I do like the idea of making a product available the first day of its announcement, to capitalize on the rush of excitement. Apple generally has done that and it’s worked pretty well for them.

Its not just a question of cost, that motor adds weight. Now on the magnesium bodies the extra weight is not so much of an issue, but on the plasticy bodies it is significant.

Now whether you consider the D300/D700 prosumer or professional seems to depend on whether you have a D3 or not. But I have seen far more amateurs with D3s than professionals and I have seen more ful-time professionals with D300s than D3s. So I somewhat doubt Nikon would do something silly.

The D5000 came out with the 10-24, a lens that costs as much as the camera and is clearly aimed at the D90-D300 segment, not the D5000 crowd. The D300s came out with a lens where the chief change was that it was being optimized for FX frame!

The 35mm f/1.8 DX came completely out of the blue.

If Nikon has a lens ready, they will launch it.

The 35mm DX lens is the normal equivalent for the DX sensor. Nikon has sold a ton of them and will sell many more.

Nikon has made it very clear that FX glass will continue to be pricey. They seem to think that people who buy a $2500 camera will pay for expensive glass. What a strange idea!

FX shooters made it pretty clear that their priority was a 70-200 zoom that didn’t vignette.

Nikon already has a lower cost 80-200 pro lens. Instead of giving up an f-stop, you give up VR.

I think that it is pretty obvious what the ‘missing’ lens numbers correspond to, they will simply be the corresponding AFS versions of the existing AF lenses in the catalog. The company has clearly decided to phase out the in-camera motor on the lower end bodies and that means they need to make all their existing range AFS.

Excluding the wide angle primes which are effectively made obsolete by zooms, there are six AF lenses in the catalog that do not have an AFS replacement already. There are eight holes in the series.

BUT the numbers are different. Wonder if they have different No’s outside the US or if the numbers used in the UK/EU site are just something else unrelated.

E.g.
http://www.europe-nikon.com/product/en_GB/products/broad/1825/overview.html
AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II (announced July, 2009)

http://www.europe-nikon.com/product/en_GB/products/broad/1680/overview.html
AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4G (announced September, 2008)

At the time of checking I went a couple of humdered No’s in advance / in the gaps but found nothing interesting.

Note – these numbers also cover other nikon products also such as sports optics, coolpix, SLR bodies etc – not just lenses.

- Nikon has a lot of DX standard zooms
- f/4 lenses are rare from Nikon, especially DX f/4 lenses (AFAIK, the only one is the 12-24/4)
- All zooms starting at 24mm are FX

So if it appears, it will not be DX for sure.

If you’re serious about photography but don’t have a spare $5k lying around for lenses, or you want to go relatively light/unobtrusive (i.e. primes or f4 zoom) but still want highest image quality, then it’s clear nikon is lagging in an important market segment.

Last point regarding giving casual shooters lots of choice. For serious amateurs and pros this is fine – they know what they need/want and that tends to be different specialist lenses for different types of photography. Casual shooters don’t necessarily know what they want/need and giving them too much choice can be a bad thing: http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html