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Nikon to stop making SLR cameras and focus on mirrorless models?

202 points by jmsflknr 4y ago

uniqueuid 4y ago
Note that this means single-lens "reflex" cameras, i.e. those with mirrors. Nikon is happily producing mirrorless cameras, as is everyone else.
ekianjo 4y ago
Nikon did not confirm nor deny the report so it's basically a pure fluff piece. > As well as the rise of mirrorless tech, SLR cameras have also been out-competed by smartphone technology, which has shrunk the camera market over decades. The market has shrunk but it's nothing to do with smartphone cameras, it's like saying McDonalds have shrunk the market for three stars restaurants. Not the same audience at all, not the same use, you'll find that the DSLR market has been mostly stagnating innovation wise for a while, making it hard to justify buying a new model for just a few more megapixels every now and then. A 10 years old DSLR is still a formidable image-maker.
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
  I disagree. A large percentage of the DSLR market are hobbyists who want to feel professional, just like with musical instruments, sports equipment and so on. Amateurs outnumber professionals by 1000:1 or more. A large percentage of those people have realised they can take really good photos with their phone now, good enough that they don't feel inadequate, and maybe they don't feel like carrying around heavy equipment either. That market is gone and will never return.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    > can take really good photos with their phone now That does not make any sense, it was already the case that you could make excellent pictures with compact cameras 15 years ago, without having a DLSR. If your hypothesis was right the DSLR market would have disappeared much earlier.
    - xdfgh1112 4y ago
      Are you really comparing 2005 compact cameras to the multi-lens machine learning tiny sensor capabilities of modern phones? Your argument only holds up if you're taking high aperture landscape photos in broad daylight...
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        The Sony Rx-100 Was released in 2012. That's 10 years ago already and that still beats hands down the best phones out there in terms of image quality.
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Early digital compact cameras were terrible compared to phones today. On the other hand they were revolutionary compared to film cameras, so it didn't really matter.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Before, one had to make a conscious choice to get a compact camera. People who wanted to take pictures had a choice-- do I get a SLR and have all the bells and whistles and be "serious", or do I get a compact camera? Also, appearances matter-- do I want to look serious? Now, a pretty excellent compact camera is in pretty much everyone's hands. So the question becomes-- is it worth another camera to be serious? Would I even carry it anywhere?
  - rscrawfo 4y ago
    I think most of the hobbyists have stuck with DSLR/mirrorless, but I knew a lot of people that used a dslr for family / vacation pictures. Those people all use phones now. Although We’re probably saying the same thing, just differing on our definition of hobbyist.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Yes, most of those vacation photos look terrible. Good enough on a beach at midday, but in other lighting conditions they're often under exposed or blurry or backlit or just poorly composed. And in fairness to smartphone cameras, most of those problems are more due to photographer incompetence than device limitations.
      - soylentcola 4y ago
        I was just on vacation and took some photos with my phone camera, and some with my Nikon D4000 and a pretty basic 55-200 lens. The phone pics have the benefit of some pretty good automatic processing, ease of use (the thing is already in my pocket), and for typical landscape or portrait stuff, they are just fine. But there really is no comparison when it comes to "real" bokeh/shallow DOF stuff, not to mention the sheer flexibility offered by a full-fat lens, bigger sensor, and controls that don't have me poking around in touch screen menus. I could even swap to my 35mm f/1.8 if I wanted to shoot in lower light than my phone can do without digital tricks or longer exposure times. If I were in the market today, perhaps I would go for a mirrorless camera, but as someone decidedly not professional at all WRT photography, I still enjoy having something flexible in addition to using my phone as a decent backup point-and-shoot camera.
      - mlyle 4y ago
        Yes, but... a phone you take with you every day is different from an SLR that you take on specific occasions. Perhaps 20% of pictures I've shot have been on a DSLR, and 80% on phones. By sheer numbers, a really big share of the best shots are from a phone camera. And there's a lot of things that I took pictures of, that there's some rather obvious phone camera penalties from... but at least I have a picture while with a DSLR I would likely not. It's freeing, too, to not have to choose between "do I lug the big camera today in difficult conditions or get no photos today?" ... I am looking forward to picking up a mirrorless to reduce the barrier a little bit of carrying "the big camera".
  - jdavis703 4y ago
    I have the latest iPhone 13 Pro Max, shoot RAW and with acoustic filters mounted on my phone and what not. Both my photos and iPhone photos that I’ve seen at “iPhone photography” art exhibits are clearly lower quality. Now one could argue about whether the tiny censors on smartphones in of itself is just another dimension of artistic expression. But my personal aesthetic preference as a hobbyist photographer and art consumer is that unintentional censor noise is not good.
  - dlevine 4y ago
    I have an old DSLR (Nikon D90, circa 2008) and hadn't taken it anywhere in quite some time (due to it being big and heavy and smartphones being more or less good enough). However, I had been slightly disappointed with the vacation photos I was getting on my iPhone 11. So I dug out the old DSLR and brought (lugged?) it with me on a recent vacation to Peru. I threw in the largest SD card it would accommodate (32GB), which gave me literally thousands of photos at the highest quality JPEG setting (don't really want to deal with post-processing RAW images). The only lens I brought was a 35mm 1.8 DX lens. I have to say that the quality of my photos was much better than I had seen in quite some time. It is hands down better than my smartphone. Even though they are both ostensibly 12MP, the larger sensor and lens make a big difference. The two things I missed from my iPhone were super wide angle shots and low light. Since I had my iPhone with me, I could just pull that out if needed. I briefly thought about buying a new DSLR or a mirrorless, but really my old one is good enough. I will probably just buy an 18-55 zoom or something for my next vacation.
  - that_guy_iain 4y ago
    > I disagree. A large percentage of the DSLR market are hobbyists who want to feel professional, just like with musical instruments, sports equipment and so on. Amateurs outnumber professionals by 1000:1 or more. And tons of people who want to have a youtube channel. Hell there are lots of people that use a SLR just for their zoom calls. As a hobbyist photographer myself I can confirm that I spend serious amount of money on equipment that is pro-level. The last camera I got was the Nikon Z6 Mark II, which is an entry-level pro camera. Why? Because "The picture quality matters" and it feels good to have a really nice camera when you're standing around a bunch of other hobbyists who all have pro cameras. For the most part the people who take photos with their phones were never really buying DSLRs. They were buying all the other digital cameras. When you go for a DSLR you're wanting to control everything, shutter speed, the aperture, etc. You want to be able to go wide-lens, tele-lens, you want to be able to choose between 2000/second and 100/second. You want to do time delay. If you're even half interested in taking good photos you're looking to get a DSLR even if you don't understand everything. You can look at the photography sites for hobbyists such as youpic.com and 500px.com. These sites are full of people sharing their hobby photos and you'll find 1-2 out of hundreds using their mobile.
    - Animats 4y ago
      "There are lots of people that use a SLR just for their zoom calls." That's the crap webcam problem. You'll never use the mirror mechanism in a DSLR in that situation. Nikon promotes using their DSLRs as webcams.[1] What you really want, of course, is the good optics, sensor, and electronics without the viewfinder, mirror, battery, and manual controls, and with good connectors and no overheating during continuous operation. Neither the webcam makers nor the traditional camera makers have addressed this market. So who's doing it? Hikvision, the surveillance camera makers.[2] Their thing is making high-rez cameras that handle widely varied lighting conditions. So they offer some of those packaged as webcams. [1] https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/webcam-utility.page https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/webcam-utility... [2] https://www.hikvision.com/en/products/Turbo-HD-Products/Turbo-HD-Cameras/webcam-series/ https://www.hikvision.com/en/products/Turbo-HD-Products/Turb...
      - 4y ago
- chenster 4y ago
  DSLR camera is still better of course, but people won't use it due to its bulky and heavy and their mobile phone can do 80% of photoing faster and probably just as good albeit a few areas that DSLR still has advantages. But for most of us, a good enough camera is just fine.
- fleddr 4y ago
  Nikon and Canon used to make the vast majority of their revenue from their entry level DSLR systems. That customer base has pretty much disappeared and it has everything to do with smartphones. If I recall the statistic correctly, the DSLR market shrunk by 40% across the board in just a few years because of this. Due to this, Nikon and others have re-positioned their market to high price/margin prosumer/pro gear mostly.
zinekeller 4y ago
I wouldn't be shocked if this true, mirrorless is the future of photography whether you like it or not (but since this is Verge...) Edit: Nikkei is also reporting on this, so that makes it more believable.
- hanniabu 4y ago
  What's the benefit of mirrorless and why isn't it more prominent today?
  - cheschire 4y ago
    Some folks prioritize the quality of the image in the viewfinder, and mirrorless uses an electronic viewfinder. Other folks prioritize weight and size, and for them the mirrorless has clear advantages.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    For landscape people you get far better wide-angle lenses, auto-focus systems which are way more consistent at the 50 MP mark and composition+exposure helpers (e.g. distortion-corrected viewfinder, histograms, zooming to 800 % in the viewfinder). For people people you get eye-autofocus and eye-tracking (better DSLRs have done people and face tracking for ages, but one of the more en-vogue styles in people photography of the last couple years is ultra-large apertures with sharp eyes, and with DSLRs that's really pushing it, especially at 50 MP). For media people you tend to get better video support. The latest flagships (e.g. 8K capabilities of the Z9) start to infringe on cinema camera territory (though with none of the connectivity, which would add an unacceptable amount of bulk to a photo/hybrid camera). For sports people you get more images per image and no blackout at all (Z9 only, for now). For wildlife people you get quiet operation (no mirror, no shutter necessary, depending on the model). In terms of the image quality itself, the hypothetical spherical cow in a vacuum, there's no advantage per se, various DSLRs and mirrorless cameras use practically identical sensors. Tiny mark against mirrorless for PDAF pixels, but that's not a practical concern for any current camera. Shutter-less mirrorless avoid a possible source of IR contamination (the optical barrier used by the camera to time the shutter), but that's about it. Oh, and IBIS, obviously.
ytch 4y ago
https://www.nikon.com/news/2022/0712_01.htm https://www.nikon.com/news/2022/0712_01.htm https://www.nikon.co.jp/news/2022/0712_01.htm https://www.nikon.co.jp/news/2022/0712_01.htm Nikon denies the report: > Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of digital SLR
- jetrink 4y ago
