Quote Originally Posted by Steve Axford View Post
Perhaps the extra cost on the mirrorless cameras at present is paying for development of the new systems required, like new focussing and EVF systems? Theses, like all similar things, will drop in price after the development process reaches maturity. Perhaps Nikon and Canon plan to wait for that crossover point to slowly move away from SLRs.
I'm sure I already said that .. and it makes sense.
Remember the millions of potential customers don't care if it's SLR or mirrorless .. as long as it's .. cheap/the right size(which SLR designs can also be up to a point) .. and so on.




Quote Originally Posted by Steve Axford View Post
.... but it is very hard to imagine that such a complex mechanical device as a moving mirror can survive in what can easily be a purely electronic environment. ......
I have to be honest, I can't see that the basic version of the mirror system is really all that 'complex'.
Reason I say this is that I have one sitting on my desk, waiting to be installed one day soon
(I plan on doing the sensor filter replacement at the same time, hence the 'one day soon' caveat)

From what I've briefly observed on the very simple D70s mirror assembly it's really not all that much more complex than a door!
The entire mirror and shutter assembly is a single (plastic) unit, very light weight just with many complicated electrical ribbon strips hanging off it, looking very rustafarian!
The D70s uses a pentamirror viewfinder mechanism which keeps it much cheaper than a more expensive pentaprism design.
So, in just quickly looking at what the D70s assembly comprises of .. it looks quite cheaply made .. and to make.

The question is, what is the cost of a electronic display unit(of half decent pixel quality with an allowance for decent refresh rates) ... relative to the cost of the mirror assembly.

I can't imagine that a very high quality EVF display unit would be cheap to manufacture .. and then of course ensure that it's going to be durable as well(that is, production allowances for duds).

Remember that an EVF is basically an LCD and they are notorious for defective pixels .. mirrors aren't!
So no matter what manufacturing processes they have in place, there will always be LCD displays with defective pixels coming straight off the line .. they have to be accounted for in the manufacturing cost.
On a much lower (effective) resolution PC or TV monitor a dead pixel or two will effectively make no difference.
But on a super high res EVF(2.4m pixels in a 10x10mm square surface area is about as super high res as we consumers get access too!) .. one dead pixel and I dare say the EVF display unit is unusable.
I can't imagine anyone being happy with a bright red dead pixel whilst viewing it through a magnified dioptre too!

ps. had I been smarter, I (and my son) could have easily lived with the small speck of damaged mirror surface on the D70s when he brought it back from his camp trip. He tried quickly to clean it but nothing happened and speck remained.
I thought, as he did, it was a speck of dust/dirt and tried to clean it too .. until in cleaning it it smeared! .. but the smearing wasn't the dust speck it was the mirrored surface coming off!
Obviously the mirrored surface has a 'lifetime' as well or that (more likely) the D70s has been well abused(by me) over the years.
This is why I have a new replacement mirror box waiting to be fitted to the D70s ... funny thing(and it is an ancient 2004-2006 model camera now) .. but the mirror box is complete with pentaprism, lens mount, shutter, many electronic peripherals and servo motors .... and cost me a whopping AU$32(US$20). The next cheapest(also being the only other one available tho) was AU$80.
At that kind of money for the entire assembly, and most likely a few handlers must have made some profit along the retail chain ... I really can't imagine the cost of one of these low end assemblies to be more than about $10-20 or so. I'd dearly love to find out what the cost of a replacement EVF display unit would be.