Nikon Mirrorless on it's way

[richtbw]

Rumour has it that Nikon is close to placing a mirrorless camera on the market soon. Light Stalking and Photography Life are indicating to the possibility.

[db3348]

I thought their already existing 1- series were their offering to the mirrorless market.

Do you perhaps mean a newer or updated range, Rich ?

[The dingo]

I thought their already existing 1- series were their offering to the mirrorless market.

Do you perhaps mean a newer or updated range, Rich ?

The 1 V series is being discontinued. V3 is the last. A more pro model will come next year.

[I @ M]

Scuse me as I grab some pop corn, a few cheap beers and a packet of bex whilst I have a lie down and at more rumours about cameras that no one actually needs. Oh well, they didn't actually need the camera until someone on a forum told them they needed it.

[arthurking83]

LOL!
This has been speculated on for about the last 5 or 6 years on most places, usually fuelled by Nikon Rumours.
Remember back about a month or so prior to when the Df came to market, that because it's size was much smaller than the pro models of the time, it too was supposed to be mirrorless .. which as we know never eventuated.

it is inevitable that they will produce a larger sensor mirrorless at some stage in the future, but exactly what this means is still a waiting game.

I wouldn't take credence from the photography life article tho. They speculate that because of the new 70-300 AF-P lens, that a new full frame mirrorless is on the way!
If this is the case, then by design, any mirrorless camera that Nikon produces is bound to use the F-mount system too.


The specs of this new lens states that these cameras:

D5, D750, D610, D600, D5500, D5300, D3300 are fully compatible if the latest firmware is loaded onto the cameras.

These cameras:

D4, D4S, D3, D3X, D3S, D810, D810A, D800, D800E, Df, D700, D300, D300S, D7200, D7100, D7000, D5200 can still use the lens and AF works, but the limitation is that when the cameras meter has reverted back to sleep mode, the lens focus position will reset and has to full refocus all over again due to the focus by wire design of the lens.

totally incompatible camera bodies are a list from the past:

D2 series, D1 series, D200, D100, D90, D80, D70 series, D60, D50, D40 series, D5100, D5000, D3200, D3100, D3000, film SLR cameras and can't be made to work with this lens. But Nikon wants you to update, or have updated a few times, from those cameras anyhow!


So to speculate that this lens is the seed for a new full frame mirrorless camera because no compatible full frame cameras currently exist is completely false.


I think the only speculation that could be made from that lens, is that all new full frame cameras to come will simply have the ability to fully use AF-P type lenses.(which is usually a given proposition from Nikon anyhow!)
This comes as no surprise as that's the way Nikon uses their technology updates.

[swifty]

AF-P lenses are important for videographers but the stepper motors would be far more useful on contrast based AF systems too.
However if Nikon are to make a big splash with their mirrorless, especially if it's FF they will need to make their F-mount AF-S lenses work flawlessly, and not just AF-P lenses where there's currently just 1 FF variety.

But more importantly I think these are just Nikon's effort at matching Canon's STM lenses.
Personally I think matching/beating Canon is not a bad predictor of what Nikon will release (rather than what Sony or Fuji might be doing). So since Canon has EOS-M, I think Nikon will have something similar.

[arthurking83]

.....
Personally I think matching/beating Canon is not a bad predictor of what Nikon will release (rather than what Sony or Fuji might be doing). So since Canon has EOS-M, I think Nikon will have something similar.

That sounds not only reasonable but very plausible as well.

So taking that into account, and the need for more AF-P type lenses .. the chances that Nikon are close to introducing a mirrorless camera soon is highly unlikely, unless it's a Dx model, where the 18-50 and 70-300 (f/6.3 Dx model lens) already exist.
Or it'll have to be a totally new system not reliant on only the 1 (70-300 f/5.6 Fx) AF-P type lens(as photography life explains it).

The third alternative is that they have somehow managed to get their plentiful AF-S lenses working really well on their mirrorless sensored camera.

I remember reading an interview with a Nikon employee of high standing where they described the Nikon 1 system as an important test bed for their engineers to develop the focusing system for future mirrorless cameras.
Option #3 could be a likely situation.

I'm more inclined to think that it makes the most sense for Nikon to rationalise the D3xxx and D5xxx lineup now(with the D7xxx being closer to D5xxx feature specs!) .. and make this the new testbed for their mass market mirrorless cameras.
Eventually, they'd then graduate those same model types into the lower end Fx cameras(ie. D6xx and maybe D7xx) .. and after a few more iterations of models, they could have parallel high end models with the option of a mirrorless or SLR type systems.

[swifty]

I remember reading an interview with a Nikon employee of high standing where they described the Nikon 1 system as an important test bed for their engineers to develop the focusing system for future mirrorless cameras.

Do you recall where this was from? That would be an interesting read.

[richtbw]

Australian Photography also reporting on the possibility of a mirrorless camera on it's way from Nikon. They quote a statement made to DPReview by Nikon that they are "developing new mirrorless products that builds on Nikon's strengths ............."
Perhaps where there is smoke there may be a fire?