>>This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards
Perhaps...but this statement sounds awfully weaselly to me, i.e. 'we don't currently have any plans for layoffs' pronouncements that corporations often make right before announcing layoffs.
The whole point of the Z9 is that it achieved auto-focus parity with the D6 for sports and wildlife, it was really obvious that the D6 would be the last D camera, just like the F6 was obviously the last F camera. The re-designed ultra-teles (as opposed to "take existing optical and mechanical design of the EF version and integrate a flange extension" like Canon did) slot into this strategy by offering a real benefit over the preceding F lenses.
Nikon has a pretty long history (in Western memory going back to the Nikon S) of executing well and consistently. They're often not the first mover: Nikon S was a "best of" Zeiss-Leica body (pretty much all Zeiss, but using the Leitz shutter - this is why Nikon lenses mount, focus and zoom to the left), became quite popular. Nikon F wasn't the first SLR system, either, but well executed and became the benchmark.
You seem knowledgeable about the Nikon world. The current Z9 is being touted as the first ILC with a completely electronic shutter. How is this possible without having an impact on image quality when so many DSLRs/MILCs have been dependent on physical shutters?
The mechanical shutters used in photo cameras are a mechanical rolling shutter, where each curtain takes about 1/500s or so to travel across the frame.
The electronic shutter in a rolling shutter CMOS is very similar: The first curtain is where rows of pixels are reset, the second curtain is when they are sampled/read out and digitized. For normal camera sensors this takes between 1/20s and 1/60s, depending on the resolution - high resolution cameras take longer.
The limiting factor for that isn't actually the pixel array itself, but the speed at which data can be transferred off the sensor. This is where stacked sensors come in: you can move data way more quickly between the front sensor die and the back logic/storage die than you can move it off chip. So the trick of the fast stacked sensors is that they read the image from the sensor die into the memory die, and then transfer the image through the usual, much slower link to the image DSP. But at that point the image has been fully exposed and the slowness of the link doesn't matter, except for the maximum frames per second.
This way you can make an image ~50 MP sensor whose electronic "shutter curtains" travel at a similar speed as the shutter curtains of a mechanical fp-shutter and so you don't reeallly need the mechanical shutter any more, because the motion artifacts will be basically the same. There are some edge cases, e.g. high frequency flickering light sources can apparently create issues, but they don't seem to be a show-stopper.
(There are some additional tricks, like CMOS sensors have been column-parallel for a long time, where each column of pixels have their own PGA and ADC, but these newer sensors seem to sample multiple rows in parallel as well)
((There are also global-shutter CMOS sensors, which can "near simultaneously" sample all pixels in the array, in the analog domain, but since this requires extra transistors in each pixel, it's always detrimental to other parameters for a ceteris paribus rolling shutter sensor. These are used mostly for machine vision / slow motion purposes. Higher-spec global shutter sensors are export controlled.))
I can answer that as I own a Z9 and was I am interested in the tech as well. Essentially, it is using a "Stacked CMOS" sensor that has a readout time of ~1/270 s. For comparison, the Z7ii is 1/30s if I am remembering correctly. Essentially, it just reads out the data on the sensor fast enough to hide any shutter artifacts (with the exception of LEDs, but this happens even with mechanical shutters as well, and isn't that big of a deal)
The only other camera from the big 3 flagships that matches this speed is the Sony A1 with 1/250s. The Canon R3 is 1/180s. It has a mechanical shutter, but I think the Z9 proves that its worth the omission in 99% of the shooting scenarios. Especially when it is coming in $1000 cheaper than the Sony.
These are great pictures, sure. However none of these rely on the capabilities of a camera like the Z9.
Your friend (and most skilled photographers) could have clicked those pictures with entry level cameras paired with appropriate lenses.
There's no such thing as an image relying on the capabilities of a Z9. In terms of raw image quality, it uses the same-ish sensor as a high-end DSLR, say a D850. Resolution and dynamic range are highly similar.