  > There was a media article regarding Nikon's withdrawal of SLR development. This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards. That's not really a denial though, just a statement that they haven't announced anything.
  - tchalla 4y ago
    I really appreciate you pointing out that difference. Critical reading is a skill.
mikece 4y ago
Let's just hope they get their autofocus issues ironed out or it will no longer be the Big Three of photography but just Canon and Sony.
- adwww 4y ago
  Where do Fuji feature in size? IMO their products are exceptional - coming from Nikon DSLRs at least.
  - uniqueuid 4y ago
    They don't have a full-frame offering, unfortunately. So low-light performance lags behind. [edit]: They do have medium-frame, but that's another league entirely.
    - isatty 4y ago
      Not really a huge problem imo - their bodies are superior when it comes to having manual controls close to your fingers and their glass is amazing.
      - uniqueuid 4y ago
        Do you have experience with e.g. modern Sigma or Zeiss lenses on EF/F mount? Are their lenses comparable or better?
- iasay 4y ago
  My Z50 and Z6 autofocus is pretty amazingly good. What issues do people report?
  - speg 4y ago
    Most of the complaints I’ve seen are around the face/eye tracking. Improved in the second generation and even more so in the Z9 but still not quite on par with Sony/Canon.
javajosh 4y ago
This is unfortunate, IMHO. DSLR's are (far) superior in terms of battery life. This was inevitable, of course. It is similar to the transition from dumb phone to smart phones (which, interestingly, had a similar tradeoff!)
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  I have 4 batteries at all times. two are official nikon ones. I've never gone past two. maybe if you're spending several days out in the middle of nowhere it makes a difference but a single battery is sufficient for most people that aren't shooting video.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Specifically when you are setting up your shot with the DSLR you are looking at a ground-glass screen and the sensor and screen can be turned off. For a mirrorless camera the sensor and screen are on when you are setting up. The flip side is that a mirrorless camera makes a great video camera with some caveats. For instance if you want to do a shot that smoothly zooms in or out you have a rocker control on a real video camera that you can hold steadily and it does just that. I can't do the same with a mirrorless lens because I can't turn the zoom ring on a lens very smoothly.
  - radlad 4y ago
    I'm confused by this - many mirrorless lenses setup for video work have a zoom switch rather than a zoom ring. An electronic motor ensures smooth zoom. Furthermore, why are you unable to hold a mirrorless camera as steadily? Something like the Peak Design Clutch strap ought to remedy that I would think? Not to mention cameras like the X-T4 have quite good IBIS built-in to steady out the shot a bit.
- klodolph 4y ago
  This is the same complaint people had about, e.g., film cameras, and before that, electronically controlled shutters. Very few people are willing to live will all those sacrifices just to get better battery life from an older generation of camera. History repeats itself.
orangepurple 4y ago
Nikon's 4k60 rolling shutter issues mean you can't realistically use them for modern videography. Nikons suffer from extreme rolling shutter because of how the sensor is sampled.
- eropple 4y ago
  From what I've seen (I don't shoot Nikon but I keep up with the market) Nikon's rolling shutter issues seem to be mostly addressed as of the Z9; you can shoot oversampled or subsampled 4K60 and the sensor readout is fast. Rolling shutter on the Z9 seems to be no worse than the Sony a1. I would expect this to move downmarket over time.
lausobo 4y ago
Nikon says this is not true: https://www.nikon.com/news/2022/0712_01.htm https://www.nikon.com/news/2022/0712_01.htm
- dang 4y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. I've added a question mark to the headline. The OP says "Nikkei has learned", so presumably they have some source telling them this and how true it is depends on how reliable the source is.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    Nikkei's leak article for Japanese company and official half-denial response is classic. Then company often release same release as leak. Perhaps Nikon won't release any release but just stop developing.
- ejb999 4y ago
  >>This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards Perhaps...but this statement sounds awfully weaselly to me, i.e. 'we don't currently have any plans for layoffs' pronouncements that corporations often make right before announcing layoffs.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    The whole point of the Z9 is that it achieved auto-focus parity with the D6 for sports and wildlife, it was really obvious that the D6 would be the last D camera, just like the F6 was obviously the last F camera. The re-designed ultra-teles (as opposed to "take existing optical and mechanical design of the EF version and integrate a flange extension" like Canon did) slot into this strategy by offering a real benefit over the preceding F lenses. Nikon has a pretty long history (in Western memory going back to the Nikon S) of executing well and consistently. They're often not the first mover: Nikon S was a "best of" Zeiss-Leica body (pretty much all Zeiss, but using the Leitz shutter - this is why Nikon lenses mount, focus and zoom to the left), became quite popular. Nikon F wasn't the first SLR system, either, but well executed and became the benchmark.
albatross13 4y ago
I shoot wildlife using a combo of DSLR and Mirrorless and I have to say, I almost always reach for my R5 (mirrorless) over my 5d mark4. One of the things I love most is seeing exposure in real time, it's a nice little quality of life thing you don't think about until you experience it. Over the years I think anyone who takes photography seriously has gotten pretty good at gauging exposure, but to actually see it change in real time when you adjust ISO or Aperture is pretty slick. But all of that being said, I'll hold onto my DSLRs forever too- as one person pointed out the battery life is far better and when you're out for 10 hours at a time that really matters.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Having autofocus focus in the same plane as the photosites is a big win too. EVF is much more convenient for near vision glasses wearers too. That said, I think you need an R5/R6 generation body to not be annoyed by mirrorless readout slowness and VF lag.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    > EVF is much more convenient for near vision glasses wearers too. How so? I use diopter adapters in my DSLR eyepieces, since the built-in adjustment doesn't suffice and I hate to shoot through glasses that prevent me seeing all of the viewfinder. I wouldn't have thought an EVF could natively improve on this, but now you've got me intrigued.
  - Dave_Rosenthal 4y ago
    Yeah, as resolutions climb autofocus not being aligned exactly to the sensor is a bigger and bigger problem. I have a very high res (mirrored) medium format system and keeping the “focus trim” set correctly to align the AF system with sensor seems impossible, seemingly changing with temperature or other conditions.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      > seemingly changing with temperature or other conditions. Focus also shifts with aperture, it's impossible to have an open loop system that works accurately. Some lenses will front focus wide open, be spot on at f4 and back focus after that, or the opposite. Or be spot on wide open and oof when you stop down.
_ph_ 4y ago
The end of an era, but Nikon is following a lot of other manufacturers like Olympus, Sony, Leica. SLRs were a great product, but about 10 years ago, mirrorless cameras started to overtake them in many aspects. The EVF has many advantages, of course especially for video recording. All new camera models now are mirrorless. Like analog SLRs gave way to DSLRs, now the migration to mirrorless is going to be finished. I wouldn't expect Canon to stick to DSLRs much longer either.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  For the same price point, mirrorless cameras are of inferior quality when it comes to noise. This is why many still choose DSLRs. Edit: OK, I should say inferior quality w.r.t noise when all other features are similar. Certainly, it's not anything specific about mirrorless that makes it noisy. It's just that if I have a DSLR with certain features, and another mirrorless with similar features (and noise profile), the latter tends to cost more. And my information may be a bit dated - the last time I checked was in 2018. And I only buy APS-C, which usually was quite a bit more expensive for mirrorless, with not better quality.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Why would they be? Where is any noise advantage of the DSLR?
  - eropple 4y ago
    I'd be interested in seeing substantiation of this claim. I can't think of why mirrorless cameras would have more noise.
    - radlad 4y ago
      Here's something I found: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57249761 https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57249761 It basically seems to come down to the fact that with DSLR you can disable Live View, therefore keeping the sensor cool until you take your exposure. I expect then that a camera like the X100V or X-Pro3 - both of which are mirrorless cameras that also have an OVF - would have the same advantage as a DSLR.
iasay 4y ago
I suspect this is half way to the truth. The Z mount lens portfolio is looking pretty good these days. At some point the FTZ will be the only F mount being sold. I sold all my F mount lenses last year finally. Despite owning a Z50 and a Z6 I only seem to use the Z50 and the DX kit lenses. Might sell the full frame stuff apart from the 35mm prime which is amazing on the Z50.
balls187 4y ago
I don't think I'm going to invest in a new system. The combo of my 5D4, and latest iphone pro seem to have me covered. I'm tempted to rent a latest canon mirrorless body, but I can't see how Canon can keep up with IQ innovation through processing the way Google and Apple have.
post_break 4y ago
This is anecdotal at best but I went to my big camera store last weekend. The last time I went was around 2011. Back then it was 48% Nikon, 48% Canon, and the rest being the other makers, think pentax, fuji, sony, etc. Now it's 30% Canon, 30% Sony, 20% Nikon, 20% Fuji. I think Nikon is dying. Sony ate everyone's lunch, now Canon is coming back big with the R mirrorless cams, and Fuji is also making one hell of a comeback. The Leica, Panasonic, Sigma alliance is also working to their advantage.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Nikon is late to mirroless, but their Z mount lenses are superb. As are their second gen mirrorless bodies. Also their first gen, even if the gear fanatics had some greavences about single memory card slots. In that light, also considering Z mount lenses took a while to be released, 20% is actually pretty solid.
  - Auracle 4y ago
    As a pro, I actually haven't invested in any Z mount lenses. They're completely neglecting the mainstays of wedding photography - f/1.4 lenses. The single memory card slot of the first generation was also ridiculous for the wedding photographer crowd in that it made them completely unusable.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Agree for wedding photographers regarding the f/1.4 lenses. For all other purposes so... Tge second card slot was fixed so, and I don't know of anyone who actually lost shots due a failing memory card. I do see the need for redundancy for stuff like weddings and events so.
- hyperbovine 4y ago
  The bigger story of course is that phones came along and ate everyone's lunch. I don't know a single person who desires to lug around a body and lens, no matter how compact, anymore. (Have you seen what the top-of-the-line iPhone can do? It's amazing.) I say this as someone who used to own five figures worth of Canon glass. The whole industry feels like it is dying to me. The professional segment will always be there but the consumer and, increasingly, "prosumer" markets are history.
ramesh31 4y ago
Maybe it means we'll finally get a true entry level mirrorless camera under $1000 now.
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  Nikon has 3 mirrorless cameras under $1k. Other manufacturers also have tons. What features are you looking for?
