I think I know what's bothering Nikon users lately. The influx of "What's wrong with Nikon?" and "I'm switching" emails has once again risen in my In Box to levels I haven't seen since the D2h came out. But how can that be? Current Nikon offerings are quite good in terms of producing images.
Well here's the scoop: this has been a relatively exciting year for photography, with many interesting new developments happening. But Nikon seems to be missing all of them. To wit:
- FX value trend. The Sony A850 and A900, plus the Canon 5DII, established aggressive FX (full frame sensor) price points. Meanwhile, the D700 remains at US$2999. With the dollar slipping against the yen again, one wonders whether Nikon will ever adjust that price. So Nikon's 12mp is competing at a higher price than 21 and 24mp bodies.
- Micro trend. Olympus and Panasonic have interesting new prospects with their m4/3 bodies (four, and counting): smaller bodies without the complex mirror mechanism. Samsung and Leica both have micro bodies coming (NX and X1 respectively). Sony has even loudly proclaimed they'll be in the same market in 2010. Nikon, meanwhile, is absent and silent.
- Retro trend. The Leica M9 and Olympus E-P1 are attractive to long-time photographers who just want a small, direct control camera (the Leica lives up to that premise better than the Olympus does, but it's the "retro" bit that's sparking much of the interest in the E-P1). Nothing retro seems to be coming from Nikon at the moment. Indeed, Nikon's going the other way (care for a digital projector built into your camera?).
- Hollywood trend. 1080i or better, full manual control over video, autofocus, plus a few other odds and ends set a high bar. Nikon's jello-ish 720P doesn't play in this realm, though the marketing department has shown that they're wannabees.
- Pancake trend. Well, okay, not exactly a trend. But the emergence of smaller bodies has increased the interest in the Pentax pancakes and both Olympus and Panasonic are bringing out pancakes for their micros, as will Samsung. Many Voightlander lenses on a Leica could also be said to be pancake. Meanwhile, the smallest Nikkor we get is the 35mm f/1.8G DX, which is decidedly un-pancake like.
- High ISO compact trend. The reversal of pixel count on the the Canon G11, the m4/3 sensor bodies, the Fujifilm EXR sensors, Sony's promise of Exmor R sensors with backlighting, all these things point to "we need better low light capability in our small cameras." Nikon's response? More 12mp Coolpix, though their ISO knobs do go to 11.
- Bigger is better trend. Hasselblad and Phase One keep pushing up the pixels in medium format, but Leica's surprise S2 puts medium format into a D3-sized camera.
- Waterproof trend. Pentax, Panasonic, and Olympus all seem to like playing in the water. Funny that Nikon, who was first in the water way back with the Nikonos, apparently has been scared out of the ocean. Was it a shark or just a rock?
So it's easy to see why Nikon users are upset: none of the cool things seem to coming our way. Instead, we get ubiquitous Coolpix models we can't tell apart without a massive number chart, revisions of existing cameras with only modest changes (D3000, D300s), much talk of lenses that never appear, plus we seem to be stuck at 12mp for everything (Coolpix through FX bodies). Okay, I get it. So while I'm waiting for something interesting from Nikon this year, I think I'll just go out and take pictures.