“Well-Connected Sources”- Digital Rangefinder from Nikon?
Rumour from a well-connected source is that Nikon will be introducing the dream camera for photojournalists shortly…..perhaps it will be a rangefinder that everyone seems to want, including me, of course.
As far as I’m concerned, no one ever knows what Nikon is going to do. Even Nikon probably doesn’t have a good idea what their MBA’s and assorted bean-counters are going to do- occasionally though, they let something wonderful go through even though it won’t make much money.
The idea of a digital rangefinder falls into the category of small numbers and marginal, at best, profit.
On the other hand- if they’d like to kill Canon on the high-end P&S market, they could come out with a digital rangefinder with capabilities similar to the Canon G9 (and Gx series in general) and make us all happy during those times when there’s no way in hell I’m dragging along my D3 to take snapshots a party, but I’d like to have something with me more than a lame P&S.
So I’m reporting on this 1 liner from LightStalkers both because I hope it’s true and also because LightStalkers is a forum for pro photojournalists who tend to be more connected than your average Fat Guy In a Forum ™.
May 26th, 2008 at 15:25
I’ve been wrong before (I didn’t think Nikon would go 35mm frame digital because I didn’t think they could pull it off after telling everyone to buy DX lenses, but I wasn’t counting on crop mode), but I can’t see Nikon putting out a digital rangefinder in the classic sense of their late 40s – 50s cameras.
While Nikon has put out a few special editions, mostly for Japan (SP2005, S3 Year 2000, FM2n Year of Dragon, F5 5th Anniversary Edition, FM2/T Year of Dog, FA Gold, etc.), in the last few years they have been relentlessly focused on profit and increasing margin. In spite of the fact that the SP2005 was priced at $6000, Nikon supposedly lost money on every sale. They’ve already predicted that earnings will grow only slightly in fiscal 2009 and margin will drop. In this environment, I can’t see them producing anything that’s going to have a very small specialized market and little or no profit.
In fact, many are predicting some kind of anniversary edition of the Nikon F in 2009, but I’m betting it doesn’t happen. I hope I’m wrong.
But I wouldn’t have guessed the new line of TS lenses either.
What I can see them doing is putting out a higher-end P&S with a DX-sized sensor and a fixed decent zoom that includes RAW and has a manual mode – something like a G7, but with a DX sensor. The only problem (and probably the reason they haven’t done it yet) is because if it has a DX-sized sensor, the lens has to be relatively large. And if this is to be a walk-around camera, then no one is going to want a large, heavy lens. And if it requires a separate lens line (assuming removable lenses), everyone will moan that they can’t use their existing lenses. It really has to be substantially smaller than a D40 for it to make sense.
Hogan predicted a pro P&S a long time ago, but I don’t know how much of that came from real knowledge of Nikon development plans and how much was wishful thinking along the lines of his proposal for a pro-level P&S design.