Robert Collins

3 hours ago, jonpais said:

Beyond this forum, I haven’t heard or seen a single so-called expert as sanguine about the lens situation as some of our esteemed contributors.

Most tend to err on the side of caution. They are too concerned with how well Nikon’s own adapted lenses will function with the new incompatible mount and how quickly Nikon themselves can turn out Z mount lenses.

And pretty much all agree that it will take years for them to catch up with Sony’s at present sixty-odd outstanding primes and zooms.

Think about it for a moment - for how many years have photographers been crying about the lack of Sony e mount lenses, and according to most, their lineup is still lacking in several key areas. And the alpha cameras are what, five years old already?

Many have held off buying into the Fuji system for the same reason - the lack of lenses they consider essential for their work. 

And now that Sony does at last boast a fine collection of fast lenses in the focal lengths I use most, there’s a strong desire to see a whole new set of slower, compact constant aperture primes and zooms (similar to what Fuji offers with their lovely 23, 35, and 50mm f/2 jewels) - at a price we can afford!

Because Sony’s brilliant sensors can see in the dark, not everyone believes that bulky, precious f/1.4 lenses are essential any longer. 

But let’s imagine for a moment that stalwart manufacturers like Tamron, Samyang or Tokina are already tooling up to make Z mount lenses as we speak: number one, their track record isn’t unblemished like Sigma’s, so we can’t be absolutely certain that their mechanical and optical quality will match those of say, the Art lenses (if all lenses were as uniformly excellent, reviewers would soon be out of a job!). And in many cases, adapted and third party lenses don’t focus as quickly as native OEM ones. (Besides which, I intensely dislike adaptors on mirrorless).

And even were Tamron to release a plastic fantastic 16-35mm f/2.8 Z mount the very day of the FX mirrorless announcement, there’s a strong possibility you’ll end up trading it in the moment Nikon unveils their own, with superior build, weather sealing and lightning quick, inaudible focusing motors.

A never-ending cycle of continually buying and upgrading! 

Lastly, one thing I really appreciate about Sony and Fuji are the excellent ecosystems - meaning that I don’t need to waste hours and days on the Internet researching lenses and ending up with a grab bag of optics by a half dozen different manufacturers, each with their own mechanical quirks and coloration, as I did with Panasonic.

I still think you are missing the fundamental reasons why the Nikon lens roll out will be faster than Sony.

Sony was first to mirrorless full frame.

As such all the lenses (designed to work efficiently on the mount) had to be redesigned virtually from scratch for two reasons.

1) To incorporate 'stepper motors' for fast and efficient 'CDAF' which is combined with 'on-sensor' 'PDAF' (which is inherently less efficient than a dedicated PDAF array you find on DSLRs). Of note the Sigma ART lenses for FE mount didnt add these motors and people have found their af relative poor on Sony A7x.

2) Lens need to be optically redesigned to take advantage (mostly wide angle) of the much shorter registration distance. As an example the upcoming Laowa 10-18mm FE weighs 40% of Canon's 11-24.

And redesigning a lens from scratch takes quite a long time - two years to production I have read.

But once they have done that for Sony FE, they dont have to do it all over again for Nikon Z mount. The registration distance is near identical and Nikon will use a combination CDAF/OSPDAF focusing system. All they have to do is change the mount which is trivial for a manual focus lens, more difficult for af lenses unless Nikon licenses the mount details.

As an example, The Fuji X mount was launched at the beginning of 2012 and Zeiss introduced totally new lenses - the Touit line - for Sony E and Fuji X in September.

16 minutes ago, mercer said:

The large mouth opening can probably only help with lens design and probably is as large as it is to allow for different AF motors, mechanics, electronics, etc... but if you take a look at even the simplest of lens designs... 

I dont think the opening will be anything like as large - 62mm - that people have guessed from some grainy photos. My guess is that it will be between the E mount 46mm and Canon EF 54mm.

By far the largest number of sales for the Z mount over time will be APS-C cameras. And it is terribly inefficient making a 62mm diameter mouth opening to accommodate a sensor with a 27mm diagonal. 

