Nikon thinks of customers in a naive, stepwise fashion. A consumer wants a small, light, friendly, simple camera with lots of automation. A pro wants a big, sophisticated camera with lots of control. Thus, Nikon makes a range of cameras from bottom to top. Thing is, there are consumers that want more of something (FX sensor and low light capability instead of DX, but with the same body complexity) and pros that want less (lighter, smaller, simpler, with top level DX or FX sensor).
So every time a new consumer Nikon DSLR comes out, we pros look at it as a possible "light kit" candidate. And for the most part, we get something not quite what we want. So here's a thought, Nikon: give us what we want. It actually shouldn't be all that difficult, and we'd even pay more for it. Here are the minimum changes that would be required on a D5000:
- Give us a one-group Commander mode, ala the D70.
- Add support for MF lenses (Non CPU Lens Data).
- Add Load/Save settings (including CSM).
- Add some weather sealing. (I'm tempted to say put better body materials on the outside, but I really don't want Nikon to spend a lot of time engineering such a camera for a small, but important market. I can live with the composites the current body uses if the whole thing is just a bit more resistent to water and dust incursion.)
- Add direct Kelvin setting.
- Convert the top Info button to Mode.
- Remove the Mode dial completely.
- Put a higher quality LCD on the back (e.g. 900k dot).
Call it a D5100P and add US$100 to the price and I'm happy. Now, if you want to put a real grin on my face:
- Remove the antialiasing and Bayer filters.
- Give us new Picture Controls for monochrome (different mid-range contrast selections).
Call that the D5100M and add another US$500 to the price and I'll still buy it, as would about 20% of my customers if I'm reading my surveys correctly (are you asking the right questions of your customers, Nikon?). Note also that this does something to the video market, too: true monochrome, large format video would be absolutely unique, I think.
The fact that I bring this up should tell you something about my initial use of the D5000: it's everything the D90 is in terms of image quality--which is to say, quite good--yet smaller and with that swivel display that makes Live View much more useful.
There's another reason why I bring this up: DSLR market growth may be gone. The whole upgrade every generation momentum is also gone (and remember, I've written several times that it doesn't pay to do that: skip a generation before upgrading). So how do you get those of us that already have perfectly fine cameras to buy more cameras? Well, you segment out the market and provide niche products like monochrome cameras. Some large proportion of serious photographers who have a perfectly good color camera would spring for a monochrome addition to their bag. Especially after they saw what gains there are to be had from that (higher ISO sensitivity and higher resolution, using the same base sensor).