Nikon 12+MP SLR for under $1000?

A local camera sales person told me Nikon is about to release a 12+MP
SLR this month. It will sell for under $1000. Has anyone heard
similar rumors?

Still Shopping

Dave Lotek wrote:
A local camera sales person told me Nikon is about to release a 12+MP
SLR this month. It will sell for under $1000. Has anyone heard
similar rumors?

Still Shopping

Rumors aplenty. Just wait a month and see. Want a huge pixel count at
affordable prices today? Get a 2nd hand film camera and a slide scanner.
You'd have to shoot A LOT of film to make up the price difference
between that and for example a Nikon D2Xs set. You'll get 12MP easily
out of good slide film combined with decent glass and a tripod. IMHO
there's way too much emphasis on questionable metrics like pixel count.

Dave Lotek wrote:
A local camera sales person told me Nikon is about to release a 12+MP
SLR this month. It will sell for under $1000. Has anyone heard
similar rumors?


Haven't heard any rumors but the Sept camera show is coming up when
many new product announcement are made and, because the 12 Mpix sensor
in the D2x is the same size as the lower pixel count sensors in the
consumer models it makes sense Nikon could put it in a cheaper 1.5x
body and still make a lot of money.

Bill

In article ,
Dave Lotek wrote:

A local camera sales person told me Nikon is about to release a 12+MP
SLR this month. It will sell for under $1000. Has anyone heard
similar rumors?

Still Shopping



Its on Nikon's website, at least a teaser is....word is its a Nikon
D80..10.2mp to replace the Nikon D50. If the speculation is correct,
then it'll be a 10 mp sensor in the D50 body. It will use SD cards not
CF cards and it will be under $1000.

JR

In article , Bas v.d. Wiel
says...

Rumors aplenty. Just wait a month and see. Want a huge pixel count at
affordable prices today? Get a 2nd hand film camera and a slide scanner.
You'd have to shoot A LOT of film to make up the price difference
between that and for example a Nikon D2Xs set. You'll get 12MP easily
out of good slide film combined with decent glass and a tripod. IMHO
there's way too much emphasis on questionable metrics like pixel count.

Well no, you'll get something like the equivalent of decent 6MP (the
rest will simply drown in all that grain and noise; not to mention the
extra effort required to scan the negative). But feel free to disagree
with me, as this is a discussed-to-death non-agreeable issue and I'm not
in the mode of having a long discussion about this.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 7070, 8080, E300, E330 and E500 forum at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
Olympus E330 resource - http://myolympus.org/E330/

On 3 Aug 2006 09:14:15 -0700, "Bill Hilton"
wrote:

Dave Lotek wrote:
A local camera sales person told me Nikon is about to release a 12+MP
SLR this month. It will sell for under $1000. Has anyone heard
similar rumors?


Haven't heard any rumors but the Sept camera show is coming up when
many new product announcement are made and, because the 12 Mpix sensor
in the D2x is the same size as the lower pixel count sensors in the
consumer models it makes sense Nikon could put it in a cheaper 1.5x
body and still make a lot of money.

Bill

Immediately, yes.
But what would they do next year, after Canon puts the 5D's sensor
into the Rebel XT? Canon still has someplace to go, but Nikon couldn't
follow there.
Marketing is about more than making money NOW! In the DSLR market,
there has to be a plan for upgrading.
--
Bill Funk
replace "g" with "a"

That's technically correct, but digital cameras provide much more
flexibility and better quality than equivalent film cameras.That's why
everybody has switched to digital;include in film cameras a wet darkroom and
that puts the last nail in the coffin for film.The (large) pixel count is
important for making big blow-ups, the least of most film users want to do,
there are also the processor of the camera,its technology, glass and sensor
nature beyond pure pixel count.With film you would get the same apparent
pixel count, but you wouldn't get auto white balance correction, erasure of
not-so-good shots, storage of hundreds of photos on a stamp-sized card, no
need for expensive developing (just before I switched to digital, one of my
last transparency films processing cost 10 euros...I used to pay 1000
drachmas3 euros)and easily distribution of the originals on cds or dvds or
even email for a few, and easy print with a 136 euros printer or at a
digital lab.


--
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios

You're totally right here. Just the way I see it, to get your huge pixel
count you can buy a used Nikon F100 + basic glass for $300 these days,
slap in a Coolscan V and you're set. Compare that to a D2Xs that'll get
the same pixel count and you have a heck of a price difference.

The difference in quality simply isn't there in digital, as far as I'm
concerned. I own two Nikons, an F90X and a D70. Just a week or so ago I
bought a coolscan to sort of rejuvenate the F90X. I went through all of
my old negatives and slides and the quality is awesome! The scans the
Coolscan produces run circles around the D70 both in terms of resolution
and image quality. Slide film, notorious for blowing out highlights,
does so much more gracefully than the D70's sensor. On my digital shots
small sparkling highlights often look as if they were burned into the
sensor with a really nasty colour fringe around them. This fringe is not
there when I put the exact same glass on my F90X and shoot a slide of
the same scene.

