Just spotted this earlier. I assume this this is a Big Deal? Nikon was not in the mirrorless biz before?
Not full-frame so far.
As the article says, Nikon and Canon have both been pretty much outsiders to the mirrorless game. The reason is that they had so much of their business in traditional DSLRs. But Sony has been eating their lunch in recent years. After shedding a lot of its legacy business, Sony focused in three areas: gaming (PlayStation), entertainment (Sony Picture Studios), and cameras/imaging. They basically didn’t have a legacy business to protect, so they jumped straight to mirrorless.
Because they have no mirrors, mirrorless bodies can place the sensor a lot closer to the lens. That means you need entire new lines of cameras and lenses. Canon and Nikon had billions locked into their traditional camera/lens business, which were also the way they locked their customers in. Starting over would sorta be like MS abandoning Windows. But mirrorless lets you do so much more than mirror, and with even smaller bodies to boot. Sony’s advantages are becoming way too impressive (and affordable) for the regular consumer. So both are now rumored to be getting into mirrorless. It’s not just Nikon. The Canon rumors are rampant.
Nikon, feeling, the heat, reveals its mirrorless lineup. The Z-mount is the first new Nikon lens mount since the F-mount, which has been around since 1959!
$2,000 for the lower end Z6, plus $1,000 for the kit lens… I know there are great photographers here but this is so far out of my price range, even as an interested consumer. Besides, in my mind my Pixel 2 XL takes better photos than my DSLR anyways. Of course that comes with a bunch of technical caveats, the DSLR with photoshop is capable of more flexible / better photos, they just don’t come out that way. But I’ll be interested to see how and whether these succeed in comparison with Sony.
The idea is to stop the Nikon users (especially pros) from defecting to Sony, hence the adapter so they can still use their F-mount lenses that pros have made sizeable investments towards. Long-term, Nikon will transition to fully mirrorless, but it’s going to take a very long time. First they have to stop the bleeding.
As Steve Jobs once noted, the desktop PC is a pickup truck. Some thing here. Not everyone needs a pickup truck, but pickup trucks are essential for certain professional classes, especially if you want high-quality content made for everyone else to enjoy.
Wait, that can’t be right. What mount did the Nikon 1 use?
I am glad Nikon is finally getting into the serious mirrorless game (the half-baked Nikon 1 didn’t count). I defected to Olympus several years ago because Nikon never delivered on mirrorless and I was tired of lugging around heavy DSLRs and lenses.
I am tempted to come back, but very few of my old lenses will fully function on the new cameras (AF-D lenses won’t autofocus), and will only function at all with the adapter, which adds bulk I was trying to get rid of. I understand the reasoning behind the new mount, but it does create an extra roadblock.
Probably best to wait for version 2.0 anyway, as I’m sure these new products will have a bunch of issues.
Keep in mind the Z6 is the equivalent of a D500, a serious sporter’s camera. There will be lower end mirrorless bodies soon enough.
https://nikonrumors.com/2018/08/24/nikon-is-considering-cheaper-two-digit-or-three-digit-z-mirrorless-cameras-in-the-future.aspx/
Yeah. The first wave is for pros. Nikon is clearly worrying about losing them.
But what’s sort of mind-boggling is that these new cameras are single-card-slot-only. Almost all pro bodies now have dual card slots. Most pros use them as backup, because if you only rely on a single card and you’re shooting something like a wedding or an NFL game and the card corrupts, the technical term for your situation is you’re hosed.
That seems like an odd omission.
Are they saving identical shots to both cards?
Yes. It’s a redundancy safeguard. If you’re just taking pics of your kids or your summer vacation then you probably don’t desperately need it. On the other hand, you probably wouldn’t be using a pro camera either.
Yup. SD cards can corrupt, especially if you shoot thousands of photos a week. They can even fall apart in the camera slot (they’re plastic and they get a lot of wear-and-tear being inserted in and out all the time), at which point it’s not unknown having to send the camera to the manufacturer to get all the pieces out.
Didn’t know that was how dual slots were used. We actually just bought our son a D750, which does have 2.
You don’t have to duplicate. Some people use their faster storage card for video, and the slower for photos.
But if you’re shooting a wedding and you only have one card and it corrupts, imagine the death stares when you walk up to the bride and ask if they can redo the ceremony.
Yeah, I get it. He’s actually going to start assisting a guy that does weddings soon. Not what he wants to be doing, but a way to get some professional experience and make a little money.
EOS R has launched.
There’s some stuff to really like. Wow, everything can be customized, including the focus ring on the lens and the ring on the adapter! And what a lens line-up at launch! Wow.
And then there’s stuff that’s puzzling. Only single-card slot. No IBIS, which is sorta huge. IBIS works amazing on Sony, and even Nikon put IBIS in their first-generation mirrorless. And it also has a slow shooting speed compared to other mirrorless. Hell, it’s slower than mirrored cameras. The latest Sony’s are close to 24 frames per second of shooting. You could create video from just the photos alone. The EOS R does a whopping 8 frames per second, but if drops to 3-5 fps when AF tracking. Yikes.
Sony has put the A7II with an kit lens on incredible sale the past few weeks. $998 for the body and the 28-70mm kit lens.
If I didn’t just buy an A6500 and lens, this is what I most definitely would have purchased.