Chasseurs d’Images interviews the president of Nikon France *UPDATED*
A few weeks ago the French magazine “Chasseurs d’Images” published an interview with Benoit Dieuleveult, President of Nikon France. After some readers helped me with the translation (thanks), here are the most interesting parts of the interview:
- Nikon has plenty “good quality sensors”
- They stopped the DL cameras because they were late (too late to stay competitive)
- There will be important Nikon products release soon
They are working on a small camera to compete with smartphones (see updated translation below)- Nikon will not quit the camera business and they are spending a lot of money on research and development.
- Regarding the Nikon D820, an excellent advice to everyone: “Mais il vous faudra encore un tout petit peu de patience pour avoir plus de details!” (You must have a bit of patience for more details)
- Regarding Coolpix camera: “R&D effort is geared toward markets with the greatest potential, which is the reason for significantly reducing the Coolpix product line”
- Regarding 100th anniversary: “As for all good celebrations, let us keep the moment of surprise!”
Here is another translations:
- The only mention of smartphones is in a sentence ending with a question mark (hard to overlook that really), so a question posed by the interviewer, to be answered by the Nikon guy.
- The relevant bit of that sentence is: “; peut-on tout de même espérer, a court ou moyen terme, un appareil Nikon pour la poche, capable de combler l’énorme vide entre smartphone et reflex?”.
- Near literal translation (which makes for ugly English): “; may one nevertheless hope, in the short or the medium term, for a pocket-sized Nikon device (“appareil”), capable of filling (“combler”) the enormous gap between smartphone and slr?”
- The Nikon guy answers by evading the question and elaborating on R&D efforts, ending with “L’avenir est donc très ouvert”, (“the future is thus very open”) adn stressing that Nikon will (of course ) go into every relevant opportunity that future will offer.