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  the nikon z50 WIth lens comes out to 999. technically under 1k. they also recently released the new z30 whihc eschws the evf for just the backmuond display. its definitely a compromised design heavily geared towards youtubers rather than still photography but it uses the same mount and lenses and retails for $849 WITH lens. https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/mirrorless-cameras/1749/z-30.html https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/mirrorles... I'd most definitely qualify either as Entry level so I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I myself sprang for the z5 for the full frame, absolutely loving it.
mavbo 4y ago
I was amazed the first time I looked into the viewfinder of a medium format SLR. After mostly using mirrorless digital cameras, even returning to a 35mm/full frame viewfinder feels like magic. The experience of seeing the image rendered by the lens on the ground glass in “full screen” with your eye’s superior color depth and dynamic range is really something. Digital viewfinders/mirrorless cameras certainly provide more utility in certain cases, but they’ll never match the “experience” of ground glass
- nomel 4y ago
  > he experience of seeing the image rendered by the lens on the ground glass in “full screen” with your eye’s superior color depth and dynamic range is really something. Sure, but it's not what you end up with once you stop looking at pretty projections and hit the shutter button.
jeromenerf 4y ago
As an amateur, I don't care too much, since I only use obsolete stuff. Black & white film are trendy, though expensive and there is not much that can break on my F3 camera. Out of curiosity, I went to the Leica store recently, to test out the Q2 monochrome (and the M11). It has a great lens, a great great 47mpx sensor, a even greater tactile experience and a sh*tty EVF. I can't fathom why non pros would by such a poor UX for $6000€ or so. On the other hand, the comparable M setup with its great but rather limiting UX would be over 10k. I don't know about pros, but for amateurs, price and electronic UX feel like good reason to just stay retro and enjoy..
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  Same reason someone would buy that ridiculous Ferrari watch that showed up the other day, imho. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046036 I used to have a Leica M6. It was a lovely camera, but I actually really prefer to shoot with my Nikon FE2 to the Leica, and so I sold the M6. Hope it ended up in the hands of someone who enjoys it.
  - jeromenerf 4y ago
    Someone said it corrupts the rich enjoying it and the poor envying it. I guess a little just corrupt a little. I also prefer looking through the lens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- yladiz 4y ago
  I'm curious what your definition of UX is in this case. I have a Q2 and I find that while it's a little quirky and they made some specific strange decisions in development to be a very powerful and pleasant to use camera and I enjoy using it over my previous DSLR because of its low weight, beautiful lens (which in reality is what you're paying 2/3 of the money for anyway) and the photos it can produce, and specifically on the point of the EVF, it's really one of the better ones on the market from my experience. The biggest critique I have for the camera is the abysmal battery life, and the fact that they changed to a proprietary (and very thick) battery compared to the Q.
perardi 4y ago
From one of the best camera industry observers: Yeah, no. https://bythom.com/newsviews/nikkei-needs-new-staff.html https://bythom.com/newsviews/nikkei-needs-new-staff.html It is self-evident that DSLRs are basically done—I would be surprised if any totally new cameras with actual flipping mirrors are introduced. But there’s no actual evidence that Nikon is stopping production of its remaining higher-end DSLRs.
Mikeb85 4y ago
Good. There's no reason to have mirrors in cameras anymore, they just add weight and moving parts.
chenster 4y ago
Time to sell my DSLR camera
- tshanmu 4y ago
  nope - keep it in mint condition and try selling after production has stopped :) collectors item etc.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
No surprise, there. If anyone has ever been in a service shop, and seen a DSLR, taken apart, you would be gobsmacked at the complexity of the mechanisms, therein. Lots of moving parts. Hard to design, hard to make, hard to maintain, and hard to fix. Also, writing firmware to control all those moving parts is a nightmare. Ideally, the lens should be the only part of the camera with a moving part. I'm hoping that this means that they will finally embrace the concept of a "true" software-driven camera, but time will tell...
- mc32 4y ago
  So is the price for used SLR equipment (lenses) going to go up or down due to this announcement [edit: apparently speculation as no official announcement has been made]?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I suspect, up, but I'm no expert. Photographers are a funny crowd. They have both the artist, and the craftsman. Some will not ever want to change their toolset, while others, will jump right onto the bandwagon.
- mnw21cam 4y ago
  Some of the better mirrorless cameras have some extra moving parts, for the anti-shake mechanism, which is capable of moving the sensor around to cancel out the movement of the camera. Yes, you can do anti-shake in the lens, but I think there are some advantages to having it in the body as well. My camera isn't a mirrorless, but I'm actually glad it still has the focus motor inside it, because that means that I can go and buy an old cheap (but still good) second-hand lens that still uses the mechanical focus gear, and get autofocus. Some other camera bodies don't have that motor, so those older lenses are manual focus only with them. With the mirrorless, by dint of having a brand new lens mount, they were able to mandate that each lens has its own autofocus motor, but I just thought I'd point this reason to have more mechanical stuff in the camera out. And of course I also have somewhere an old film camera where absolutely everything (except the lightmeter) works if you take the battery out. Quite how they got the precision to be able to set shutter speeds between seconds and 1/2000th of a second is quite beyond me.
EvanAnderson 4y ago
I suppose it was inevitable but it breaks my heart. I shot on film in high school. I had a decent job so I could buy enough film and processing that I didn't worry too much about "wasting" shots. I used various point-and-shoots in the late 90s and early 2000's. I constantly had "battery anxiety". I missed a lot of good shots because I kept the camera powered-off for fear of draining the battery. When I threw caution to the wind and kept the camera on the battery would inevitably die and I'd miss shots. I was constantly thinking about my battery. It sapped a lot of the joy from shooting pictures. I never worry about that with my Nikon DSLRs. I can grab the camera when I head out in the morning and know I can shoot as much as I want, all day, and never run out of battery. (Realistically a big shooting day for me is only 400-500 shots. Still...) Given how long my D30, D3100, and now D7200 have lasted I guess I can find some inventory blowout on a couple newer cameras and hoard them away.
- lm28469 4y ago
  I've shot up to 1000 pics on a single battery with my xt4, I bought a second battery "just in case" that I never used. Even on my m10 monochrom, which has a very poor battery life, I never reached for the spare in normal usage.
  - kenneth 4y ago
    I barely charge my A7C ever. I go weeks without a a charge and never really worry. The battery life on cameras these days is just insane
- petepete 4y ago
  I'm a D500 shooter and don't plan on switching yet. I'll probably pick up a D850 at some point as the prices will inevitably drop as people make the leap and sell off their old gear. I have a nice selection of lenses, I don't want to give them up or use adapters.
- helloworld11 4y ago
  Seems a bit odd to me. Many older film cameras from the 80s and 70s (or earlier) can still take perfectly decent photos even without a battery. As long as you can guesstimate things correctly and manually control for other settings such as aperture, it becomes easy to do. I've used my old Asahi Pentax for decades sans battery or exposure meter.
yakubin 4y ago
A bit offtopic: is it publicly known what sort of software stack camera manufacturers like Nikon, Canon and Sony use in their cameras?
imagetic 4y ago
Long overdue. If it's not true, it should be. As much as I love my Nikon DSLR, MILC has surpassed it as a technological possibilities. They needed to pour all of their available resources into MILC 4 years ago. The Z9 was a big release for Nikon, proving they could rival Sony's dominance and match the performance of the D6. The Z6/7 releases were great proof of concepts but not competitive cameras, at least not in a ring with Sony and Canon. And now that we know they can, they need to put it all on the line as their market share just keeps declining.
munificent 4y ago
As someone who has shot SLRs (digital and even some analog) for almost thirty years: It's a dying format and it should die. I have about twenty years of investment in Canon EF SLR lenses and even so, I bought a mirrorless body last year. I still have my EF lenses (and an EF-RF adapter) but I'll probably sell them gradually and never buy another EF lens again. It's important to understand the history of SLRs. When they were invented, they were competing against rangefinders. With a rangefinder, you have a lens that exposes directly onto the film. Then you have a separate little viewing window that you look through to aim and compose your shot. That little eyepiece is off center from the actual lens and film, so what you see looking through it isn't exactly what the lens will see when you take the shot. Also, you can't preview things like the aperture, depth of field, and focus. SLRs were a radical improvement over that. With an SLR, there's a little mirror/pentaprism thing between the lens and film. When the shutter is closed, it routes light up from the lens to the eyepiece. Then when you press the shutter button, the mirror flips out of the way (this is part of the iconic "take a photo" sound) and the light going through the lens goes straight onto the film. In this way, what you see in the eyepiece is exactly what the lens sees. The whole point of an SLR is to make previewing a photo before taking a shot match the actual taken shot. Digital SLRs have the exact same structure, but with a digital sensor instead of film. When you look through the eyepiece, you are looking through the pentaprism and mirror and then out the lens. So you see exactly what the lens sees, and what the sensor will see when the shutter opens. But the framing tends to not be exactly the same since the sensor may crop in various ways that the eyepiece doesn't. Also, the eyepiece doesn't show you anything that the sensor is doing to the photo, like exposure control, ISO, noise, motion blur, etc. If your goal—which was the original goal of SLRs!—is to make your eyepiece match the final photo, the best way to do it is to have the eyepiece be a digital display that shows what the sensor itself sees. That is as close to the ground truth as you can possibly get. This is what mirrorless cameras do. Not only are they superior when it comes to previewing accuracy, they are lighter, smaller, simpler, and more durable because they don't need the large moving parts for the pentaprism and mirror. I loved my SLRs over the years, but its time has passed.
- armadsen 4y ago
  To me, the SLR has always seemed like a somewhat inelegant design that nevertheless solved real problems present in rangefinders (and other non-reflex cameras). The whole idea of a big, heavy, loud, flappy mirror mechanism just seems clunky on some level. Mirrorless digital cameras get to solve the same problems in a much simpler, more elegant fashion, and the day I got my first mirrorless camera, I knew I'd never buy another DSLR.
120photo 4y ago
Nikon F mount...
jimnotgym 4y ago
Everyone is stopping making SLRs. It has been a dead format since Sony introduced mirrorless. Is this even news?
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  Minor nitpick. The Epson RD-1 is probably the first digital mirrorless interchangeable lens camera followed by the Leica M8. Understandably those were never meant to be replacements for modern SLRS. The MFT format was the first autofocus mirrorless launching in 08. Sony was 2 years after that. It's not surprising news, but it is news that a camera format that Nikon helped popularize, made them a household name, and has been making for about 70 years is now dead.