A mirrorless system does not create better pictures. It does increase the likelihood that you capture the image you want at all.
> There's no such thing as an image relying on the capabilities of a Z9
Sure there is.
For example consider the problems involved in taking a high resolution picture for a fast moving but difficult to focus object in low light. A Z9 will do brilliantly but cheaper cameras -- not so much.
A camera is not just the image sensor, modern sensors are all fairly close technologically in the grand scheme of things.
I linked to his photos as a confirmation that he is an adept photographer whose opinion about a camera is valid. But, hey, the shots are—at the least—not worse than his pre-Z9 images.
Quoting from newsroom >>>>> There was a media article regarding Nikon's withdrawal of SLR development. This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards. Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of digital SLR. Nikon appreciate your continuous support.<<<<<
Notice how they didn't mention continuation of "DEVELOPMENT"!
That Nikom stopped development of DSLRs, and F-mount lenses, isn't a big surprise so. The D780, D850 and D6 are propably the last generation of Nikon DSLRs we see. Which is ok, times move on.
Nikon is still producing a few manual focus (Ai-s) lenses. Or if not actively producing any more, then they're at least not officially discontinued so far. Since the 55mm and 105mm Micro-Nikkors pop up in machine vision applications, I'm assuming they have long-term supply agreements with industrial customers for those lenses. (A lot of industrial cameras are Nikon F-mount)
Nikkei's leak article for Japanese company and official half-denial response is classic. Then company often release same release as leak. Perhaps Nikon won't release any release but just stop developing.
It's nice to see people aware of their surrounds paying attention to where they are and who and what is around them. I like it. Photography is now so much more boring when it has people in them because their focus is often on their phones.
Yes, as in - we are living in a weird time where humans all stare into plastic squares instead of looking where they're going as they've usually done for thousands of years.
I can't tell if it's supposed to be a strict instrumental take on Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City" or a clever mash-up of the bridge from Joe Zawinul's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" and the former. Either way, I dig it.
It's "elevatorized" Stevie don't you think? I blame Seinfeld for making everyone so cracked out on the slap bass back then. I feel like people would re-record tunes just to throw slap bass in there. It felt like popular music had rubber bands in it all the time. Oh, and wall to wall alto sax solos (thanks 80s and George Michael!) Also: note the period-accurate very smooth jazz aiming for a glam jazz feel. This was everywhere back then too. But the cool thing was NYC was much more of a jazz city throughout- I'll never forget one of the first times I took the subway- a guitarist was playing and singing "Ribbon In The Sky" - he was incredible, and I thought... I guess I'm in the right place.
Hah! It's funny that you say that; I nearly mentioned Seinfeld in my original comment. I guess we were thinking along the same lines. It's true that it is a bit "elevatorized" but I guess I was enjoying it from my 2018 perspective as almost a knowing and satirical nod (i.e., half-parody, half-pastiche) to that era.
There are many things that we do or could do to make the ssential complexity more manageable.
Something that we do already is abstract away parts of the essential complexity (CRUD, entities, validations, etc) where you have DSLs to specify that essential complexity.
But there are many other things we could as well, like some sort of ontological autocomplete that would help you specify your business model (a User may have these fields, a “Sale” is better represented as a “Transaction” in order to handle returns)
Moreover, re the Facebook App example, the ease of creation vs control is a false dichotomy. A page builder of sorts could spit a predefined design (to have something working ASAP) but there is no reason you couldn’t customize completely to your liking, as if no page builder was used. In other words, having a working app ASAP by using defaults, in order to aid requirement discovery, should be a feature or programming environments/tools/libraries framewors and not an either-or.
Personally, I don't think we could reinvent programming and make it 100% future proof. But if we reinvented programming it will be much more future proof that what we have now. The reason is that our current stack was not invented in the first place, kind of evolved upwards organically. If we did something it will at least be purposeful.
