On 25/02/2013 8:43 p.m., nospam wrote:
In article , Me
wrote:

Better still the D800E sensor, which won't cost more to make (than the
D600 sensor) in a mirrorless body where the slow burst frame rate is
hardly going to be an issue, because everything else will be slow too,
especially auto-focus.
Yeah - they won't do it if it cannibalises D6/800 sales, which it will.

it's better if nikon cannibalizes it with another of their own cameras
rather than a competitor cannibalizing it.

I don't expect they'd hold back if Canon did this (Fx mirrorless)

Nikon also has the issue that with different flange distance, it might
be a good time to revise the F-mount system, but need to do that
maintaining some backward compatibility, but also with a good eye to the
future.

what are you talking about different flange distances?? all nikon slrs
have the same flange distance and there's no need to change it.

Well, there's an opportunity for them with mirrorless to reduce the
flange distance on the body. Of course they could just whack an F-mount
on it, and you could use a standard extension tube with electronic
contacts and mechanical stop-down mechanism. But there are a few good
reasons why they might want to change it:
F-mount is narrow - there's no room for the electronic contacts to fit
beside the large rear element, hence while they make f1.2 lenses,
they're manual focus with no "chip" because there's no room for the
contacts. The mechanical stop-down linkage is also an issue - look at
the problems with liveview implementation and changing apertures. They
kind of "fixed" that with the D800/D4, but it's a complex servo stepper
motor (IIRC) in the body, but this created other issues (with video
IIRC?). A mirrorless will probably effectively be in "liveview" mode
when you turn it on. Electronic (in lens) aperture control is a
simpler, better solution these days. Nikon already implemented this is
the TS-"E" (E for electronic aperture in this case) lenses because of
the difficulty of a reliable functional mechanical linkage accommodating
tilt and shift. Problem is that the electronic aperture won't work
unless you have a recent pro-level Nikon camera.
Nothing inherently wrong with F-mount for today's cameras - apart from
those minor niggles, but times are changing, and as much as I believe
the DSLR still has a few years left, it's going to be doomed eventually.
Whatever they do, they need to be very careful. I suspect that part of
their reason to hold-back on larger format mirrorless cameras will be to
make sure that when they do make the move, they do it right.