On January 6th, 2012 Nikon will have a major announcement. Expect the Nikon D4 and one new lens (probably AF-S 85mm f/1.8G). Friday is an unusual date for Nikon to introduce new products, but my understanding is that there will be press events scheduled in Las Vegas during the weekend before the PMA show that starts on January 10, 2012.
The Japanese Digital Camera Magazine did a series of interviews with leading camera manufacturers about their future products (see a recap of the interviews with Pentax and Olympus executives). The magazine will be published on December 19th, 2011 in Japan. A 12 pages preview of the upcoming issue can be downloaded here (the Nikon interview is on page 7). Here is a quick recap (thanks Matthew) of the Nikon section:
I have to make a correction to the Nikon D4 specs: the ISO sensitivity range of the D4 will be 100-12,800 and not 100-102,400 as initially reported. Sorry about that, it got lost in the translation! The ISO range will still be expandable to 50 and 204,800.
For comparison, the Nikon D3s has ISO range of 200 – 12,800, expandable to ISO 102,400.
I have mentioned before that I have several samples taken with the upcoming Nikon D800 camera. The TIFF files produced by the Nikon D800 are around 103 MB:
Unfortunately I cannot publish the entire images online but I can show you few JPG crops taken at different ISO settings. It’s not much, but at least you can get some idea about the ISO performance. I already mentioned that with the D4 and D800 Nikon will make a clear separation in the target audience for those cameras. With its high resolution, the D800 will be for the landscape/studio photographers, where the D4 will have the speed and low light performance for photo journalists/sports shooters. This is a clear differentiation from the previous D3/D700 models that shared the same sensor/technology.
Here are five 100% crops taken at ISO 500, 1400, 3200, 6400 and Hi-1 (I do not have samples taken at other ISO settings). Keep in mind that those were probably taken with a pre-production D800 camera:
Contrary to my initial guess, the latest intel suggests that the Nikon D4 will start shipping at the end of January 2012! Of course availability will be limited for months if not years. I am still trying to confirm/verify this info but if that’s the case, I can see that Nikon wants to get their top of the line DSLR available before the Canon 1Dx which will start shipping in March of 2012.
The D4 body wil be similar to the D3s without any major design changes.
The US price of the Nikon FT-1 lens adapter for Nikon 1 mirrorless camera will be $269.97 (street price: $235).
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