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July 10, 2008

New Face, D700 Thoughts and Gear Twins

Welcome to our Nikonians blog facelift. Also great to see the large number of reads the first edition of Tom's Nikon D700 preview have gotten so far.

Blog facelift
We had grew tired of the looks of our old blog while plans for updating were collecting dust. As so often, other items had higher priorities so it felt really good to be able to roll out the new design at last. Big thanks to Maria and Federico at enprovia who have been instrumental on this.

Oh, and what happened to the Nikon USA blog? We thought it was really good seeing Nikon touching some viral marketing potential, getting their own blog up and running and now this, last entry nearly two months old, from May 20th. I hope Nikon get back on track with the blog.

D700 and other bodies
I would bet my old, starched pants on that the Nikon D700 will cause a similar, even though not as strong response as the D300 when hitting the shelves. The D300 is really mass market, but the current price of the D700 somewhere around 3k USD will cause it to be somewhat less so. The street price of the D700 will for sure drop and we should take into consideration that the Canon EOS 5D had a similar price when it first came out. Today, since many are waiting for the (much awaited) Canon 5D MkII, you can find fairly cheap 5D's used and this is creating an interesting tendency, first time in history: Beginners and photographers with potentially fairly shallow pockets out shopping for used full frame cameras. The brand for them right now is Canon and not Nikon, where used equipment is sold to first timers who will stick to the brand due to lens-lock.

We can expect the Nikon D700 to hit the 2.3k USD level fairly soon it's out the door and end of 2009 we should be able to go shopping used FX cameras at significantly lower prices.

I find it extremely amusing how we have fought for DX sensors over the years when it is clear that full frame has some definite advantages. Now when Nikon comes out with the first consumer full frame DSLR, we users are very interested and we probably will bash DX sensors just as the Canon camp has for several years.

How could Nikon miss out on not introducing full frame earlier? I recall discussions with a Nikon rep on the Nikonians Brussels get-together in 2003 where he answered my question if Nikon is going to release full frame anytime soon with "yeah, but maybe not or possibly so if I could say something". Is it because Nikon haven't had its own engineering capability for sensors and are tied up with Sony in OEM agreements on this?

What is happening now when Sony is pushing in to the professional DSLR segment? Are top rated sensors from Sony going into the Sony bodies first and then later in to the competitors bodies, sort of a Redmond-of-sensors-monopoly controlling who will receive the best sensors when? How do you secure the supply of top rated sensors if not investing in engineering yourself?

Are You My Gear Twin?
We thought the idea to be pretty cool: As you touch the page, automagically you see which people, maybe even living very close to you are using exactly the same gear as you. Without much ado, you can get together with other people using exactly the same camera (Nikon of course) lens (maybe Nikkor...) tripod, ball head and backpack. Hey, I was born exactly 3 years, 2 months and 13 hours before my Gear Twin. We are sort of family you know... same gear.

So, we decided to upgrade NikoScope, our search portal that indexes all the data we have, to allow us to create such family bonds of material lust. Of course, this information is only visible to members on Silver level or higher. Er, will be... We are launching it coming week.

Posted by bgs at July 10, 2008 11:27 AM