So for anything that has to look good and be blown up big, I use my
F90X. I also had the opportunity to take a Canon EOS 1D Mark II for a
short spin. Now that's what I call a monster digicam, blows my D70
straight out of the water. Admittedly: no nasty fringing in the
highlights but at that price.. I'll stick with my F90X for now. I'm not
a professional, this is a hobby for me. Those thousands of $$$ are
better spent on actually taking great pictures than on a camera body
that will probably be completely obsolete in 5 years.

Bas

Alfred Molon wrote:
In article , Bas v.d. Wiel
says...


Rumors aplenty. Just wait a month and see. Want a huge pixel count at
affordable prices today? Get a 2nd hand film camera and a slide scanner.
You'd have to shoot A LOT of film to make up the price difference
between that and for example a Nikon D2Xs set. You'll get 12MP easily
out of good slide film combined with decent glass and a tripod. IMHO
there's way too much emphasis on questionable metrics like pixel count.


Well no, you'll get something like the equivalent of decent 6MP (the
rest will simply drown in all that grain and noise; not to mention the
extra effort required to scan the negative). But feel free to disagree
with me, as this is a discussed-to-death non-agreeable issue and I'm not
in the mode of having a long discussion about this.

I have a shot from my scanner right here that's way above the 6MP
resolution that I get from my D70. And that's not just pixel count, I
mean real detail that's actually there. Not noise and grain. It's a 5MB
JPEG file raw from the scanner, all I did was convert the TIFF to JPEG
to save you a 145MB download:

http://www.kompasmedia.nl/fileadmin/crop0004.jpg

As far as I'm concerned, this closes the discussion indeed.

Regards,

Bas

Bas van de Wiel wrote:
Alfred Molon wrote:
In article , Bas v.d. Wiel
says...


Rumors aplenty. Just wait a month and see. Want a huge pixel count at
affordable prices today? Get a 2nd hand film camera and a slide scanner.
You'd have to shoot A LOT of film to make up the price difference
between that and for example a Nikon D2Xs set. You'll get 12MP easily
out of good slide film combined with decent glass and a tripod. IMHO
there's way too much emphasis on questionable metrics like pixel count.


Well no, you'll get something like the equivalent of decent 6MP (the
rest will simply drown in all that grain and noise; not to mention the
extra effort required to scan the negative). But feel free to disagree
with me, as this is a discussed-to-death non-agreeable issue and I'm not
in the mode of having a long discussion about this.

I have a shot from my scanner right here that's way above the 6MP
resolution that I get from my D70. And that's not just pixel count, I
mean real detail that's actually there. Not noise and grain. It's a 5MB
JPEG file raw from the scanner, all I did was convert the TIFF to JPEG
to save you a 145MB download:

http://www.kompasmedia.nl/fileadmin/crop0004.jpg


How long did it take you from the time you took that picture until the time
you could mail it? How much work? You get the resolution and corresponding
detail at the expense of per shot money and time [you pay up front for a
digital camera where you pay as you go for film].

My point is that there is a place for both and that discussion is probably far
from over.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse
Key Fingerprint: 2DB9 813F F510 82C2 E1AE 34D0 D69D 1EDC D5EC AED1

http://www.kompasmedia.nl/fileadmin/crop0004.jpg



How long did it take you from the time you took that picture until the time
you could mail it? How much work? You get the resolution and corresponding
detail at the expense of per shot money and time [you pay up front for a
digital camera where you pay as you go for film].

My point is that there is a place for both and that discussion is probably far
from over.


In this instance it actually took me 4 years. The shot's from 2002 and I
only scanned it today. ;-)

If I had to actually measure the time I'd say the loading of the film,
preview, crop and scan took a little less than 5 minutes. Not counting
the actual upload and conversion to JPEG because I usually don't do that.

I agree with you totally that there's a time and place for both film and
digital. Right now however there's an enormous price gap between
exceptionally good film bodies (in the lower hundreds of $$) and the top
of the line digitals (ten to twenty times the price of a film body).

I'd say you'd save around $7000 if not more. That's a whole lot of cash
to get parity with slide film. I'm certain this will improve and digital
cameras will overtake film. Just not anytime soon. I'm pretty convinced
that my F90X will still be around and in active use after I replace the
replacement of my D70.

Everybody seems so hung up on pixel count that it's sad. The CCD still
suffers from noise, why not reduce that first? I'll take a D70 with a
noise-free ISO 1600 over the current top of the line any day.

Bas

PS. Had that 2002 shot been taken digitally 4 years ago, it would have
been with a D1 (which I couldn't afford at the time, but that aside).
And a D1 is *CRAP* compared to decent film, so in the end I'm glad I had
film in there at the time.. ;-))