  - jimnotgym 4y ago
    I say Sony because it was Sony that took Nikon's marketshare. Why I don't think it it's big news to ordinary people is that it is not a huge difference for them. If I put a mirrorless camera in front of most people they would think it was an SLR. If you dig a little deeper you may find it even fits your old lenses with an adapter. It is hard for ordinary people to see it as even an important development. A digital camera does not require a mirror, so they made one without it. Without the mirror it is possible to improve on certain things in a small way. The camera business is a nerd business. Even small changes are good for sales. Ordinary people don't care. I suspect Nikon are being coy about this because they still have inventory of SLR cameras and lenses.
ubermonkey 4y ago
It's really unclear what advantage the SLR design has now. It's more mechanically fiddly, and on the same platform (body/lens) requires faster base shutterspeeds when handheld.
peanut_worm 4y ago
Thats not a surprise considering mirrorless cameras are popular now. I keep seeing this news being spinned as “iPhones replacing cameras”. Not sure why, iPhones have an effective range of like 8 feet obviously people need to take pictures of things further away.
- mc32 4y ago
  Phone cameras are the Kodak Brownies of today. Sure, they can't take telephoto shots, macro/micro or action shots in the traditional way, but outside of pros and semi-pros, phone cameras cover 98% of users' needs. People always carry their phone, it's secure --less likely to get snatched, easier to insure, etc. Also lightweight and pretty advanced imaging algos to produce output users like.
- Espressosaurus 4y ago
  IPhones have replaced compact and bridge cameras, and as they continue to improve in quality they eat into the entry level camera market because they're right there and portable. That also removes the on-ramp to getting more into the ecosystem. I've gone from no camera to spending as much as a car on camera gear in the last 3 years, and while I love it, I fully recognize the market forces at work here. It's a declining market with cellphones eating into it. In the end we'll likely see extremely expensive pro-level gear and slightly less expensive enthusiast gear, with the low and mid-end taken over completely by cellphones. You still can't beat sensor area and optics size, but it might be good enough for most people.
caymanjim 4y ago
Are there really people who used to buy SLRs and now don't because of phones? They seem like entirely different markets. Professionals and dedicated amateurs have lenses and other gear that simply don't exist for phones. Maybe SLR sales are down because of the kinds of people who would buy them and literally never use them, because now instead of thinking "I wish I had a camera for this vacation" (which they wouldn't use after buying), they just use their phone. That doesn't seem like a significant market though.
- hristov 4y ago
  Yes. Me. I was an amateur and was definitely buying in the low end of the SLR spectrum, but I kind of stopped when iphone cameras started getting very good. I thought that photography was a cool hobby and liked being able to control a bunch of parameters, but once the iphones got good enough cameras, it was not cool anymore to hang out in bars and cafes with a huge slr camera, it was not conversation starter, and at some point the camera just got too much of a pain to take with me when i went out, so i started leaving it home, and I stopped spending money on it, and eventually i just kind of put it away.
- kypro 4y ago
  Probably. I used to take either my SLR or mirrorless camera with me almost everywhere I went a decade or so ago. I don't anymore because my phone camera is good enough for most things. If I'm going somewhere nice and know I know I'll want to take pictures I'll still take my mirrorless camera, but honestly phone cameras have gotten to the point where for a lot of shots the average person won't be able to tell the difference anyway. Dedicated cameras only really shine in extremes now, or if you're looking for a very specific shot.
- armadsen 4y ago
  Absolutely. For example, my parents in law, who are very much non-technical, had a Canon DSLR, and a film SLR before digital, that they used to take normal family/vacation photos. They've long since switched to just using their phone. I think you're underestimating the number of people who bought low-end (D)SLRs with the cheap kit zoom lens and used them for regular, non-enthusiast, non-professional photography without ever taking the lens off let alone buying higher end ones. The alternative used to be a compact or bridge camera without an interchangeable lens, and those too have gone close to extinct. Essentially, the market served by (D)SLRs has changed to be almost entirely pros and dedicated hobbyist photographers, which is a small market compared to "everyone who takes photos". And now, mirrorless is well on the way to taking over that small market. I'm an enthusiastic hobbyist photographer, and switched to mirrorless in 2014 (Fuji X-T1). I knew immediately after getting my first mirrorless camera that I would never buy another DSLR.
semiquaver 4y ago
I've been an amateur photographer my whole life and spent the best parts of my formative years in a darkroom. I've owned a number of film and digital SLRs that are quite dear to me. That said, it seems like irrational nostalgia (which is perfectly understandable) is the only reason to prefer SLRs over mirrorless cameras at this point. The comparative disadvantages of mirrorless cameras were mostly temporary and rooted in the fact that SLRs had been around much longer. Now that the lens selection and technology has caught up, SLRs are strictly worse in every way. Am I missing something or are there any durable advantages to resisting the seemingly inevitable march towards mirrorless?
- amelius 4y ago
  But do they keep the sound?
  - beanjuice 4y ago
    Yes, optionally. For some Japanese versions of mirrorless cameras, there is a forced sound even in silent modes.
    - amelius 4y ago
      Interesting, do they produce the sound through a speaker, or do they use some other mechanism?
    - vanderZwan 4y ago
      Is that because of the camera voyeurism issues?
      - gwill 4y ago
        exactly. same reason why phones sold in japan don't have an option to disable the camera sound.
        amelius 4y ago
vparikh 4y ago
The mirror box / pentaprism combo is not required. DSLR cameras were built as the technology did not exist to eliminate them. Now that processor, LCD and AF systems have caught up, the SLR is redundant. The primary advantage of the SLR was that you can see the image as the lens is framing the image - a huge improvement over rangefinder systems (such as the Leica M). This allowed the use of super telephoto, wide angle, macro and tilt shift lenses to be much easer. The primary downside of the SLR was that it did not show you how the exposure was going to be recored on the film or digital sensor. The mirrorless system eliminates that and now lets you see precisely how the image is framed as well as how it is exposed in real time *without* taking the image as the LCD and viewfinder are constantly reading from sensor. In addition you gain the possibility to handhold at much lower shutter speeds due to the mirror slap being removed and the on board sensor shift stabilization systems. DSLRs couldn't do this and relied on lens based solutions (Olympus & Pentax did have sensor shift stabilization, but it was niche and the market leaders Nikon & Canon relied on lens based stabilization). Another advantage is that with the removal of the mirror box, you can have short flange distances allowing new lens designs and lens interoperability. Nikon has the shortest flange distance in the industry and has support for just about every other lens mount out their (though through third party adapters - some with full AF capability also). So the DSLR, except for maybe a few niche cases is old technology that is superseded in every single way. The interesting thing will be to see how the new mirrorless cameras effect the UI and ergonomics of the camera systems. So far, the pro level systems (Z9, R5, etc..) are all still for the most part using the DSLR form factor. Especially Nikon. I actually like this, but lets see what the future holds.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Hopefully the lenses from their DSLR stuff will work on the mirrorless cameras. My lens investment is more important than the camera body.
  - achairapart 4y ago
    One problem may be that your long and heavy zoom/telephoto lens (plus adapter) may be extremely unbalanced attached to the light and compact body of a mirrorless camera.
tokai 4y ago
Nikon still produce two film SLRs and 8 different old school manual focused lenses for them. Nikon mo is to move slow. So stopping SLR production would be very surprising
dmtroyer 4y ago
For all the people who have left high end DSLR to go to high end mirror less, I’m genuinely curious how the viewfinders compare in quality. I’m behind the times with an A6000 but have always been kind of disappointed when looking through the viewfinder compared to similar gen mid level DSLRs.
frognumber 4y ago
This will never happen, but I think there's a solid business in selling a mirrorless which adapts solidly to all the dSLR mounts. A-mount is big here. Sony dropped support here first, and the LA-EA adapters all have significant issues. Even today, in many cases, Sony mirrorless adapts better to Canon than to Sony A-mount. Eating up other mounts would be big too. K-mount customers wanting to go mirrorless. Nikon and Canon would be big too, obviously. That would open several markets: - People looking to switch - People wanting to use esoteric lenses (e.g. Minolta's 500mm f/8 reflex, STF lenses, some of the neater tilt-shifts, etc.) - Less profitable, people wanting to use cheaper used lenses In the long term, most people will switch to native lenses, eventually, as lens technology moves on too.
technick 4y ago
So the D6 is the last DSLR body that will be available. I've been a Nikon shooter for 2 decades now, shooting with the D100, D70, D2S, D2X, D3X, D300, D700, D810 and D850. It's easier to list the Nikon lenses I didn't buy vs the ones I bought... which I didn't buy anything over an F2.8 aperture. This is heart breaking for me. Now Nikon expects me to buy into a new camera and new lens system...
- benjimouse 4y ago
  Nikon has provided a perfect upgrade path for your lenses. When/if ever you buy a z body, they will perform better with the ftz adapter than they ever did on your dslrs.
fleddr 4y ago
If you want to be a contrarian, you can consider right now to be the golden age of DSLR. That is, for the gear heads and bargain hunters. The truth of the matter is that as it comes to image quality, a DSLR is in no way inferior to mirrorless, it's just that mirrorless has several features helping you to take the shot. There's quite a few types of photography where those features are close to irrelevant, not everybody does fast-moving sports photography. Given that baseline capabilities are still excellent, you can exploit this transition to get a lot of value (and fun) out of the legacy. If you now take a high-end DSLR, preferably on the cheap, you can make stunning photos with it for as long as it lasts, and nobody can tell that it is "obsolete". Modern DSLRs have incredible noise performance, a huge dynamic range, very high resolution. Specifically for Nikon, lens hunting is also fun. For example, I have a f/1.2 from 1979. It's a stunning lens, all metal, manual aperture, ridiculously fast. And it works just as well as it did back then. Unfortunately, it seems the market recognizes that high-end DSLRs are still excellent, second hand prices are not coming down, I've been monitoring this for years.
m463 4y ago
With interchangeable lens cameras... The camera bodies come and go. The lenses are the investment and are long-lived.
supernova87a 4y ago
I guess just like the move to televisions that are not tuned with capacitors, or planes not flown by mechanical linkages and are now fly-by-wire (or cars for that matter), we continue proceeding into the age where you cannot get something to work anymore (or fix it) with just a screwdriver and other mechanical tools. Not that a SLR or DSLR was operated or fixable purely mechanically anyway... but still.
FunnyBadger 4y ago
The main reason for the reflex mirror is film. So this is saying that Nikon will get out of film cameras. So if you want a Nikon film camera - for reasons - better buy one now.

