Ultimatum to Nikon - D400 or not!

Hit the nail on the head there - as the user name suggests, my input comes from first hand experience of selling cameras across the last half a decade. 2008 through to late 2010 or early 2011, the £1000 to £1500 range was our absolute bread and butter - much higher demand than the £1500+ range and much healthier margin than the sub £1000 range. It's the huge fall in demand for that niche that has hurt us so badly in the last year and a half!

Back in 2008/9, the D300 wasn't just popular with the Pro/Prosumer market - entry to mid level consumers bought it because nothing below it in the range offered feature they wanted - fps, weather sealing, lens compatability, etc. Now, they can just get an Alpha 37, or a K30, or a D7000 and enjoy the feature they wanted at a much lower price. Even the release of the D90 saw a huge drop in D300 sales, just because of all the people who wanted AF-D compatability and nothing else.

Of course, most of the people who bought the D300 or D300s because it was the only option at the time have grown to love their camera, and with good reason - but believe me when I say it, the only people that buy the D300s or the 7D now are people who need near enough EXACTLY that combination of features. Stick a £1100 price tag on it, and THAT is your reason why the Pro DX market it experiencing a huge decline compared to any other level.

Of course, my feelings on where Nikon should go are pretty neutral. I bought my D300 because I wanted a weather sealed Nikon that I could take hiking without having to worry, but I mostly wanted a better DSLR than my D70s for studio work. It was nice, but when the D7000 came out it just fit my needs better (never really used anything more than the centre AF point and single shot release mode, and the extra DR and resolution are nice for my bread and butter stuff). The D300 was nicer to use from an ergonomics point of view, if they had something with the D7k sensor in a D300 body I might've been swayed to buy that instead... but probably not, I'm saving for a wedding. See what I mean? People get the camera that ticks all the boxes, and if they can save £200 or so, they will.

For a D400 to work I feel like it wouldn't just need to be more of the same old stuff, it'd need to bring something special to the plate - and not bringing out a D7XXX with the same sensor withing 6 months would certainly help it along, too