Nikon Mirrorless from Samsung?

Sports

While NR keeps listing deals, mirrorlessrumors.com says that Nikon is buying Samsung's mirrorless tech, and will be getting future sensors from Samsung as well........
Any chance this could advance from the "Fun and Weird" forum catagory to become news of the year?

CaMeRaQuEsT

Sony, after sucking Nikon's sensor tech dry, both directly and now through their buyout of the Toshiba sensor division, decided to turn the tables against Nikon and prevent them from using their newer sensors until their own cameras using those same sensors were 6 months into the market or worse. That's why we still don't have a D300s successor. In any case, Sony has become Nikon's sole supplier of sensors for 99% of their DSLRs, with only the low volume D4s/DF using their own and long in the tooth tech outsourced sensor. Nikon's lawyers are the only ones to blame by not preventing this situation from happening. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Enter Samsung, who spent a fortune in both R&D and factory outlay on a sensor they themselves couldn't sell in high enough volumes to break even; they most have pitched their new sensor to all the other APS-C camera makers, but the only ones without their own sensor fabs are Nikon, Ricoh and Fuji, and only Nikon sells in meaningful volumes. Two companies dealing with bad situations, each having what the other lacks. A marriage is made, but time will tell whether it's one made in heaven or one made by a shotgun. I just hope Nikon's lawyers do close all the loopholes on the contracts this time around, that Nikon bought at fire sale price tech that Sony will probably make obsolete in a few months and that they signed on a clause for continued development so as for Nikon to not just buy on a dead end alley.

manhattanboy

Very interesting. The billion dollar question is about the mount!
I pray Nikon does not abandon the F-mount for a few centimeters of reduced thickness.
Samsung will probably fire sale their NX-1's and lenses at some point when more details leak on this deal and the public realizes it's a dead system.

spraynpray

I am very fed up to read the relationship between Nikon and Sony is sour. I sure hope Nikon can maintain sensor superiority over Canon using Samsung sensors.

Sports

Happy to see Admin's post on the main blog. This is the kind of rumor that really deserves his comments. We'll see what happens.
I think both the parts of the rumor about mirrorless and the parts about sensors have very interesting aspects. Many reasons for both true and false, I'd say.

Ironheart

Nikon has forgotten more about sensors than Sony and Samsung ever knew combined. The Fab and the base design are not where the innovation really happens. If that were true, Sony and Samsung sensors would be on a level playing field with Nikon in terms of DR and IQ. They are not, so Nikon must be doing something different. Anyone with a modicum of chip design experience can design a pixel to convert photons to electrons; this is taught at the universities. Going from designing a single pixel to an array of pixels is a simple matter of replicating your design 36 million times. Easily done by a computer.

So what is the big deal? Where is the "secret sauce"? It is in that conversion from analog to digital. The A/D step is where all the magic happens. How much light causes the pixel value to change from 12384 to 12385? More importantly, what does the curve of those values from -11EV (milky way galactic center) to 21EV (specular highlight) look like from that single pixel? It is here where Nikon innovates, and gives that "nikon look", the improved DR and IQ.
BTW, this is about 50% hardware (how good/clean/accurate your D/A conversion is) and 50% firmware/software (how do you interpret/smooth/clean the results from your sweet D/A converter).

Nikon is king in this area, not even Canon can touch them here.

Msmoto

My view.....the smoke screen we are allowed to see publicly may not tell us much about the true motivations behind corporate mergers, buy outs, etc. And, even more so, I have no control over the strange thinking of big business.

But, if for reasons I do not know, the merger moves us toward the full frame Nikon mirrorless, I am all for it. Maybe it is to acquire manufacturing facilities?

moreorless

Sony, after sucking Nikon's sensor tech dry, both directly and now through their buyout of the Toshiba sensor division, decided to turn the tables against Nikon and prevent them from using their newer sensors until their own cameras using those same sensors were 6 months into the market or worse. That's why we still don't have a D300s successor. In any case, Sony has become Nikon's sole supplier of sensors for 99% of their DSLRs, with only the low volume D4s/DF using their own and long in the tooth tech outsourced sensor. Nikon's lawyers are the only ones to blame by not preventing this situation from happening. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Enter Samsung, who spent a fortune in both R&D and factory outlay on a sensor they themselves couldn't sell in high enough volumes to break even; they most have pitched their new sensor to all the other APS-C camera makers, but the only ones without their own sensor fabs are Nikon, Ricoh and Fuji, and only Nikon sells in meaningful volumes. Two companies dealing with bad situations, each having what the other lacks. A marriage is made, but time will tell whether it's one made in heaven or one made by a shotgun. I just hope Nikon's lawyers do close all the loopholes on the contracts this time around, that Nikon bought at fire sale price tech that Sony will probably make obsolete in a few months and that they signed on a clause for continued development so as for Nikon to not just buy on a dead end alley.

I very much doubt this is true, Sony's sensor division was just spun off from the main company exactly to avoid such situations of favourism between departments standing in the way of greater profits.

