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Nikon Strikes Back August 28: For a while there, some photo industry pundits thought Nikon was in trouble. For the first half of this decade, Canon was rolling out DSLRs with superior sensors and always staying several steps ahead of Nikon. Nikon, for its part, was acting like an also-ran, and its sales were slumping. Sure, many of its cameras had key innovations (an outstanding wireless flash system, for instance), but they lacked a full-frame sensor, and the sensors they were using in their latest cameras were often last year’s technology. We feared that if this sort of thing continued, Nikon would go the way of Minolta, or worse. Why, we wondered, was Nikon snoozing on the job?Fortunately for the photographic consumer, 2008 will be remembered as The Year Nikon Woke Up.First, Nikon came out with a couple of full-frame DSLRs, their first after years of declaring that they would stick exclusively with APS-D, and professional photographers rejoiced–and reached for their wallets. Nikon sales are growing while Canon, although they continue to introduce outstanding new cameras, recorded slower camera sales in the most recent quarter. Now, Nikon and Canon are in a full-scale competitive battle. Many pro shooters have switched back to Nikon. Look at the press cameras at the Olympics, the U.S. Open, and any political rally and you’ll to see that Nikon is back. Let’s go to the video… Yesterday’s announcement of the Nikon D90, which comes a day after Canon’s new prosumer offering, the EOS 50D, shows that Nikon is now turning its attention more seriously towards photo enthusiasts. Sure, the 12.3MP sensor is a bit lower than Canon’s just-announced, 15MP 50D (although it has a slight pixel density edge over the similarly-priced, 10.5MP 40D), but like the 50D the Nikon D90 borrows heavily from both its pro and semi-pro siblings and the best of its predecessor, and offers an impressive feature set. (A new “kit” lens that’s longer than the old “kit” lens at 18-105mm, was also announced, and a GPS unit will be available later this year.) The specs are impressive, as is the D90’s surprisingly (for Nikon) low $999.99 price tag. But the one spec that is grabbing headlines is a bona-fide, why-didn’t-anyone-else-think-of-this feature: Video. The Nikon D90 is the first digital SLR to capture video. Sure it’s limited–24 fps (just like movies) instead of 30, videos can’t be longer than 5 minutes, memory-hogging AVI files, and mono audio–but still it’s high-definition, and it lets you shoot videos while taking advantage of interchangeable lenses. So…two amazing enthusiast DSLRs in two days…let the battle begin! © 2008 Adorama |
Nikon Strikes Back