40 minutes ago, Yurolov said:

According to the rumor sites olympus is putting out another high end camera early 2019 with 'advanced video features'. These are two companies that have nothing to protect in terms of high-end video gear so they are of most interest to me. I don't think we will see anything great from canon but I don't see why nikon couldn't go all out in terms of video - unless there are some contractual obligations we aren't aware of. 

Needless to say, I think m4/3 has a place in the video sphere if they are able to improve their ibis. Olympus has the best, and they are said to have made it even better. For me an ideal situation for a small mirrorless camera, one that is competitive,  is one that has ibis good enough to where u can chuck out your gimbal. Couple that with good video af and you have the perfect run and gun combo. I think this is where their market is. 

I am not sure the concept of crippling the video of a 'MILC' to protect your high end video gear actually makes any economic sense in the current market. It seems to me that MILCs are something of a sweet spot for video because they are video cameras largely paid for by still photographers in large numbers. And if you consider say a Sony A9 can shoot 20fps, FF, 24mp in 12 bit 'real' raw for US$4k - you can imagine what the possibilities are for video going forward.

Seems to me that crippling a MILC to protect your cinema cameras is rather akin to crippling a mobile phone camera to protect your compact cameras.

47 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Nikon have patented their own version of dual pixel autofocus.

https://www.diyphotography.net/nikon-mirrorless-camera-may-dual-pixel-autofocus-tech-according-new-patent/

We could well be seeing that in the new mirrorless cameras.

If you assume the leaked specs and price are correct, there's no need to think it will be anything approaching a 'lite' mirrorless camera.

I didnt say I thought the camera would be a 'lite' mirrorless - just that it would be a 'solid' first FF mirrorless that was not too 'groundbreaking'. No reason to doubt the leaked specs or price but I dont think Nikon has to 'outdo' Sony for their mirrorless to sell well at that pricepoint.

47 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Leaked ad campaign looks good. It's a Chinese one with a very famous actress. Not much unusual about that. If you want to read that much into a leaked BTS photo from one ad campaign because there isn't a serious pro photographer holding the camera...well... haha. Maybe if the leaked specs didn't mention a $3000 price tag and full frame 46MP sensor with 4K video.

We are all speculating on relatively little information. You might think I am being spurious by making some guesses based on a marketing campaign photo but if you look at the D850/D750/Nikon 1/DF the underlying tone and capability of the camera is reflected in their marketing campaign. On the other hand, I think it is totally spurious to assume it will have Nikon's own version of dual pixel af based on 1 of several thousand of Nikon patents!!

47 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's great that the Sony monopoly on full frame mirrorless cameras (Leica aside) has come to an end.

There will be the Canon offering before too long as well, and then maybe Olympus / Panasonic will jump into the full frame mirrorless wars.

More competition = better cameras.

Cant argue with any of that - the better the camera that Nikon produces, the better it is for any FF mirrorless consumer. And monopolies pretty much always exist at the expense of both price and innovation.

Actually my biggest concern is Sony's stranglehold on image sensor fabrication for dedicated cameras. Hopefully that will change in a couple of years when Towerjazz has modernized its factories in the team up with Nikon.

4 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

I'm not going to split hairs with you over the definition of adapted Jon but if Nikon don't have their adapter making their existing currently produced lenses work as closely to native as the new lenses then they won't have those years in which to catch up with Sony so how it performs is arguably as important as the camera performance itself.

I said I wasn't going to split hairs over the definition of adapters but if I was (  ) then I'd say that for many, many people, the adapter in this case will be attached with such permanence to these cameras that it will just be called 'the lens mount'. 

Ironically, the advantage to me of the E mount is just how much can be adapted to it. The smart adapters for Canon alone flesh out Sony's lineup and the genius of the TechArt Pro in giving AF to manual focus lenses both old and new is a huge advantage. 

Actually,, I have a different reason for thinking that it 'wont' take Nikon years to catch up 'Sony' with lenses.

The key point with mirrorless lenses is that they need different af motors to pure 'pdaf' lenses (of DSLRs) to take advantage of the 'pdaf' plus 'cdaf' fine tuning of mirrorless lenses. 

