an inconvenience, not a lost shoot. The factory setting, Overflow, only touches the second card when the first one fills — one copy of everything until then. Primary slot selection, one item above, chooses which slot leads. Videos play by a different rule: their card is chosen in the Video Recording Menu under Destination, not by the stills slot settings.
Shoot NEF (RAW), lossless
Set Image quality to NEF (RAW) and RAW recording to Lossless compression: the full frame from the 24.5-megapixel sensor, packed with no loss of quality. The alternatives are honest compromises — High efficiency ★ produces pictures that, in Nikon's own words, compare favorably in quality to lossless, in smaller files; plain High efficiency is smallest of all. JPEG and HEIF shooters set their quality under Image quality instead.
Steady the sensor, at your focus point
Vibration reduction to Normal for everyday subjects; Sport is Nikon's recommendation for rapidly, unpredictably moving subjects, for panning, and on a tripod or monopod. Then the step most owners skip: Link VR to focus point → ON. Stabilization is then optimized to reduce blur at the focus point you are using, not just the center of the frame. (One exception to know: with an F-mount lens on an FTZ adapter that has its own VR switch, the menu greys out — the lens switch rules.)
Save everything to U1
Save the setup you just built to U1 on the mode dial. From now on, U1 is your known-good camera — after a reset or a session of menu experiments, one turn of the dial restores it. U2 and U3 stay free for variants: a video setup, a wildlife setup.
Do the steps now, in order, then turn the mode dial to U1 and confirm every setting stuck. That dial position is your camera from today on.