Why would sensor tech be holding back a D400? surely the current 24 MP APSC sensor Nikon use elsewhere is good enough? the selling point of such a camera would be the high FPS and the AF system.

As far as Sony getting the 42 MP sensor first it could well me that it simply didn't fit into Nikon's plans for a D800 successor that always looked like being released next year. Equally of course it could be that Sony's camera division did a deal with the sensor division and paid more to use the new sensor first rather than depending on favouritism, certainly the A7r II costs a lot more than the previous one. Maybe a bit of both with Nikon more happy to let Sony cameras pay a premium for a sensor they weren't ready for anyway.

manhattanboy

Why would sensor tech be holding back a D400? surely the current 24 MP APSC sensor Nikon use elsewhere is good enough? the selling point of such a camera would be the high FPS and the AF system.

It has to do with heat and flow from the current sensor. There is a new 24mp Sony sensor that can handle the D400 speeds so really its now Nikon as the only thing holding it back.

Ironheart

From main blog:
"Samsung officially denied all rumors about Nikon buying their NX mirrorless technology..."

PB_PM

Why would sensor tech be holding back a D400? surely the current 24 MP APSC sensor Nikon use elsewhere is good enough? the selling point of such a camera would be the high FPS and the AF system.

It has to do with heat and flow from the current sensor. There is a new 24mp Sony sensor that can handle the D400 speeds so really its now Nikon as the only thing holding it back.

Heat is not holding back a possible D400. It's utter non-sense, if you use the logic centre of your brain, because if that were true the sensors in the D7100/D7200 would melt when recording video. 8-|

haroldp

I have been on both sides of several mergers. Both side will deny everything until it is announced. They are also likely under NDA's.

PB_PM

Samsung has no reason to sell any part of their imaging division. Yes the compact cameras and mirrorless might not have much traction, but the all important sensor part is doing well. What, how? Easy smartphones, Samsung sells more than enough to cover any loss of sales in the camera division. A company that makes and sells everything from dishwashers to tanks (yes I said tanks) is hardly going to worry about a small dip in sales of cameras.

I doubt they would sell it off to Nikon even if they did sell it, since Korea and Japan are not exactly countries that have a love affair with each other. If Nikon tries to buy anything it would likely be the likes of Tamron, Sigma or Tokina (which is a break off of Nikon in the first place).

manhattanboy

Heat is not holding back a possible D400. It's utter non-sense, if you use the logic centre of your brain, because if that were true the sensors in the D7100/D7200 would melt when recording video. 8-|

The sensors have different specs for fps for a reason, and my understanding is that it is due to heat and data throughput, but I am open to learning what the real reasons are as I am not an engineer. There was an article earlier http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/whats-coming-in-sensors.html about sensor tech improving to the point that a very high FPS DX sensor is possible to be purchased from Sony.
Regarding video, overheating is the main reason that the camera shuts down and is the reason why I believe many manufacturers limit the resolution of what is being recorded in video mode. For example, there are well documented issues with the new Sony a7 mark ii overheating during video shooting (just search on DPreview and see for yourself). Personally, I would love it if I could record the native resolution of the sensor in video mode, but until that's possible, then fps pictures at full resolution is the best we can get.

PB_PM

Data throughput is an issue, but maybe not as much as you think. A 1080p video in high quality mode on a Nikon DSLR (default not hacked) is around 24MB/s if I recall correctly. That's about the same size as a single RAW file from the 24MP sensors. When shooting at 6+ FPS the camera is pushing data at least as fast. 20 still frames would be just over 500MBs, but of course the camera doesn't push that all at once, it usually takes a 4-10 seconds to do so. On the other hand 60 seconds of video clip requires the camera to push over 1.4GBs of data.

Paperman

D7100 video, I believe, is 24 Mbits/s ( 3MB/s ) - not 24 MB/s.

Pistnbroke

The camera shuts down after 20 min to avoid being classed as a video camera and attracting more import duty. ( UK )

heartyfisher

So ... nikon samsung hybrid. ..hmmm... would be so nice... I think i suggested that in the d400 thread some time ago.. and if i didnt i surly thought it... i have been dreaming about how wonderful it would be if samsung/nikon opened its code to allow people to opensource some features into the cameras.. imagine what wonders could be done! ! ESPECIALLY with a the samsung NX sensor!!.. you may know that that samsung sensor is able to stream out 200 FPS at full resolutions in short bursts of a fraction of a second! About 60 frames i think maybe more cant remember. .. but i can see several ground breaking applications and I am sure some other amazing new ideas could be thought up. .. if only it was true. ..

WestEndFoto

Then Nikon would be able to service your camera just like Microsoft services Windows.

tommay

I think a cooperation between Nikon and Samsung would be great. Samsung has proven with the NX1 that they are capable enough to create stunning cameras. The 28 MP BSI APS-C sensor is superior to the 24 MP Sony sensor. I think Samsung full frame sensors could easily keep up with the Sony creations. But lets wait until january. Then we will see whats the matter with these rumors.

PB_PM

Agreed, it would be nice to see Nikon move away from Sony for sensors, but I doubt the will happen.