The Nikon 1 had excellent on sensor pdaf because the sensors were built by Aptina which had on sensor pdaf tech. Aptina agreed a cross licensing patent deal with Sony (and was subsequently taken over by On Semi who no longer makes image sensors for dedicated ILCs). Sony took that tech and used it in their second generation A7x series. Nikon will presumably license the same tech from Aptina/Sony for their mirrorless. This is a long winded way of saying that Nikon's mirrorless af will likely be very similar to Sony's.

So I dont really see any particular reason why 3rd party manufacturers of Sony FE mount lenses shouldnt be able to fairly quickly come up with Nikon Z mount versions. So Sigma (well sort of), Tamron, Samyang and Zeiss Batis (?). Now that is 20 lenses that could be introduced in less than a year.

6 minutes ago, Danyyyel said:

I personally think they will. They didn't wait that long for nothing and I might seem stupid but I am judging that camera by the look. In fact it is about the size, one of the big problem that have plagued the Sony's has been ergonomic and overheating. This camera seems a bit bigger, which will give better ergonomics and more space for heat dissipation without being as big as a DSLR like the D750. That doesn't mean that they will not introduce much smaller apsc version that will be targeting D5300-D5600 buyers that will want pocket-able cameras. In the end for full frame camera, ultra small size is a bit moot because the FF lens will make big. The second thing also is about size and now it is about the mount size. This thing is so big that my guess is that they will come with IBIS as good as the Panasonic cameras, because the sensor will be able to move much more than the Sony's. The second thing about this big lens mount is that they will be able to do faster unique lens like the patented Noct .95 lens and or easier quality lens as thy won't have to bend the light that much to make it pass through a smaller size mount. The last thing is AF, many people forget that they already had a good on sensor Pdaf system in the Nikon 1 mirroless, even if it was on a much smaller sensor, I think they have progress enought since 2011-2015 to get it good in FF in 2018. 

Well its all good speculation. I certainly dont think Nikon would introduce a poor camera for their first serious mirrorless but I think it will be a 'solid' entry rather than anything too groundbreaking. Two reasons...

1) Timing. I think if Nikon had a mirrorless up their sleeve that would 'blow away' Sony they would have already released it much earlier. The timing looks entirely 'defensive' to me. Nikon  'needs' FF mirrorless 'now' in response to the success of Sony's A7x3 cameras or risk eroding their client base..

2) Marketing 'lite'...

Look at this photo taken at a marketing shoot....

This is marketing 'lite' - it is far more Nikon 1 than D850. This girl is young, female and appreciates that the mirrorless is lighter. She doesnt go out in the sun (or the rain) or go parkour jumping.....

I think the current general narrative - Nikon v Sony - FF mirrorless isnt that productive. Sony has set the bar in terms of 'features' and 'value' incredibly high to think that Nikon will beat it with their first mirrorless offering. 

From Nikon's perspective the most important thing is that they get their installed customer base on board for their mirrorless product and dont continue to leak elsewhere.

From that perspective, it is incredibly important that their adapter works incredibly well (or certainly much better than a Nikon lens on a Sony - which certainly isnt asking a lot

12 minutes ago, jonpais said:

Go with the Dell 9570. Do not get a MacBook for editing Premiere.

Yup Premiere does not run well on Mac....

22 minutes ago, mercer said:

Well, there’s probably two reasons for that. Remember they got a little heat last release for not having a pro female photographer amongst their ambassador group.

Plus, Canon just took the number one slot in mirrorless sales for the last quarter in Japan and Canon heavily markets their M line to females.

True but Canon mirrorless market share is built on US$600 mirrorless and not US$2-3k mirrorless.

Nikon 1 was always pitched at women (remember the pink variant?)

I just find it surprising that it is not being pitched at the 'aspiring pro' market as an alternative to a DSLR.

I find it interesting that Nikon's marketing of the mirrorless (at least in Japan) is aimed at women (youngish). It is a far cry from their marketing of their other full frame offerings.

1 hour ago, jonpais said:

Sorry if this is a dumb question - but who makes cameras in Taiwan? ?

He was referring to cmos image sensors in general which are used in a wide variety of industries - automotive, mobile phone, pc web cams. security devices...