202 points by jmsflknr 4y ago

Note that this means single-lens "reflex" cameras, i.e. those with mirrors. Nikon is happily producing mirrorless cameras, as is everyone else.

ekianjo 4y ago

Nikon did not confirm nor deny the report so it's basically a pure fluff piece. > As well as the rise of mirrorless tech, SLR cameras have also been out-competed by smartphone technology, which has shrunk the camera market over decades. The market has shrunk but it's nothing to do with smartphone cameras, it's like saying McDonalds have shrunk the market for three stars restaurants. Not the same audience at all, not the same use, you'll find that the DSLR market has been mostly stagnating innovation wise for a while, making it hard to justify buying a new model for just a few more megapixels every now and then. A 10 years old DSLR is still a formidable image-maker.

xdfgh1112 4y ago
I disagree. A large percentage of the DSLR market are hobbyists who want to feel professional, just like with musical instruments, sports equipment and so on. Amateurs outnumber professionals by 1000:1 or more. A large percentage of those people have realised they can take really good photos with their phone now, good enough that they don't feel inadequate, and maybe they don't feel like carrying around heavy equipment either. That market is gone and will never return.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > can take really good photos with their phone now That does not make any sense, it was already the case that you could make excellent pictures with compact cameras 15 years ago, without having a DLSR. If your hypothesis was right the DSLR market would have disappeared much earlier.
  - xdfgh1112 4y ago
    Are you really comparing 2005 compact cameras to the multi-lens machine learning tiny sensor capabilities of modern phones? Your argument only holds up if you're taking high aperture landscape photos in broad daylight...
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      The Sony Rx-100 Was released in 2012. That's 10 years ago already and that still beats hands down the best phones out there in terms of image quality.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Early digital compact cameras were terrible compared to phones today. On the other hand they were revolutionary compared to film cameras, so it didn't really matter.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Before, one had to make a conscious choice to get a compact camera. People who wanted to take pictures had a choice-- do I get a SLR and have all the bells and whistles and be "serious", or do I get a compact camera? Also, appearances matter-- do I want to look serious? Now, a pretty excellent compact camera is in pretty much everyone's hands. So the question becomes-- is it worth another camera to be serious? Would I even carry it anywhere?
- rscrawfo 4y ago
  I think most of the hobbyists have stuck with DSLR/mirrorless, but I knew a lot of people that used a dslr for family / vacation pictures. Those people all use phones now. Although We’re probably saying the same thing, just differing on our definition of hobbyist.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Yes, most of those vacation photos look terrible. Good enough on a beach at midday, but in other lighting conditions they're often under exposed or blurry or backlit or just poorly composed. And in fairness to smartphone cameras, most of those problems are more due to photographer incompetence than device limitations.
    - soylentcola 4y ago
      I was just on vacation and took some photos with my phone camera, and some with my Nikon D4000 and a pretty basic 55-200 lens. The phone pics have the benefit of some pretty good automatic processing, ease of use (the thing is already in my pocket), and for typical landscape or portrait stuff, they are just fine. But there really is no comparison when it comes to "real" bokeh/shallow DOF stuff, not to mention the sheer flexibility offered by a full-fat lens, bigger sensor, and controls that don't have me poking around in touch screen menus. I could even swap to my 35mm f/1.8 if I wanted to shoot in lower light than my phone can do without digital tricks or longer exposure times. If I were in the market today, perhaps I would go for a mirrorless camera, but as someone decidedly not professional at all WRT photography, I still enjoy having something flexible in addition to using my phone as a decent backup point-and-shoot camera.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Yes, but... a phone you take with you every day is different from an SLR that you take on specific occasions. Perhaps 20% of pictures I've shot have been on a DSLR, and 80% on phones. By sheer numbers, a really big share of the best shots are from a phone camera. And there's a lot of things that I took pictures of, that there's some rather obvious phone camera penalties from... but at least I have a picture while with a DSLR I would likely not. It's freeing, too, to not have to choose between "do I lug the big camera today in difficult conditions or get no photos today?" ... I am looking forward to picking up a mirrorless to reduce the barrier a little bit of carrying "the big camera".
- jdavis703 4y ago
  I have the latest iPhone 13 Pro Max, shoot RAW and with acoustic filters mounted on my phone and what not. Both my photos and iPhone photos that I’ve seen at “iPhone photography” art exhibits are clearly lower quality. Now one could argue about whether the tiny censors on smartphones in of itself is just another dimension of artistic expression. But my personal aesthetic preference as a hobbyist photographer and art consumer is that unintentional censor noise is not good.
- dlevine 4y ago
  I have an old DSLR (Nikon D90, circa 2008) and hadn't taken it anywhere in quite some time (due to it being big and heavy and smartphones being more or less good enough). However, I had been slightly disappointed with the vacation photos I was getting on my iPhone 11. So I dug out the old DSLR and brought (lugged?) it with me on a recent vacation to Peru. I threw in the largest SD card it would accommodate (32GB), which gave me literally thousands of photos at the highest quality JPEG setting (don't really want to deal with post-processing RAW images). The only lens I brought was a 35mm 1.8 DX lens. I have to say that the quality of my photos was much better than I had seen in quite some time. It is hands down better than my smartphone. Even though they are both ostensibly 12MP, the larger sensor and lens make a big difference. The two things I missed from my iPhone were super wide angle shots and low light. Since I had my iPhone with me, I could just pull that out if needed. I briefly thought about buying a new DSLR or a mirrorless, but really my old one is good enough. I will probably just buy an 18-55 zoom or something for my next vacation.
- that_guy_iain 4y ago
  > I disagree. A large percentage of the DSLR market are hobbyists who want to feel professional, just like with musical instruments, sports equipment and so on. Amateurs outnumber professionals by 1000:1 or more. And tons of people who want to have a youtube channel. Hell there are lots of people that use a SLR just for their zoom calls. As a hobbyist photographer myself I can confirm that I spend serious amount of money on equipment that is pro-level. The last camera I got was the Nikon Z6 Mark II, which is an entry-level pro camera. Why? Because "The picture quality matters" and it feels good to have a really nice camera when you're standing around a bunch of other hobbyists who all have pro cameras. For the most part the people who take photos with their phones were never really buying DSLRs. They were buying all the other digital cameras. When you go for a DSLR you're wanting to control everything, shutter speed, the aperture, etc. You want to be able to go wide-lens, tele-lens, you want to be able to choose between 2000/second and 100/second. You want to do time delay. If you're even half interested in taking good photos you're looking to get a DSLR even if you don't understand everything. You can look at the photography sites for hobbyists such as youpic.com and 500px.com. These sites are full of people sharing their hobby photos and you'll find 1-2 out of hundreds using their mobile.
  - Animats 4y ago
    "There are lots of people that use a SLR just for their zoom calls." That's the crap webcam problem. You'll never use the mirror mechanism in a DSLR in that situation. Nikon promotes using their DSLRs as webcams.[1] What you really want, of course, is the good optics, sensor, and electronics without the viewfinder, mirror, battery, and manual controls, and with good connectors and no overheating during continuous operation. Neither the webcam makers nor the traditional camera makers have addressed this market. So who's doing it? Hikvision, the surveillance camera makers.[2] Their thing is making high-rez cameras that handle widely varied lighting conditions. So they offer some of those packaged as webcams. [1] https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/webcam-utility.page https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/webcam-utility... [2] https://www.hikvision.com/en/products/Turbo-HD-Products/Turbo-HD-Cameras/webcam-series/ https://www.hikvision.com/en/products/Turbo-HD-Products/Turb...
    - 4y ago
chenster 4y ago
DSLR camera is still better of course, but people won't use it due to its bulky and heavy and their mobile phone can do 80% of photoing faster and probably just as good albeit a few areas that DSLR still has advantages. But for most of us, a good enough camera is just fine.
fleddr 4y ago
Nikon and Canon used to make the vast majority of their revenue from their entry level DSLR systems. That customer base has pretty much disappeared and it has everything to do with smartphones. If I recall the statistic correctly, the DSLR market shrunk by 40% across the board in just a few years because of this. Due to this, Nikon and others have re-positioned their market to high price/margin prosumer/pro gear mostly.

zinekeller 4y ago

I wouldn't be shocked if this true, mirrorless is the future of photography whether you like it or not (but since this is Verge...) Edit: Nikkei is also reporting on this, so that makes it more believable.

hanniabu 4y ago
What's the benefit of mirrorless and why isn't it more prominent today?
- cheschire 4y ago
  Some folks prioritize the quality of the image in the viewfinder, and mirrorless uses an electronic viewfinder. Other folks prioritize weight and size, and for them the mirrorless has clear advantages.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  For landscape people you get far better wide-angle lenses, auto-focus systems which are way more consistent at the 50 MP mark and composition+exposure helpers (e.g. distortion-corrected viewfinder, histograms, zooming to 800 % in the viewfinder). For people people you get eye-autofocus and eye-tracking (better DSLRs have done people and face tracking for ages, but one of the more en-vogue styles in people photography of the last couple years is ultra-large apertures with sharp eyes, and with DSLRs that's really pushing it, especially at 50 MP). For media people you tend to get better video support. The latest flagships (e.g. 8K capabilities of the Z9) start to infringe on cinema camera territory (though with none of the connectivity, which would add an unacceptable amount of bulk to a photo/hybrid camera). For sports people you get more images per image and no blackout at all (Z9 only, for now). For wildlife people you get quiet operation (no mirror, no shutter necessary, depending on the model). In terms of the image quality itself, the hypothetical spherical cow in a vacuum, there's no advantage per se, various DSLRs and mirrorless cameras use practically identical sensors. Tiny mark against mirrorless for PDAF pixels, but that's not a practical concern for any current camera. Shutter-less mirrorless avoid a possible source of IR contamination (the optical barrier used by the camera to time the shutter), but that's about it. Oh, and IBIS, obviously.

ytch 4y ago

https://www.nikon.com/news/2022/0712_01.htm https://www.nikon.com/news/2022/0712_01.htm https://www.nikon.co.jp/news/2022/0712_01.htm https://www.nikon.co.jp/news/2022/0712_01.htm Nikon denies the report: > Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of digital SLR

jetrink 4y ago
> There was a media article regarding Nikon's withdrawal of SLR development. This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards. That's not really a denial though, just a statement that they haven't announced anything.
- tchalla 4y ago
  I really appreciate you pointing out that difference. Critical reading is a skill.

