For Those Who Are Doubtful of a D300s Replacement

I still don't think that there is market room for two bodies, simply because the D600 (and the 6D) will be sucking a lot of cash out of the market place around $2k. So, I think one body. Then there is the question of which platform it will be built on. Companies like Canon and Nikon don't update the basic platforms of their cameras very often, new models will share the subassemblies and mechanical designs like the mirrorbox, shutter, aperture drive, AF drive, chassis construction and so on. These can be refined and improved, but they are rarely redesigned because a complete ground up redesign is a big risk (witness the oil spot problem with the D600, which will be essentially a new platform because although similar to the D7000, most things will have to be redesigned for the bigger format). The D300 shared the platform that essentially came from the D2, went into the D200. The D3x00 and D5x00 use the platform from the D40. The D3 was something new, and has gone into the D700, D800, D4. The last new DX platform was the D7000, which superseded the D70 platform which was the basis for the D50, D80, D90 - and had the obligatory intro problems for a new platform. So, it is clear that Nikon would not have developed a new platform just for a single model, so it seems likely to me that this D7000 platform will be the basis for the new top end DX. probably it can be developed to 8FPS or so, very likely it can take the CAM 3500 AF module, and adding extra controls is trivial. So, the question is, what is the camera that Nikon will choose to make from that, and what will they call it. Both of these are marketing issues really.

I can see as an outside chance they might choose to make two versions of what is the same camera to squeeze in two price points, perhaps using CAM 4800 in one and CAM 3500 in the other, maybe slowing one down an FPS or two (like they did the D700), maybe a few control differences, like adding the AF-ON and replacing the mode dial assembly with a D4 style quad button array. Those are trivial enough that the two cameras could be produced on the same line, and that relative production volumes could be changed on the fly, rather like the D800 and D800E variants, where Nikon has worked it so they have minimal changes in stocking or production. If they do that, I would expect the lower one to be the D7100 (or maybe D7200) and the upper to be the D9000.

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Bob