24 minutes ago, John Brawley said:

Because there's no such thing as an off the shelf sensor.  Even the off the shelf sensors still need a huge amount of development to make them into a functional product that can ship.

JB

This is simply a non-sequitur. First of all there 'isnt' an off the shelf sensor. But then there 'is' but you need to add some tech to turn the sensor into a camera - 'no shxx sherlock!!'

But to explain my point. It is generally thought that the GH5S, BMPCC 4k and Z Cam 2e all use the same generic sensor.

The Sony IMX294CJK sensor (which is part of the Starvis line developed originally for security cams.)

Here are its specs....

https://www.sony-semicon.co.jp/products_en/IS/sensor0/img/product/cmos/IMX294CJK_Flyer.pdf

Now you might know that amongst those 3 cameras the Z Cam 2e is the only one to offer 4k 120fps. But if you read the 'sensor specs', you will see that 120fps 4k can only be achieved from a 10 bit signal...

And sure enough if we look at the Z cam 2e specs.... 120fps only comes from a 10 bit signal....

13 hours ago, John Brawley said:

I don’t think it ever even got made, let alone sold.  I think they only announced it.

It’s worth reading the very interesting article Andrew posted about how Nikon sensors get made..I would hope it may change our view of the idiotic phrase “off the shelf sensor”.... because no sensor is off the shelf....

JB

Of course there are... 

To quote Sony...

"The third category of sensors is completely generic – the sensors are created for use internally and to sell externally, to anybody. China or Taiwan or wherever.”

You can literally pick up a catalog of sensors from Sony, Samsung or Omnivision for that matter.

What Nikon does - getting a custom build with their design exclusive to them - is the 'exception' rather than the 'rule'

'Custom builds' are expensive to design and even more expensive to build because you both need a separate manufacturing line and you then have to ramp up to an acceptable yield.

If you consider that the cost of a generic M43 sensor is US$40-50 a piece and you expect to sell 100,000 cameras, your spend on sensors is roughly US$4.5m.

Most components in cameras are 'generic' or 'off the shelf'. Shutters by Nidal Copec, EVFs from Epson etc...

41 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Wow Hasselblad reps letting the company down big-time there.

Honestly, when I think Hasselblad, I simply cant get the picture out of my mind of those Sony Nex cameras they rebranded.....

Thankfully they have been put out of their misery by DJI who will probably do great things with the brand (as they are more innovative than all the other camera brands put together.)

16 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

It does look like the knee-jerk reactionary "House of Mouse" execs will have to eat their words.

He has broad public support as well.

Pretty much 90% of the internet seems to want Gunn reinstated, with a lot of high profile sites running positive articles about him and the vast majority of the Reddit comments being along the lines of positive support, not of his tasteless jokes, but of the man himself.

Which makes the vastly more angry and negative response on the EOSHD forums even more hard to comprehend.

Honestly, I have quite a lot of qualms with the whole concept of reinstating him.

This has nothing to do with the rights and wrongs in this case - he shouldnt have been sacked in the first place (from what I can see.)

It is more to do with whether 'everything should be judged by who can shout loudest in the internet court of public opinion'

It just seems an incredibly crappy way about going about things....

30 minutes ago, Trek of Joy said:

So Canon and Nikon have been doing it wrong all these years putting the lens release on the left?

Well sort of.

(I could also argue that Leica has always had the lens release button on the right side and Pentax used to have the button on the wrong side and have now got it on the right side.)

My guess would be that Canon and Nikon's 'tradition' for having the lens release on the 'wrong' side stems from the fact that when it was first introduced, it 'actually released the lens'. So if you accidentally pressed it the lens would literally fall off. So the lens release button was placed in the most inconvenient place possible.

But seriously.... take the 1kg Leica SL..... (looks a bit like the Nikon mirrorless)

....try putting the lens release on the left hand side and think about holding it with your left hand to put a lens on with your right hand. Totally daft right?

59 minutes ago, Nikkor said:

Robert get a life, lol. Are you left handed? Most people are right handed, why would those want to do the complicated part with the left hand? (plugging the lens into the lens mount).