mikece 4y ago

Let's just hope they get their autofocus issues ironed out or it will no longer be the Big Three of photography but just Canon and Sony.

adwww 4y ago
Where do Fuji feature in size? IMO their products are exceptional - coming from Nikon DSLRs at least.
- uniqueuid 4y ago
  They don't have a full-frame offering, unfortunately. So low-light performance lags behind. [edit]: They do have medium-frame, but that's another league entirely.
  - isatty 4y ago
    Not really a huge problem imo - their bodies are superior when it comes to having manual controls close to your fingers and their glass is amazing.
    - uniqueuid 4y ago
      Do you have experience with e.g. modern Sigma or Zeiss lenses on EF/F mount? Are their lenses comparable or better?
iasay 4y ago
My Z50 and Z6 autofocus is pretty amazingly good. What issues do people report?
- speg 4y ago
  Most of the complaints I’ve seen are around the face/eye tracking. Improved in the second generation and even more so in the Z9 but still not quite on par with Sony/Canon.

javajosh 4y ago

This is unfortunate, IMHO. DSLR's are (far) superior in terms of battery life. This was inevitable, of course. It is similar to the transition from dumb phone to smart phones (which, interestingly, had a similar tradeoff!)

cultofmetatron 4y ago
I have 4 batteries at all times. two are official nikon ones. I've never gone past two. maybe if you're spending several days out in the middle of nowhere it makes a difference but a single battery is sufficient for most people that aren't shooting video.
PaulHoule 4y ago
Specifically when you are setting up your shot with the DSLR you are looking at a ground-glass screen and the sensor and screen can be turned off. For a mirrorless camera the sensor and screen are on when you are setting up. The flip side is that a mirrorless camera makes a great video camera with some caveats. For instance if you want to do a shot that smoothly zooms in or out you have a rocker control on a real video camera that you can hold steadily and it does just that. I can't do the same with a mirrorless lens because I can't turn the zoom ring on a lens very smoothly.
- radlad 4y ago
  I'm confused by this - many mirrorless lenses setup for video work have a zoom switch rather than a zoom ring. An electronic motor ensures smooth zoom. Furthermore, why are you unable to hold a mirrorless camera as steadily? Something like the Peak Design Clutch strap ought to remedy that I would think? Not to mention cameras like the X-T4 have quite good IBIS built-in to steady out the shot a bit.
klodolph 4y ago
This is the same complaint people had about, e.g., film cameras, and before that, electronically controlled shutters. Very few people are willing to live will all those sacrifices just to get better battery life from an older generation of camera. History repeats itself.

orangepurple 4y ago

Nikon's 4k60 rolling shutter issues mean you can't realistically use them for modern videography. Nikons suffer from extreme rolling shutter because of how the sensor is sampled.

eropple 4y ago
From what I've seen (I don't shoot Nikon but I keep up with the market) Nikon's rolling shutter issues seem to be mostly addressed as of the Z9; you can shoot oversampled or subsampled 4K60 and the sensor readout is fast. Rolling shutter on the Z9 seems to be no worse than the Sony a1. I would expect this to move downmarket over time.

lausobo 4y ago

Nikon says this is not true: https://www.nikon.com/news/2022/0712_01.htm https://www.nikon.com/news/2022/0712_01.htm

dang 4y ago
Thanks for pointing that out. I've added a question mark to the headline. The OP says "Nikkei has learned", so presumably they have some source telling them this and how true it is depends on how reliable the source is.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Nikkei's leak article for Japanese company and official half-denial response is classic. Then company often release same release as leak. Perhaps Nikon won't release any release but just stop developing.
ejb999 4y ago
>>This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards Perhaps...but this statement sounds awfully weaselly to me, i.e. 'we don't currently have any plans for layoffs' pronouncements that corporations often make right before announcing layoffs.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  The whole point of the Z9 is that it achieved auto-focus parity with the D6 for sports and wildlife, it was really obvious that the D6 would be the last D camera, just like the F6 was obviously the last F camera. The re-designed ultra-teles (as opposed to "take existing optical and mechanical design of the EF version and integrate a flange extension" like Canon did) slot into this strategy by offering a real benefit over the preceding F lenses. Nikon has a pretty long history (in Western memory going back to the Nikon S) of executing well and consistently. They're often not the first mover: Nikon S was a "best of" Zeiss-Leica body (pretty much all Zeiss, but using the Leitz shutter - this is why Nikon lenses mount, focus and zoom to the left), became quite popular. Nikon F wasn't the first SLR system, either, but well executed and became the benchmark.

albatross13 4y ago

I shoot wildlife using a combo of DSLR and Mirrorless and I have to say, I almost always reach for my R5 (mirrorless) over my 5d mark4. One of the things I love most is seeing exposure in real time, it's a nice little quality of life thing you don't think about until you experience it. Over the years I think anyone who takes photography seriously has gotten pretty good at gauging exposure, but to actually see it change in real time when you adjust ISO or Aperture is pretty slick. But all of that being said, I'll hold onto my DSLRs forever too- as one person pointed out the battery life is far better and when you're out for 10 hours at a time that really matters.

dboreham 4y ago
Having autofocus focus in the same plane as the photosites is a big win too. EVF is much more convenient for near vision glasses wearers too. That said, I think you need an R5/R6 generation body to not be annoyed by mirrorless readout slowness and VF lag.
- throwanem 4y ago
  > EVF is much more convenient for near vision glasses wearers too. How so? I use diopter adapters in my DSLR eyepieces, since the built-in adjustment doesn't suffice and I hate to shoot through glasses that prevent me seeing all of the viewfinder. I wouldn't have thought an EVF could natively improve on this, but now you've got me intrigued.
- Dave_Rosenthal 4y ago
  Yeah, as resolutions climb autofocus not being aligned exactly to the sensor is a bigger and bigger problem. I have a very high res (mirrored) medium format system and keeping the “focus trim” set correctly to align the AF system with sensor seems impossible, seemingly changing with temperature or other conditions.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    > seemingly changing with temperature or other conditions. Focus also shifts with aperture, it's impossible to have an open loop system that works accurately. Some lenses will front focus wide open, be spot on at f4 and back focus after that, or the opposite. Or be spot on wide open and oof when you stop down.

_ph_ 4y ago

The end of an era, but Nikon is following a lot of other manufacturers like Olympus, Sony, Leica. SLRs were a great product, but about 10 years ago, mirrorless cameras started to overtake them in many aspects. The EVF has many advantages, of course especially for video recording. All new camera models now are mirrorless. Like analog SLRs gave way to DSLRs, now the migration to mirrorless is going to be finished. I wouldn't expect Canon to stick to DSLRs much longer either.

BeetleB 4y ago
For the same price point, mirrorless cameras are of inferior quality when it comes to noise. This is why many still choose DSLRs. Edit: OK, I should say inferior quality w.r.t noise when all other features are similar. Certainly, it's not anything specific about mirrorless that makes it noisy. It's just that if I have a DSLR with certain features, and another mirrorless with similar features (and noise profile), the latter tends to cost more. And my information may be a bit dated - the last time I checked was in 2018. And I only buy APS-C, which usually was quite a bit more expensive for mirrorless, with not better quality.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  Why would they be? Where is any noise advantage of the DSLR?
- eropple 4y ago
  I'd be interested in seeing substantiation of this claim. I can't think of why mirrorless cameras would have more noise.
  - radlad 4y ago
    Here's something I found: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57249761 https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57249761 It basically seems to come down to the fact that with DSLR you can disable Live View, therefore keeping the sensor cool until you take your exposure. I expect then that a camera like the X100V or X-Pro3 - both of which are mirrorless cameras that also have an OVF - would have the same advantage as a DSLR.

iasay 4y ago

I suspect this is half way to the truth. The Z mount lens portfolio is looking pretty good these days. At some point the FTZ will be the only F mount being sold. I sold all my F mount lenses last year finally. Despite owning a Z50 and a Z6 I only seem to use the Z50 and the DX kit lenses. Might sell the full frame stuff apart from the 35mm prime which is amazing on the Z50.

balls187 4y ago

I don't think I'm going to invest in a new system. The combo of my 5D4, and latest iphone pro seem to have me covered. I'm tempted to rent a latest canon mirrorless body, but I can't see how Canon can keep up with IQ innovation through processing the way Google and Apple have.

post_break 4y ago

This is anecdotal at best but I went to my big camera store last weekend. The last time I went was around 2011. Back then it was 48% Nikon, 48% Canon, and the rest being the other makers, think pentax, fuji, sony, etc. Now it's 30% Canon, 30% Sony, 20% Nikon, 20% Fuji. I think Nikon is dying. Sony ate everyone's lunch, now Canon is coming back big with the R mirrorless cams, and Fuji is also making one hell of a comeback. The Leica, Panasonic, Sigma alliance is also working to their advantage.

hef19898 4y ago
Nikon is late to mirroless, but their Z mount lenses are superb. As are their second gen mirrorless bodies. Also their first gen, even if the gear fanatics had some greavences about single memory card slots. In that light, also considering Z mount lenses took a while to be released, 20% is actually pretty solid.
- Auracle 4y ago
  As a pro, I actually haven't invested in any Z mount lenses. They're completely neglecting the mainstays of wedding photography - f/1.4 lenses. The single memory card slot of the first generation was also ridiculous for the wedding photographer crowd in that it made them completely unusable.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Agree for wedding photographers regarding the f/1.4 lenses. For all other purposes so... Tge second card slot was fixed so, and I don't know of anyone who actually lost shots due a failing memory card. I do see the need for redundancy for stuff like weddings and events so.
hyperbovine 4y ago
The bigger story of course is that phones came along and ate everyone's lunch. I don't know a single person who desires to lug around a body and lens, no matter how compact, anymore. (Have you seen what the top-of-the-line iPhone can do? It's amazing.) I say this as someone who used to own five figures worth of Canon glass. The whole industry feels like it is dying to me. The professional segment will always be there but the consumer and, increasingly, "prosumer" markets are history.

ramesh31 4y ago

Maybe it means we'll finally get a true entry level mirrorless camera under $1000 now.

dghlsakjg 4y ago
Nikon has 3 mirrorless cameras under $1k. Other manufacturers also have tons. What features are you looking for?
cultofmetatron 4y ago
the nikon z50 WIth lens comes out to 999. technically under 1k. they also recently released the new z30 whihc eschws the evf for just the backmuond display. its definitely a compromised design heavily geared towards youtubers rather than still photography but it uses the same mount and lenses and retails for $849 WITH lens. https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/mirrorless-cameras/1749/z-30.html https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-products/product/mirrorles... I'd most definitely qualify either as Entry level so I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I myself sprang for the z5 for the full frame, absolutely loving it.

