Since the beginning of the year, reliable rumors about new Nikkor lenses have been lacking. The earthquake in Japan made the situation even worse and now I am hearing that there may not be any new Nikon lenses announced in 2011 at all. Nikon already reported that the factory in Tochigi, which produces lenses, has been “severely damaged”.
The pro DSLRs (except the D300s) and lenses were removed from the latest US Nikon instant rebate program. Here are all available combinations:
The next guest post is by Lionel Humbert who took a scientific approach when examining the AF accuracy acros camera brands:
Many discussions emerge on the Internet about image quality, noise, focus accuracy… when a new camera hits the market. Some people move from one brand to another based solely on some brief, vague and not justified reports viewed on the web. Generally tests published on the Internet are by design not reproducible and biased. A scientific approach will required multiple bodies and lenses, and at least more than one sample for each model because of small manufacturing differences that may influence results.
In this article I will discuss the accuracy of focus with a rigorous analysis using modern statistical methods on data collected from a well known website (www.lenstip.com, 8000 visits per day). This analysis is focused on their tests because it is the only website that reports the accuracy of focus for each lens. They get a percentage of error, measured as the number of times the resolution on the target is less than 20% of the maximum MTF50 obtained by this lens. The data cover 18 bodies of six brands, 114 lenses from 11 manufacturers for a total of 162 bodies/lenses tests.
Without rigor we could draw a bar plot with on the X axis the percentage of auto-focus error and on the Y axis the frequency of lens tested showing this auto-focus error (Figure 1) for each brand. Samsung was removed in this figure, since only one test was available.
Figure 1: Barplot of Auto-Focus error per brand
I feel pretty confident about the April 4th release date for the Nikon 5100, even though some countries have a Nikon press event scheduled for April 5th, 2011 (probably because of the different timezones). The interesting part is that there’s also suppose to be some kind of a Coolpix presentation. This could just be rerun of the latest Coolpix cameras announced in February (similar to the recent Nikon event in Taipei) or it might be the new Nikon mirrorless system (I am secretly hoping they will not use the Coolpix or Coolpix Pro names).
Shahrizan Jeffri Aziz dropped his Nikon D3s with a 300mm f/2.8 lens from a motorcycle while shooting the Le Tour Langkawi in Malaysia. Only the battery door and the burst mode were broken. With the help of some duct tape, the camera continued to work. Later in the race, the D3s was also exposed to rain for 4 hours but the photographer was able to successfully complete his assignment. You can hear the whole story in this video:
The Nikon instant rebates in the US will be extended again, but as expected this time they will exclude all pro DSLR bodies and lenses produced in Japan (the D300s is produced in Thailand):
The different body+lens combinations will save you up to $200 (compared to $400 before). The new Nikon instant rebates program will run from March 27 – April 30, 2011. I will post the detailed combination break down on Monday.