Huh? Cameras are designed to be held one handed on the right hand side - that is why they have a grip there (and the lens release should be there.)

Holding a camera on the short left hand side is uncomfortable because the left hand generally holds the lens 'which is convenient for taking the lens off and putting it on'

I know because I used to have an Olympus that had the lens release on the wrong side which was very stressful. In fact, I would often have to spend a day in bed after changing lenses, simply to recover.

Yes, sure.

And while I dont like the lens release located on that side of the lens - to change lenses. It looks as though they have located 3 function buttons on the other side of the lens to use while shooting...

...And you certainly dont want someone to confuse a function button with a lens release button!!

29 minutes ago, kye said:

If it's going to last another 100 years, designing it with more pins than you think you'll need, or even some spares would make sense.

Who knows what kind of currently-unknown technologies will come into play during that time..  

True. DJI's mount already has one more pin than them, though.

I notice they chose not to correct two previous problems.

1. The connector pins remain on the top of the mount rather than the bottom

2. The lens release button is on the wrong side especially for mirrorless.

23 minutes ago, Danyyyel said:

So that's the latest teaser from Nikon, what it is confirming is that the size of the Mount will be huge, could fit a hasselblad 44x43 mm sensor. But I think this will give is much better IBIS for full frame camera and some unique lens like .95 Noct primes that they have patented. The more I think about this new Nikon Mirrorless Nikon camera is that the saying that Nikon might be late but when they come, they come with a bang. No one was guessing that this new mount would be that big and the more you think about it, the more it looks like a move that will last for another half a century at least. My guess is that Sony will be in big trouble, in this range of Mirrorless cameras and will have to see what Canon comes out next.

Interesting they have increased the pin count....

13 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Yeah but DPR is Mostly Photo shooters, but sure everyone that has Canon, Nikon lenses are hoping like hell they can still use them without some Frankenstein setup to do it.

And yeah they are going to Have to have IBIS in them to compete. I guess we will know soon enough.

I am sure that hybrid mirrorless sales are largely driven by still shooters though. In fact, from a video/film centric view, I think the whole concept of mirrorless hybrid is driven by the fact that you get a very capable video camera that is heavily 'subsidized' by still shooters.

DPreview did a poll of what people want to see in Canon and Nikon FF mirrorles (they got nearly 4,000 replies.)

Not surprisingly 'full compatibility with existing lenses' came out on top - so these systems will live or die through the quality of their adaptors. (I really hope that Nikon doesnt go with a translucent mirror design.)

IBIS also scores highly (not surprisingly.)

Also note that 'compact size', small affordable primes and lightweight scores high. (Fast primes, substantial grip - not so much.) So I wonder if the Nikon bigger mirrorless is going to be that successful.

12 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Yes but aren't they really limited to slower shutter speeds. I mean like 1/2000th or less? Not too big of a problem for video, but for photos, not so hot.

https://improvephotography.com/44427/what-is-a-leaf-shutter/

They definitely limited to slower speeds of say 1/2000th.

But I dont see that as a problem for 'stills' with a 'drone'. The shutter limitation of 1/2000th of a second for stills only really occurs when you are trying to use a very fast lens - say 85 1.4 - 'wide open' in 'bright sunlight'. If you stop down to f5.6 you wont have a problem. You are not trying to get shallow dof with a drone. And I assuming the Mavic Pro has variable aperture.

11 hours ago, jonpais said:

Seven full frame lenses patented by Olympus so far.

source

I think it is highly unlikely Olympus would go full frame with cameras. Their imaging division has only made a profit once in the last 10 years. Having abandoned 4/3 and never made a profit with M43, I think shareholders would literally lynch the management if they decided to diversify into a new camera mount.

It is quite possible though that Olympus could start making FF lenses for existing mounts - Sony FE or Nikon Z. Afterall their key expertise is optics and they make great lenses. 

30 minutes ago, Eric Calabros said:

If they had stock, they knew Sony Semiconductor is completely independent from Sony Imaging, and has strategic relationship with Nikon. 

 

Or possibly not....

https://petapixel.com/2017/03/22/sony-keeps-best-sensors-cameras/