NIKON...MIRROR LESS NOW WITH FIRMWARE UPDATE

rmp

Bright light, like sun light, makes an eye level viewfinder valuable.

Symphotic

Eye level has longer battery life: it is on only when your eye is up to it. (Not as good as with a mirror and pentaprism, though.)
As Sport said, eye level lets you stabilize your camera better. If you go to any popular scenery sites you can see all kinds one people holding their cameras (and cell phones) in ways that would make high megapixel resolution useless.

framer

Retro Rangefinder digital w/50MP sensor. Cool...

framer

Capt_Spaulding

I'm often taking photos of fast moving objects. I never had a rear composing screen or camera that could keep things in focus. In my MF film days I'd just prefocus on a spot and then take the image when the subject got there. The rear screen cameras don't allow that. Eye level optical finder for me.

Symphotic

The Blog states:

"I believe on August 23rd we will get both the Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z7 mirrorless cameras together with the 24-70mm f/4, 50mm f/1.8 and one more wide angle lens (24mm f/1.8 or 28mm f/1.8 or 35mm f/1.8)."

I would truly love a compact-ish 28 mm f/1.8 with the new body: that would cover the range of the 28 and 40 (42 actually) of my old Minolta CLE with a faster lens. (I took one of my favorite photographs with the CLE and a 40 mm lens.)

I'd not hesitate to order a Z7, 28 mm lens and lens adapter on the first day.

mhedges

Wonder when we will see rebates again on the DSLR lineup. You'd think they would want to clear some of it out.

manhattanboy

Can anyone translate this video from YouTube?



He published a video on Nikon’s Z6 and Z7 many weeks before Peter on the main blog did. I take this to mean he had access to inside information and is not getting his info from rumors sites like this one.

There are a lot of goodies in that video like the flip out screen, 5 axis stabilization and pricing info. Can someone help translate

moreorless

The rumour about the future lens roadmap does make me think Nikon are going to go more for a focused lineup. Only 1-2 zoom lenses in 2019, one of which you'd think would have to be an UWA zoom but mostly primes.

Nikon IMHO aren't in the same position as Sony were there having to make this camera go exactly toe to toe with FF DSLR's, I suspect at least in the shorter term they'll be happy to leave the F/2.8 zoom style market to the F-mount and aim the Z-mount at F/4 zooms, F/1.8 primes and the odd ultra fast prime(wasn't there an 35mm F/1.2 patented?) the existing mount can't deal with.

PB_PM

Nikon clearly thinks it's 2015, and people want mirrorless just for primes. Fine by me, I won't be buying into it for $2000 F4 zooms and $3500 wide angle primes.

moreorless

PB_PM said:

Nikon clearly thinks it's 2015, and people want mirrorless just for primes. Fine by me, I won't be buying into it for $2000 F4 zooms and $3500 wide angle primes.

I suspect that a pretty high percentage of them do still want it for smaller zooms and primes, honestly I'v never seen a Sony A7 model in public with anything but those on it.

Pistnbroke

Well at least we got rid of that stupid pro memory system and have U1 U2 U3

donaldejose

Three user settings would be good. As far as lenses are concerned if there is a good adaptor for F mount lenses, and I think there will be, there will not be lenses "missing" in the first few years in the sense that you are forced to use f4 zooms because your existing f2.8 zooms will work just fine even though they may not be optimized in size for a smaller and lighter mirrorless body. Over time the native Z mount lenses will catch up. It is looking good so far.

spraynpray

That leaves the door wide open for Sigma to jump in with some very nice and fast zooms. No worries.

WestEndFoto

spraynpray said:

That leaves the door wide open for Sigma to jump in with some very nice and fast zooms. No worries.

Well, let's assume that they are legally permitted to do that. See:

https://nikonrumors.com/2018/04/04/the-latest-nikon-patents-13.aspx/

Or that Nikon does not cripple the camera, or perhaps only the auto-focus, when a non-Nikon lens is attached.

Searcy

donaldejose said:

As far as lenses are concerned if there is a good adaptor for F mount lenses, and I think there will be, there will not be lenses "missing" in the first few years in the sense that you are forced to use f4 zooms because your existing f2.8 zooms will work just fine even though they may not be optimized in size for a smaller and lighter mirrorless body. Over time the native Z mount lenses will catch up. It is looking good so far.

What I have seen of the Sony a7iii using adapters for Nikon F mounts have been disappointing. This is one reason I have decide to wait and see what Nikons new Z system and adapters are all about before I buy a Sony A7iii. If the new Nikon mirrorless has the same video capability as the Sony and their new Z to F mount adapter doesn't kill the auto focus speed it may be enough to change my mind about buying the Sony.

