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> They have some of the finest scientists and engineers in the world, as well as a gigantic portfolio of patents. They aren't going away. Those are exactly qui

by wegs 6y ago

> They have some of the finest scientists and engineers in the world, as well as a gigantic portfolio of patents. They aren't going away. Those are exactly quickly going away. Engineers and scientists need to get paid and want job stability, while patents have a 20-year lifespan. Nikon was on top of the world in 2008 with the D300 and the D90, but the technologies that made those possible were patented years prior. Right now, the curve is with mirrorless where Sony, Panasonic, and (now defunct) Olympus have a 10-year lead on patents. It's also with smartphones, and those technologies bubbling up. In the deep learning/ML battle, Nikon is bringing a knife to a gunfight. On the other side, they're having massive layoffs right now. When companies have layoffs, usually they let go the bottom end of the workforce, while the top end leave voluntarily. Nikon is continuing to patent new lens designs, but so is its competition. Nikon has excellent optics, but so does Olympus, Canon, Fuji, or Sony; they aren't exactly ahead of the pack here. Sigma has really been pushing the edge on optics.

geerlingguy 6y ago
Nikon needs a new D3/D700-tier body to get back into the game. Right now their bodies are just 'competitive' with Canon and Sony FF bodies... back when the D3 sensor came out, it put the final nail in the coffin for most analog film shooters.
- orthoxerox 6y ago
  Nikon needs a buyer. It converted into a camera company during the DSLR boom when phones and compact cameras couldn't take good enough pictures. Now phones have eaten both compact cameras and hobbyist DSLR markets. Prosumer and professional DSLRs/ILCs are a niche market and Nikon is becoming a niche company. If your hobby is shooting sports, wildlife or stars (big balls of gas), buy an ILC. If all you need is a travel camera, an iPhone is a damn good one and it's smart enough to beat 9 out of 10 humans fiddling arround in Lightroom.
- wegs 6y ago
  Nikon buys sensors from Sony. It can't get ahead in any meaningful way there. Plus, sensor tech has plateaued a bit. Nikon, if it were to survive, would need to move into new markets. dSLRs are dying, but imaging is exploding. Nikon and Canon ran into the innovator's dilemma: they didn't want to eat into their core market, so they released crippled products like the Nikon 1 or Canon M-mount. By the time they got into the game, their market was collapsing, they lost a lot of credibility, and Sony had a huge lead. It's probably too late, but we'll see. Drones, industrial, teleconferencing, and hundreds of other markets are popping up, but Canon and Nikon are conspicuously absent.
supernova87a 6y ago
This is a side related question, but I have always been curious about the process by which say, a Nikon team, decides to create a new lens. I'd love to know things like what they trade off in terms of $, weight, complexity, aberrations, performance. And do they have to retire an old lens line to make room for a new one? And this is way too much to ask here (I'm sure I need to read an optics intro), but how in the world do they solve that they need 12 elements, etc. to make some aberration go away, by combining 3 different index of refraction glasses in a certain order, etc! Amazingly complicated. I imagine now there are ray tracing solvers for it, but I wonder how they did it in the early days of lens design!

by wegs 6y ago

geerlingguy 6y ago

Nikon needs a new D3/D700-tier body to get back into the game. Right now their bodies are just 'competitive' with Canon and Sony FF bodies... back when the D3 sensor came out, it put the final nail in the coffin for most analog film shooters.

orthoxerox 6y ago
Nikon needs a buyer. It converted into a camera company during the DSLR boom when phones and compact cameras couldn't take good enough pictures. Now phones have eaten both compact cameras and hobbyist DSLR markets. Prosumer and professional DSLRs/ILCs are a niche market and Nikon is becoming a niche company. If your hobby is shooting sports, wildlife or stars (big balls of gas), buy an ILC. If all you need is a travel camera, an iPhone is a damn good one and it's smart enough to beat 9 out of 10 humans fiddling arround in Lightroom.
wegs 6y ago
Nikon buys sensors from Sony. It can't get ahead in any meaningful way there. Plus, sensor tech has plateaued a bit. Nikon, if it were to survive, would need to move into new markets. dSLRs are dying, but imaging is exploding. Nikon and Canon ran into the innovator's dilemma: they didn't want to eat into their core market, so they released crippled products like the Nikon 1 or Canon M-mount. By the time they got into the game, their market was collapsing, they lost a lot of credibility, and Sony had a huge lead. It's probably too late, but we'll see. Drones, industrial, teleconferencing, and hundreds of other markets are popping up, but Canon and Nikon are conspicuously absent.

supernova87a 6y ago

This is a side related question, but I have always been curious about the process by which say, a Nikon team, decides to create a new lens. I'd love to know things like what they trade off in terms of $, weight, complexity, aberrations, performance. And do they have to retire an old lens line to make room for a new one? And this is way too much to ask here (I'm sure I need to read an optics intro), but how in the world do they solve that they need 12 elements, etc. to make some aberration go away, by combining 3 different index of refraction glasses in a certain order, etc! Amazingly complicated. I imagine now there are ray tracing solvers for it, but I wonder how they did it in the early days of lens design!