mavbo 4y ago

I was amazed the first time I looked into the viewfinder of a medium format SLR. After mostly using mirrorless digital cameras, even returning to a 35mm/full frame viewfinder feels like magic. The experience of seeing the image rendered by the lens on the ground glass in “full screen” with your eye’s superior color depth and dynamic range is really something. Digital viewfinders/mirrorless cameras certainly provide more utility in certain cases, but they’ll never match the “experience” of ground glass

nomel 4y ago
> he experience of seeing the image rendered by the lens on the ground glass in “full screen” with your eye’s superior color depth and dynamic range is really something. Sure, but it's not what you end up with once you stop looking at pretty projections and hit the shutter button.

jeromenerf 4y ago

As an amateur, I don't care too much, since I only use obsolete stuff. Black & white film are trendy, though expensive and there is not much that can break on my F3 camera. Out of curiosity, I went to the Leica store recently, to test out the Q2 monochrome (and the M11). It has a great lens, a great great 47mpx sensor, a even greater tactile experience and a sh*tty EVF. I can't fathom why non pros would by such a poor UX for $6000€ or so. On the other hand, the comparable M setup with its great but rather limiting UX would be over 10k. I don't know about pros, but for amateurs, price and electronic UX feel like good reason to just stay retro and enjoy..

aaronbrethorst 4y ago
Same reason someone would buy that ridiculous Ferrari watch that showed up the other day, imho. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32046036 I used to have a Leica M6. It was a lovely camera, but I actually really prefer to shoot with my Nikon FE2 to the Leica, and so I sold the M6. Hope it ended up in the hands of someone who enjoys it.
- jeromenerf 4y ago
  Someone said it corrupts the rich enjoying it and the poor envying it. I guess a little just corrupt a little. I also prefer looking through the lens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
yladiz 4y ago
I'm curious what your definition of UX is in this case. I have a Q2 and I find that while it's a little quirky and they made some specific strange decisions in development to be a very powerful and pleasant to use camera and I enjoy using it over my previous DSLR because of its low weight, beautiful lens (which in reality is what you're paying 2/3 of the money for anyway) and the photos it can produce, and specifically on the point of the EVF, it's really one of the better ones on the market from my experience. The biggest critique I have for the camera is the abysmal battery life, and the fact that they changed to a proprietary (and very thick) battery compared to the Q.

perardi 4y ago

From one of the best camera industry observers: Yeah, no. https://bythom.com/newsviews/nikkei-needs-new-staff.html https://bythom.com/newsviews/nikkei-needs-new-staff.html It is self-evident that DSLRs are basically done—I would be surprised if any totally new cameras with actual flipping mirrors are introduced. But there’s no actual evidence that Nikon is stopping production of its remaining higher-end DSLRs.

Mikeb85 4y ago

Good. There's no reason to have mirrors in cameras anymore, they just add weight and moving parts.

chenster 4y ago

Time to sell my DSLR camera

tshanmu 4y ago
nope - keep it in mint condition and try selling after production has stopped :) collectors item etc.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

No surprise, there. If anyone has ever been in a service shop, and seen a DSLR, taken apart, you would be gobsmacked at the complexity of the mechanisms, therein. Lots of moving parts. Hard to design, hard to make, hard to maintain, and hard to fix. Also, writing firmware to control all those moving parts is a nightmare. Ideally, the lens should be the only part of the camera with a moving part. I'm hoping that this means that they will finally embrace the concept of a "true" software-driven camera, but time will tell...

mc32 4y ago
So is the price for used SLR equipment (lenses) going to go up or down due to this announcement [edit: apparently speculation as no official announcement has been made]?
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I suspect, up, but I'm no expert. Photographers are a funny crowd. They have both the artist, and the craftsman. Some will not ever want to change their toolset, while others, will jump right onto the bandwagon.
mnw21cam 4y ago
Some of the better mirrorless cameras have some extra moving parts, for the anti-shake mechanism, which is capable of moving the sensor around to cancel out the movement of the camera. Yes, you can do anti-shake in the lens, but I think there are some advantages to having it in the body as well. My camera isn't a mirrorless, but I'm actually glad it still has the focus motor inside it, because that means that I can go and buy an old cheap (but still good) second-hand lens that still uses the mechanical focus gear, and get autofocus. Some other camera bodies don't have that motor, so those older lenses are manual focus only with them. With the mirrorless, by dint of having a brand new lens mount, they were able to mandate that each lens has its own autofocus motor, but I just thought I'd point this reason to have more mechanical stuff in the camera out. And of course I also have somewhere an old film camera where absolutely everything (except the lightmeter) works if you take the battery out. Quite how they got the precision to be able to set shutter speeds between seconds and 1/2000th of a second is quite beyond me.

EvanAnderson 4y ago

I suppose it was inevitable but it breaks my heart. I shot on film in high school. I had a decent job so I could buy enough film and processing that I didn't worry too much about "wasting" shots. I used various point-and-shoots in the late 90s and early 2000's. I constantly had "battery anxiety". I missed a lot of good shots because I kept the camera powered-off for fear of draining the battery. When I threw caution to the wind and kept the camera on the battery would inevitably die and I'd miss shots. I was constantly thinking about my battery. It sapped a lot of the joy from shooting pictures. I never worry about that with my Nikon DSLRs. I can grab the camera when I head out in the morning and know I can shoot as much as I want, all day, and never run out of battery. (Realistically a big shooting day for me is only 400-500 shots. Still...) Given how long my D30, D3100, and now D7200 have lasted I guess I can find some inventory blowout on a couple newer cameras and hoard them away.

lm28469 4y ago
I've shot up to 1000 pics on a single battery with my xt4, I bought a second battery "just in case" that I never used. Even on my m10 monochrom, which has a very poor battery life, I never reached for the spare in normal usage.
- kenneth 4y ago
  I barely charge my A7C ever. I go weeks without a a charge and never really worry. The battery life on cameras these days is just insane
petepete 4y ago
I'm a D500 shooter and don't plan on switching yet. I'll probably pick up a D850 at some point as the prices will inevitably drop as people make the leap and sell off their old gear. I have a nice selection of lenses, I don't want to give them up or use adapters.
helloworld11 4y ago
Seems a bit odd to me. Many older film cameras from the 80s and 70s (or earlier) can still take perfectly decent photos even without a battery. As long as you can guesstimate things correctly and manually control for other settings such as aperture, it becomes easy to do. I've used my old Asahi Pentax for decades sans battery or exposure meter.

yakubin 4y ago

A bit offtopic: is it publicly known what sort of software stack camera manufacturers like Nikon, Canon and Sony use in their cameras?

imagetic 4y ago

Long overdue. If it's not true, it should be. As much as I love my Nikon DSLR, MILC has surpassed it as a technological possibilities. They needed to pour all of their available resources into MILC 4 years ago. The Z9 was a big release for Nikon, proving they could rival Sony's dominance and match the performance of the D6. The Z6/7 releases were great proof of concepts but not competitive cameras, at least not in a ring with Sony and Canon. And now that we know they can, they need to put it all on the line as their market share just keeps declining.

munificent 4y ago

As someone who has shot SLRs (digital and even some analog) for almost thirty years: It's a dying format and it should die. I have about twenty years of investment in Canon EF SLR lenses and even so, I bought a mirrorless body last year. I still have my EF lenses (and an EF-RF adapter) but I'll probably sell them gradually and never buy another EF lens again. It's important to understand the history of SLRs. When they were invented, they were competing against rangefinders. With a rangefinder, you have a lens that exposes directly onto the film. Then you have a separate little viewing window that you look through to aim and compose your shot. That little eyepiece is off center from the actual lens and film, so what you see looking through it isn't exactly what the lens will see when you take the shot. Also, you can't preview things like the aperture, depth of field, and focus. SLRs were a radical improvement over that. With an SLR, there's a little mirror/pentaprism thing between the lens and film. When the shutter is closed, it routes light up from the lens to the eyepiece. Then when you press the shutter button, the mirror flips out of the way (this is part of the iconic "take a photo" sound) and the light going through the lens goes straight onto the film. In this way, what you see in the eyepiece is exactly what the lens sees. The whole point of an SLR is to make previewing a photo before taking a shot match the actual taken shot. Digital SLRs have the exact same structure, but with a digital sensor instead of film. When you look through the eyepiece, you are looking through the pentaprism and mirror and then out the lens. So you see exactly what the lens sees, and what the sensor will see when the shutter opens. But the framing tends to not be exactly the same since the sensor may crop in various ways that the eyepiece doesn't. Also, the eyepiece doesn't show you anything that the sensor is doing to the photo, like exposure control, ISO, noise, motion blur, etc. If your goal—which was the original goal of SLRs!—is to make your eyepiece match the final photo, the best way to do it is to have the eyepiece be a digital display that shows what the sensor itself sees. That is as close to the ground truth as you can possibly get. This is what mirrorless cameras do. Not only are they superior when it comes to previewing accuracy, they are lighter, smaller, simpler, and more durable because they don't need the large moving parts for the pentaprism and mirror. I loved my SLRs over the years, but its time has passed.

armadsen 4y ago
To me, the SLR has always seemed like a somewhat inelegant design that nevertheless solved real problems present in rangefinders (and other non-reflex cameras). The whole idea of a big, heavy, loud, flappy mirror mechanism just seems clunky on some level. Mirrorless digital cameras get to solve the same problems in a much simpler, more elegant fashion, and the day I got my first mirrorless camera, I knew I'd never buy another DSLR.

