Recap of the today's rumors (most of them D3x related):
- The November 20th date is still on in Denmark (according to Kamera & Bild). I guess Nikon Denmark is being punished for leaking the info in advance. Here is better translation provided by a reader:
The plans for Nikon's new product launch has been altered. But the PR office at Nikon Denmark missed this change, which got the Nikon head office attention. Earlier this autumn, Nikon Denmark announced a press release on the 22th of October. The weird part was that the other countries weren't doing the same thing. K&B checked with Nikon Sweden if they were arranging a press conference on the same date as well and got a positive response at first, that turned into a denial shortly after.
On the Photo Expo in Stockholm this weekend, K&B met up with Peter Brondin (head of Nikon's professional service in the Nordic countries). He was able to tell us that the danish PR office were being punished.
- Half an hour after the news went out, Tokyo called. Then the danish had to explain for themselves.
No other country has confirmed the November 20th launch date, and the current confusion with different dates is all because the danish went by old an old timetable for product launches. They don't want to provide a new date though.
- AF DX Fisheye-NIKKOR 10.5mm f/2.8G ED is not longer listed as a product in Europe (Germany, UK). New AF-S model coming soon? (Update: this one got busted - the lens is listed under DX section)
- It seems that Nikon CoolScan 9000 ED is very hard to get in Europe. There is a rumor that it may be discontinued.
- Email from a reader:
"Nikon Poland has invited a group of polish Nikon Pro photographers for weekend of 6-7th of December for two day workshop in city of Lodz. The program includes some studio work, NX2 workshop and "the surprise". I was told that on 4th of December there will be official presentation of "this surprise" and on the workshop we will have a chance to play with this "surprise from NIkon". That's the words from a guy from Nikon Poland. I was not told what is "the surprise" but as I understand, it has to be something that you use at a studio. There is no detailed program of studio workshop, so I guest it is playing with new camera."
- Another email:
"I just returned from a workshop today with xxxx, a famous National Geographic photographer. He mentioned testing a new camera awhile back and accidentally called it a D3x."
- No rumors here: Nikon Solution Expo will take place in London on December 9th and 10th. Register for free here.
Related posts:
- PocketWizard for Nikon being tested, no release date yet
- Nikon D4 and D800 pre-orders are back on Amazon with a March 20th release date
- Nikon Japan announced the release date of the Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.8G lens
- The publisher of the Nikon D800 book insists on a March 2011 release date
- July 1st: big release date
14 Comments
Nikon’s GPS-1 is yet to be manufactured (as some people have pointed out)
Nikon Solutions Expo still lists opportunities to try out the D700 and D90 as “new” products.
Just been looking at Nikon’s DSLR timeline on Wikipedia:
D2X – lasted 7 quarters; replaced by
D2Xs – lasted 6 quarters; replaced by
D3 – now in it’s 5th quarter
As the speed of technology development increases, we can expect the rate of new cameras to increase (we see a similar trend for the D100-D200-D300 graph), so either now or next March would be a good time to release an updated D3.
Re Potential CoolScan Discontinuation…
Sent To Dealer Yesterday (edited): If Nikon updated their scanners to a reasonable resolution – at least twice the current – that it would sell. I did a project in 2001 looking at scanners (and much more), which showed just how inadequate 4,000 dpi was with a good Kodachrome image and combined with upcoming display technologies and even current multi-terabyte disks, I submit that we could do with FAR better scanners now. I can’t speak for the broad population, but the long term shooter I know best agrees and says there’s no question that he and many others would buy. Perhaps the main reason manufacturers of similar scanner no longer make them is that they never were capable of capturing high quality images at appropriately high resolution – and Kodak agreed with this assessment.
If I recall, Nikon scanners have been able to do 4K dpi scans for over a decade (before appropriately priced high quality storage and even the promise of appropriate displays), yet technology in all related fields has seen incredible gains. If a ‘better’ Nikon scanner ever comes out, I know that I’d buy. I suggest that not much more than sensor and speed improvements are needed and it could thus be an upgrade.
wow, is it the first time somebody says coolscan ED 9000 is discontinued today? it’ve been discontinued for 3 years now… funny
nada, no AF-S fisheye lens is coming because 16mm f/2.8D AF have a new teammate that is the same, 10.5mm f/2.8G AF, both with screwdriver AF
You would think Nikon would be nice and say “we will have a press conference for a new product(s) on xx/xx/xxxx. We apologize for the confusion”
That would be nice. Oh well, we will just have to wait and practice our patience. Not so easy of course.
The biggest problem with the scanners isn’t the hardware, but the outdated (and no longer being updated) driver software… They still don’t have the driver running under Leopard (or I assume, Vista…) Even the same scanners with a modern driver would increase sales….
Who needs a driver? I think (even though a drive is available) I’m able to run Silverfast in all the current OS’s, which bypasses mfr drivers. Does anybody use manufacturers software? I wasn’t aware there was an advantage/reason to.
i assume you don’t have this scanner or running on leopard OSX. i use the coolscan 9000 ED almost every day to scan my film negatives and i run on leopard OSX using the driver via adobe photoshop CS4. it runs just fine and doesn’t differ in the quality or speed from previous OSX ((tiger OSX 10.4)).
but there are still other scanners you can get for cheap like epson perfection V700 series ((it can scan any film negatives from 35mm negative to 8×10 transparencies. cool, huh
?? Why add AFS to a lens that pretty much focuses from 4ft to infinity???
Oh the D60 of course.
Would not have been a priority for me. But probably indicates that there is going to be an AF-AFS upgrade across the whole model line in the short term. Now they have the design problem solved in the AFS 50mm they can probably apply AFS to all their primes.
That’s interesting, Dan… I was not aware. It would seem they don’t even want to increase sales if something that basic is missing. Still, I likely would not buy on unless the resolution is ~8K or more. At that level, our old slide collections would just rock on what Gates refers to as the ’10 foot experience’. I recall a 2001 Businessweek article suggesting that wall-sized OLED screens with very high resolution would cost not much more than paint within 15 years… and it seems we’re nicely on track when you compare OLED’s past 6 years.
The 10.5mm is still listed in Germany under DX lenses. I don’t know if this was always the case. However, since I bought a Nikon 2 month ago, the 10.5mm lens is listed there.
Cheers,
Jan
There’s a very official-looking Nikon invitation for Dec. 1 posted here:
http://www2.xitek.com/showpicture.php?action=http://www7.xitek.com//forum/200811/6054/605420/605420_1226923890.jpg
It’s in Japanese, which I don’t read, so I have no idea what it says, but the date IS on there in Western numerals. It was posted on dpreview as a reference to the press conference, apparently by someone who DOES read Japanese.
It’s in Chinese, actually, and the translation is already up.
The spelling error in the deadline makes the site look amateurish
Of course, I meant “headline”….
LOL, never correct spelling or grammar on the internet. It’ll just come back to bite ya…..
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