At this point I want to know the auto focus speed, battery life, EVF quality and video capability as well as price point of the Nikon Z6.

Interesting times.

mhedges

Yeah I've heard the Canon adapter works well. The Nikon - not so much.

HankB

Nikon F-mount lenses do have the adapter burden of mechanically operating the diaphragm on all but the relatively small number of "E" lenses. And then there are the pre AF-S lenses whose focus I doubt will be supported by the adapters altogether. Only Nikon lenses have this problem

But I can't help but think Nikon will address the diaphragm problem very well. And I hope they also offer a simpler, cheaper adapter just for the "E" lenses.

PB_PM

Keep in mind that all the adapters for Nikon lenses to Sony are third party, thus they have to reverse engineer things to make them work. That never works as well as solutions from the OEM. Nikon's solution will likely work much better if the FP-1 adapter for the Nikon 1 system is any indication. Focus was fast and was actually better at focusing than natively mounted on a DSLR in some cases (fast glass).

Symphotic

I concur with PB-PM: I have never had a problem with the adapters for my Nikon 1 cameras, and we use these in the lab here everyday for video and stills. We use the adapters to mount them to 50 mm G lenses and E-bay 60 mm manual macro lenses (along with the Nikon 1 10 mm pancake lens.)
Why should Nikon be able to make an adapter for the Nikon 1 but not for the Z? Is it because they are going to add a screw drive? Are we really concerned with mechanical stop down of manual lenses? That flat driver device and stop down lever could easily fit in an adapter of the size Nikon will need to fit F lenses to the Z mount.
Have these critics of the adapter to F mount lenses ever actually tried a Nikon 1 camera with an adapter?
I'd be happy with an adapter without the screw drive as I have never used it. I would like the stop down device.
I could be wrong, but Nikon has had experience doing this, and I doubt it is beyond their capabilities.
Anyway, I'm all in if they have an adapter and a compact wide angle lens with reasonable close-focus at introduction. We'll see in a couple of days!

Symphotic

Let's see what the adapter costs. I'm guessing $700.00.

HankB

No doubt Nikon can and will offer adapters for non-E lenses that work very well. I just wonder if they will ALSO offer cheaper, simpler adapters just for E lenses. The mechanical diaphragm control is easily handled, but at a cost that Canon will not have to face.

tc88

Selling the adapter for $700 will really hamper the adoption of the mirrorless cameras. I hope they are not that stupid. But I wouldn't put that past Nikon's management. My expectation is that the adapter will be bundled with the camera at some point for minimum cost, just like the grips because very few are willing to pay that much money on these items psychologically.

Symphotic

OK. $695. I hope I'm wrong, but that's the number I'm going with. (Don't worry too much: I thought the D850 was going to be a lot more than it turned out to be, and I was ready to pay for it, too.)

The FT-1 adaptor for Nikon 1 is $240 new from BandH, so if there is a screw drive and a stop down lever, $695 is not too far off. (The FT-1 has neither, but works well enough anyway.)

manhattanboy

Symphotic said:

OK. $695. I hope I'm wrong, but that's the number I'm going with. (Don't worry too much: I thought the D850 was going to be a lot more than it turned out to be, and I was ready to pay for it, too.)

The FT-1 adaptor for Nikon 1 is $240 new from BandH, so if there is a screw drive and a stop down lever, $695 is not too far off. (The FT-1 has neither, but works well enough anyway.)

The FT-1 doesn't enable full AF on the Nikon 1 cameras. From what I have read, it sounds like the adapter will be a translucent mirror so we are unsure what AF system will be available from that. Will it be an older module like the D600? An intermediate like the D810? Or top of the line like the D850? My hunch is it will be more like the D600 and enable basic AF of the now obsolete F-mount lenses.

A much better solution is to use the on-sensor PD to drive the lens, but thus far it doesn't sound like Nikon has done that despite the "success" of the FT-1 adapter. The metabones for Canon lenses on a Sony works okay, but I would be interested to compare Canon's M5 with their own adapter versus say an A9 with the metabones and the same lens. The main problem for any comparison right now is that Canon's AF on their mirrorless uses dual pixel AF, which is not as fast as true PDAF. A quote from a Canon user: "The M5 uses DPAF, so it's a lot faster than the original M for focusing. If you have a dslr with dpaf in live view, its speed is similar to that."

mhedges

I just can’t believe Nikon would try to foist off an adapter with a mirror. That would be a total disaster. There’s no way I would consider that.