D300s Successor-D400, what and when

sevencrossing

. You can easily use fx glass on dx and no You are not going to loose any quality on this severn crossing, honestly that's ridiculous approach as You are using only the sweet spot = IQ is better.

Are you saying

If I take two photos with a D800 with a 24 -120 @ f 8
one set to dx crop at 50mm
one not cropped (Fx) at 85mm



the Dx crop will have a higher IQ because i am using the sweet spot

even if put the 24 -120 on a 5200 I cannot believe the IQ would be better than the D800
( I think the same applies if you used 85 and 50 FX primes

Msmoto

I better not get started with the motorcycle stories....Hayabusa sold at age 67.

I made a comment on the D600 oil and dirt thread which I am repeating here. As to the delay of the D400 or whatever the D300s replacement is called, maybe Nikon has tested the new body, and maybe it has the D600 oil/dirt problem. One might suspect the "new" technology of the D600 would potentially have similarities with any new pro-sumer body, namely the newest DX bodies.

If this is true, some real problems are in store for Nikon. Once the D400 is announced, it will be several months before my order goes in as I do not want to deal with any teething problems. I cannot imagine there have not been a lot of new DSLR folks who have read the reports on some of the new Nikon bodies and found themselves looking at another manufacturer.

What is so baffling, is how Nikon makes their decisions. So far they seem to have grossly misread what consumers want in terms of service and reliability.

donaldejose

SquamishPhoto: No, I don't think I have ESP or alone changed the minds of Nikon engineers. Nikon produces what it can and what it thinks will sell. Nikon pays no attention to mine, or anyone else's, guesses as to what it many do in the future. If you get that impression, it is incorrect. What I do is evaluate the odds and think where things most likely are going. That is the source of my "predictions." Anyone, who reads them can judge for themselves whether or not I have been "mostly right" or "mostly wrong." I side with msmoto on the D400 having a native ISO of 12,800 as a strong selling point, if Nikon can do it. Why wouldn't Nikon do it, if it is possible? Neither msmoto nor I are saying a DX D400 will have the same image quality as an FX D4 at ISO 12,800 (although I would think they would be indistinguishable in an 8x10 print).

sevencrossing

What is so baffling, is how Nikon makes their decisions. So far they seem to have grossly misread what consumers want in terms of service and reliability.

Proving what the customer wants is no guarantee of commercial success

Jessops tried to provide customer service, at on line prices

Yes we all want a D4 at a D300 Price but I honestly don't think it is in Nikon s best interest to provide one

soap

Are you saying

If I take two photoes with a D800 with a 24 -120 @ f 8
one set to dx crop at 50mm
one not cropped (Fx) at 85mm

the Dx crop will have a higher IQ because i am using the sweet spot

Define the nebulous term "image quality" in a strict sense if you want that question answered. There are many possible ways to define it, leading to different answers.

Msmoto

@ sevencrossing

What I am referring to is Nikon being forthright and honest in dealing with customer complaints. On the other hand, what we see is cameras returned with no fix. The problem is well know in the media and nikon has not made any statement such as indicating they are investigation a solution to the problem and reassuring owners of nikon products that the solution will be presented soon. When a company like camera rentals has to clean every D600 they have this is a statistical outlier and deserves some public announcement by Nikon.

And, the lack of some announcement is an absolutely inappropriate way to mange a crisis. I would bring one more loosely related example into view here. Years ago in the USA the Tylenol brand of acetaminophen was tampered with and poison was placed in the capsules. The manufacturer spent millions of dollars recalling all of the Tylenol products and reestablishing the packing in a tamper proof configuration. The fault was never the manufacturer's yet they know the public relations benefit of finding a solution even when it was not their responsibility. And the result of McNeil doing this resulted in Tylenol totally dominating the market for years and making the manufacture millions of time the actual cost of the recall. This has been called in the USA one of the best public relations moves by any manufacturer in history.

Nikon is acting not only with their head in the sand, but also in a manner which potentially could cost them thousands of times in lost sales what the fix of the D600 could cost. We refer to this as "short sighted" or penny rich and dollar poor.

SquamishPhoto

I think comparing dust removal to an instance of a company recalling pills laced with poison is a bit of a stretch.

donaldejose

The comparison is not dust to pills laced with poison. It is two different public relations responses to a perceived problem. Yes, one problem was a serious (but extremely rare) health risk while the other is with a quite common defective product irritation which you can fix yourself. Different categories but still it is an example of proactive corporate action vs. saving face by announcing nothing and doing nothing. Nikon can be validly criticized for their lack of response as many commentators have done.