120photo 4y ago

Nikon F mount...

jimnotgym 4y ago

Everyone is stopping making SLRs. It has been a dead format since Sony introduced mirrorless. Is this even news?

dghlsakjg 4y ago
Minor nitpick. The Epson RD-1 is probably the first digital mirrorless interchangeable lens camera followed by the Leica M8. Understandably those were never meant to be replacements for modern SLRS. The MFT format was the first autofocus mirrorless launching in 08. Sony was 2 years after that. It's not surprising news, but it is news that a camera format that Nikon helped popularize, made them a household name, and has been making for about 70 years is now dead.
- jimnotgym 4y ago
  I say Sony because it was Sony that took Nikon's marketshare. Why I don't think it it's big news to ordinary people is that it is not a huge difference for them. If I put a mirrorless camera in front of most people they would think it was an SLR. If you dig a little deeper you may find it even fits your old lenses with an adapter. It is hard for ordinary people to see it as even an important development. A digital camera does not require a mirror, so they made one without it. Without the mirror it is possible to improve on certain things in a small way. The camera business is a nerd business. Even small changes are good for sales. Ordinary people don't care. I suspect Nikon are being coy about this because they still have inventory of SLR cameras and lenses.

ubermonkey 4y ago

It's really unclear what advantage the SLR design has now. It's more mechanically fiddly, and on the same platform (body/lens) requires faster base shutterspeeds when handheld.

peanut_worm 4y ago

Thats not a surprise considering mirrorless cameras are popular now. I keep seeing this news being spinned as “iPhones replacing cameras”. Not sure why, iPhones have an effective range of like 8 feet obviously people need to take pictures of things further away.

mc32 4y ago
Phone cameras are the Kodak Brownies of today. Sure, they can't take telephoto shots, macro/micro or action shots in the traditional way, but outside of pros and semi-pros, phone cameras cover 98% of users' needs. People always carry their phone, it's secure --less likely to get snatched, easier to insure, etc. Also lightweight and pretty advanced imaging algos to produce output users like.
Espressosaurus 4y ago
IPhones have replaced compact and bridge cameras, and as they continue to improve in quality they eat into the entry level camera market because they're right there and portable. That also removes the on-ramp to getting more into the ecosystem. I've gone from no camera to spending as much as a car on camera gear in the last 3 years, and while I love it, I fully recognize the market forces at work here. It's a declining market with cellphones eating into it. In the end we'll likely see extremely expensive pro-level gear and slightly less expensive enthusiast gear, with the low and mid-end taken over completely by cellphones. You still can't beat sensor area and optics size, but it might be good enough for most people.

caymanjim 4y ago

Are there really people who used to buy SLRs and now don't because of phones? They seem like entirely different markets. Professionals and dedicated amateurs have lenses and other gear that simply don't exist for phones. Maybe SLR sales are down because of the kinds of people who would buy them and literally never use them, because now instead of thinking "I wish I had a camera for this vacation" (which they wouldn't use after buying), they just use their phone. That doesn't seem like a significant market though.

hristov 4y ago
Yes. Me. I was an amateur and was definitely buying in the low end of the SLR spectrum, but I kind of stopped when iphone cameras started getting very good. I thought that photography was a cool hobby and liked being able to control a bunch of parameters, but once the iphones got good enough cameras, it was not cool anymore to hang out in bars and cafes with a huge slr camera, it was not conversation starter, and at some point the camera just got too much of a pain to take with me when i went out, so i started leaving it home, and I stopped spending money on it, and eventually i just kind of put it away.
kypro 4y ago
Probably. I used to take either my SLR or mirrorless camera with me almost everywhere I went a decade or so ago. I don't anymore because my phone camera is good enough for most things. If I'm going somewhere nice and know I know I'll want to take pictures I'll still take my mirrorless camera, but honestly phone cameras have gotten to the point where for a lot of shots the average person won't be able to tell the difference anyway. Dedicated cameras only really shine in extremes now, or if you're looking for a very specific shot.
armadsen 4y ago
Absolutely. For example, my parents in law, who are very much non-technical, had a Canon DSLR, and a film SLR before digital, that they used to take normal family/vacation photos. They've long since switched to just using their phone. I think you're underestimating the number of people who bought low-end (D)SLRs with the cheap kit zoom lens and used them for regular, non-enthusiast, non-professional photography without ever taking the lens off let alone buying higher end ones. The alternative used to be a compact or bridge camera without an interchangeable lens, and those too have gone close to extinct. Essentially, the market served by (D)SLRs has changed to be almost entirely pros and dedicated hobbyist photographers, which is a small market compared to "everyone who takes photos". And now, mirrorless is well on the way to taking over that small market. I'm an enthusiastic hobbyist photographer, and switched to mirrorless in 2014 (Fuji X-T1). I knew immediately after getting my first mirrorless camera that I would never buy another DSLR.

semiquaver 4y ago

I've been an amateur photographer my whole life and spent the best parts of my formative years in a darkroom. I've owned a number of film and digital SLRs that are quite dear to me. That said, it seems like irrational nostalgia (which is perfectly understandable) is the only reason to prefer SLRs over mirrorless cameras at this point. The comparative disadvantages of mirrorless cameras were mostly temporary and rooted in the fact that SLRs had been around much longer. Now that the lens selection and technology has caught up, SLRs are strictly worse in every way. Am I missing something or are there any durable advantages to resisting the seemingly inevitable march towards mirrorless?

amelius 4y ago
But do they keep the sound?
- beanjuice 4y ago
  Yes, optionally. For some Japanese versions of mirrorless cameras, there is a forced sound even in silent modes.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Interesting, do they produce the sound through a speaker, or do they use some other mechanism?
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    Is that because of the camera voyeurism issues?
    - gwill 4y ago
      exactly. same reason why phones sold in japan don't have an option to disable the camera sound.
      - amelius 4y ago

vparikh 4y ago

The mirror box / pentaprism combo is not required. DSLR cameras were built as the technology did not exist to eliminate them. Now that processor, LCD and AF systems have caught up, the SLR is redundant. The primary advantage of the SLR was that you can see the image as the lens is framing the image - a huge improvement over rangefinder systems (such as the Leica M). This allowed the use of super telephoto, wide angle, macro and tilt shift lenses to be much easer. The primary downside of the SLR was that it did not show you how the exposure was going to be recored on the film or digital sensor. The mirrorless system eliminates that and now lets you see precisely how the image is framed as well as how it is exposed in real time *without* taking the image as the LCD and viewfinder are constantly reading from sensor. In addition you gain the possibility to handhold at much lower shutter speeds due to the mirror slap being removed and the on board sensor shift stabilization systems. DSLRs couldn't do this and relied on lens based solutions (Olympus & Pentax did have sensor shift stabilization, but it was niche and the market leaders Nikon & Canon relied on lens based stabilization). Another advantage is that with the removal of the mirror box, you can have short flange distances allowing new lens designs and lens interoperability. Nikon has the shortest flange distance in the industry and has support for just about every other lens mount out their (though through third party adapters - some with full AF capability also). So the DSLR, except for maybe a few niche cases is old technology that is superseded in every single way. The interesting thing will be to see how the new mirrorless cameras effect the UI and ergonomics of the camera systems. So far, the pro level systems (Z9, R5, etc..) are all still for the most part using the DSLR form factor. Especially Nikon. I actually like this, but lets see what the future holds.

spookthesunset 4y ago
Hopefully the lenses from their DSLR stuff will work on the mirrorless cameras. My lens investment is more important than the camera body.
- achairapart 4y ago
  One problem may be that your long and heavy zoom/telephoto lens (plus adapter) may be extremely unbalanced attached to the light and compact body of a mirrorless camera.

tokai 4y ago

Nikon still produce two film SLRs and 8 different old school manual focused lenses for them. Nikon mo is to move slow. So stopping SLR production would be very surprising

dmtroyer 4y ago

For all the people who have left high end DSLR to go to high end mirror less, I’m genuinely curious how the viewfinders compare in quality. I’m behind the times with an A6000 but have always been kind of disappointed when looking through the viewfinder compared to similar gen mid level DSLRs.

frognumber 4y ago

This will never happen, but I think there's a solid business in selling a mirrorless which adapts solidly to all the dSLR mounts. A-mount is big here. Sony dropped support here first, and the LA-EA adapters all have significant issues. Even today, in many cases, Sony mirrorless adapts better to Canon than to Sony A-mount. Eating up other mounts would be big too. K-mount customers wanting to go mirrorless. Nikon and Canon would be big too, obviously. That would open several markets: - People looking to switch - People wanting to use esoteric lenses (e.g. Minolta's 500mm f/8 reflex, STF lenses, some of the neater tilt-shifts, etc.) - Less profitable, people wanting to use cheaper used lenses In the long term, most people will switch to native lenses, eventually, as lens technology moves on too.

technick 4y ago

So the D6 is the last DSLR body that will be available. I've been a Nikon shooter for 2 decades now, shooting with the D100, D70, D2S, D2X, D3X, D300, D700, D810 and D850. It's easier to list the Nikon lenses I didn't buy vs the ones I bought... which I didn't buy anything over an F2.8 aperture. This is heart breaking for me. Now Nikon expects me to buy into a new camera and new lens system...

benjimouse 4y ago
Nikon has provided a perfect upgrade path for your lenses. When/if ever you buy a z body, they will perform better with the ftz adapter than they ever did on your dslrs.

fleddr 4y ago

If you want to be a contrarian, you can consider right now to be the golden age of DSLR. That is, for the gear heads and bargain hunters. The truth of the matter is that as it comes to image quality, a DSLR is in no way inferior to mirrorless, it's just that mirrorless has several features helping you to take the shot. There's quite a few types of photography where those features are close to irrelevant, not everybody does fast-moving sports photography. Given that baseline capabilities are still excellent, you can exploit this transition to get a lot of value (and fun) out of the legacy. If you now take a high-end DSLR, preferably on the cheap, you can make stunning photos with it for as long as it lasts, and nobody can tell that it is "obsolete". Modern DSLRs have incredible noise performance, a huge dynamic range, very high resolution. Specifically for Nikon, lens hunting is also fun. For example, I have a f/1.2 from 1979. It's a stunning lens, all metal, manual aperture, ridiculously fast. And it works just as well as it did back then. Unfortunately, it seems the market recognizes that high-end DSLRs are still excellent, second hand prices are not coming down, I've been monitoring this for years.

m463 4y ago

With interchangeable lens cameras... The camera bodies come and go. The lenses are the investment and are long-lived.

supernova87a 4y ago

I guess just like the move to televisions that are not tuned with capacitors, or planes not flown by mechanical linkages and are now fly-by-wire (or cars for that matter), we continue proceeding into the age where you cannot get something to work anymore (or fix it) with just a screwdriver and other mechanical tools. Not that a SLR or DSLR was operated or fixable purely mechanically anyway... but still.

FunnyBadger 4y ago

The main reason for the reflex mirror is film. So this is saying that Nikon will get out of film cameras. So if you want a Nikon film camera - for reasons - better buy one now.