DouxBokeh

adamz wrote : "IMHO, d600 didn't cannibalise d800 sales, as this are two different cameras."

IMHO, no so. If the D600 had been introduced first (before D800 and without oil and dust problems), the sales of the D800 would have been quite different... The D800 being to much of a camera for many FX users...

For the same reason, the "D400" will be introduced before the "D7100"... = Sales and $$$

spraynpray

I think comparing dust removal to an instance of a company recalling pills laced with poison is a bit of a stretch.

No it isn't Squamish - in terms of good move/bad move for the companies future, it is identical.

donaldejose

DouxBokeh: I (and about 10,000 others) sure hope you are correct that the D400 will be out before the D7200.

adamz

@DouxBokeh - indeed the numbers will change, but d600 was introduced later and I agree that if they ship d400 than it's gonna be before d7200

@sevencrossing - I didn't said anything about comparing sensors (FX to DX), I just saying just saying about fx galss used on dx cameras - You can only benefit on IQ from this, no other way.

TaoTeJared

This was why I asked about manufacturing cost of FF. If Nikon can produce the FF version of an APS-C body for let's say an extra cost of $50-100 ( which they can easily reflect on the price ), then they do not need to worry about prosumer DX body market loss.

The actual manufacturing cost is always hidden due to all camera brands being public. If you knew that, you can back into margins and back into a ton of other numbers. There is not a public company on earth that will be that stupid to publish the actual cost. What they have published is the multiple of how much more it costs. What I have seen is that you can get only 1/4 as many FX sensors as you can than DX sensors on a silicone board. They also scrap 20X more by percentage due to the larger size and consequently higher chance of error. A number of FX sensors being 7x the DX sensor cost was floated by Canon, but many years ago. I'm guessing it is still close to that as DX manufacturing has improved at the same pace or better as FX. $50-100 doesn't even touch it. It is probably closer to $500.

At the end of the day, I do believe that Nikon is loosing money on the D600 and making much more on lenses and accessories where their higher margins reside. That practice is noting new - just like Cell phones, pay next to nothing and you are locked into a contract that pays for the loss on the phone, and much more.

TaoTeJared

Define the nebulous term "image quality" in a strict sense if you want that question answered. There are many possible ways to define it, leading to different answers.

There is no strict definition of Image quality as it is a qualitative not quantitative measurement. Not everything is black and white.

soap

Define the nebulous term "image quality" in a strict sense if you want that question answered. There are many possible ways to define it, leading to different answers.

There is no strict definition of Image quality as it is a qualitative not quantitative measurement. Not everything is black and white.

Thanks for telling me what I said.

The whole point of attempting to get sevencrossing to define what he is talking about is because there is no objective definition of "image quality", yet he's making objective claims.

Paperman

I'm guessing it is still close to that as DX manufacturing has improved at the same pace or better as FX. $50-100 doesn't even touch it. It is probably closer to $500.

TTJ, you are not suggesting only the sensor in the $1,700 D600 costs $500, are you ? ( more actually as you are guessing that is the difference between the FF & APS-C sensors ) . And if what you are saying is true, how can Nikon sell the D600 at the same (expected ) price of a D300 replacement ?

SquamishPhoto

I think comparing dust removal to an instance of a company recalling pills laced with poison is a bit of a stretch.

No it isn't Squamish - in terms of good move/bad move for the companies future, it is identical.

Really? Had Tylenol taken the same route that Nikon is presently taking, namely by simply not addressing the issue publicly in any way, and just let more people possibly take more poison and die I don't believe that the company would exist today. However, people are still buying D600's all the time despite the issues and despite Nikon saying nothing, so calling this identical is silly.

ZSChow

I'm guessing it is still close to that as DX manufacturing has improved at the same pace or better as FX. $50-100 doesn't even touch it. It is probably closer to $500.

TTJ, you are not suggesting only the sensor in the $1,700 D600 costs $500, are you ? ( more actually as you are guessing that is the difference between the FF & APS-C sensors ) . And if what you are saying is true, how can Nikon sell the D600 at the same (expected ) price of a D300 replacement ?

He is. A while back we had a discussion re: sensor pricing. The main driver of cost in a semiconductor fabrication process is the cost of the wafer of silicon. Because the costs of the wafer are fixed, the cost per chip are higher if with a FF sensor compared to a DX sensor as you can make less chips per wafer.

In addition, the more chips you make from the wafer, the higher your yields are. This is because the probability of each chip being damaged is lower as the risk is distributed over all the smaller chips. However, because FF sensors are so large, they have a higher probability of being damaged during production.

These are the main drivers of the cost difference between FX and DX sensors. It doesn't help that the sunk costs of designing FX sensors is divided over a smaller production run. I'm sure that processes have improved to the point that FF sensors are economically feasible to put into the D600, but that does not mean that Nikon is making a profit off it. Market penetration seems to be the driver behind Nikon at the moment.

Additional reading : Canon FF camera/sensor white paper

EDIT : Crap, just realised I just independently repeated TTJ. Must read full thread next time.

Msmoto

Oh well...

donaldejose

SquamishPhoto is correct in that the risk from dust on a sensor and poison in a Tylenol bottle are different risks. If Tylenol had not voluntarily recalled the bottles and installed tamper proof lids a very large number of people would not have bought Tylenol. The effect of corporate bad PR decision making would be rather immediate. However, msmoto and others are also correct in suggesting the same thing may occur on a slower time frame which Nikon bad PR decision making. A lot of people may stop buying Nikon cameras over time due to quality control issues which are not admitted or fixed by the company. Actually though, the risk of death from a tampered Tylenol bottle must have been incredibly low on a statistical basis. Probably a lower risk then we normally take from dying in an auto accident when we drive our car to the grocery store each week. In contrast, the risk of repeated D600 sensor dust seems to be quite large.

Ironheart

Commercially available silicon wafers currently max out at 200mm and 300mm. The 450mm wafers won't be available until 2018. My math gets 135 DX vs. 45 FX on a 300mm wafer. The cost differential ratio will be roughly the same, roughly 3:1.

PB_PM

Throw in the fact that the edge of the wafer is unusable (round) and that not every possible chip functions properly (too many dead/hot pixels) and the cost of yields is greater than that. Of course as the process matures the price goes down.

TaoTeJared

Commercially available silicon wafers currently max out at 200mm and 300mm. The 450mm wafers won't be available until 2018. My math gets 135 DX vs. 45 FX on a 300mm wafer. The cost differential ratio will be roughly the same, roughly 3:1.

I have seen the highest numbers of around 75 DX vs 24 FX and even as low as 18Fx sensors per wafer. I'm not sure how old those numbers were as manufacturing processes have improved year over year. Or as PB_PM said with the error rate, maybe that is all the usable ones they get out of it.

TTJ, you are not suggesting only the sensor in the $1,700 D600 costs $500, are you ? ( more actually as you are guessing that is the difference between the FF & APS-C sensors ) . And if what you are saying is true, how can Nikon sell the D600 at the same (expected ) price of a D300 replacement ?

Note what I said above relating to cell phone plans (In the US they will sell cell phones for 10% of the actual cost and lock people into 2-year agreements that make up usually 125% of the actual phone price.) Almost anything that is sold that has either accessories, service contracts, or continual maintenance is sold at or near a loss and companies plan on the sales of the "others" to make money on. The actual item is the "come on" for them to make their money in higher margin areas. I remember when the XBox was first released, Microsoft sold it for 1/4 of what it was to make but the projections of the money they would make off of games and accessories over it's life of ownership accounted to 10x more than what they lost on it. That is how business works.

spraynpray

I think comparing dust removal to an instance of a company recalling pills laced with poison is a bit of a stretch.

No it isn't Squamish - in terms of good move/bad move for the companies future, it is identical.

Really? /blah, blah, blah/ so calling this identical is silly.

Note to Squamish: - Try reading peoples full replies and considering all their words before replying - "in terms of good move/bad move for the companies future" That means the drug company probably would not have had a future or it would have been seriously damaged had they not acted correctly which applies to the D600 situation identically too. I will definitely not be an early adopter of any Nikon product so that I can be sure I don't get any QA problems. Plenty of other people will just buy another brand.

sevencrossing

I better not get started with the motorcycle stories.</</i>blockquote>

Well, we seem to be discussing everything else on this thread, so why not