I can understand the fast zoom Canon announced, finally FF has a lens as fast as one Olympus released over 13 years ago. But do many pros use f/1.2 primes? They seem like esoteric, very narrow-use lenses.
You need to look at this article, they do have their own sensor R&D lab, You will find out that they designed their D850 sensor with low iso of 50 and find it was not for landscape photographers.Hmmm, I'd say, both are dogs and tails
The basic sensor development is mostly driven by other industries - mainly smartphones, but increasingly industrial/automotive cameras etc. - because there is much more money involved as in digital still cameras (DSLR/MILC etc.).
One example: stacked sensor technology was developed for smartphones already around 2012:
https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201208/12-107E/index.html
Nikon is not so much into that smartphone market, but they rely on the basic developments and excellent sensors from Sony Semiconductors. It's cheaper than running their own sensor R&D department
Please don't let your enthusiasm for Olympus or mirrorless get in the way of reporting the facts. Canon and Nikon have been producing f/1.2 lenses for longer than Olympus has produced any M.Zuiko lenses.
Thanks, that is interesting and right up to date as of today. I wonder how much difference we could see in a 16 bit raw file vs. 14 bit.
given that Sony had the a7r using the same 36MP IMX094 sensor used in the D800/810 Nikons
They used the Nikon sensor over a year after the D800
From DPR review of the D800 in 2012
Sorry, but Nikon does not develop Sony sensors.
I'm waiting too. I have a D810, and I think I'm just going to get more lenses for it. I'm not particularly happy with Nikon's full-frame mirrorless launch. I might upgrade to a D850 next year instead of hoping for a better Nikon mirrorless camera. (I do like the tilt screen and 9 MP of extra resolution.) The 60 MP Sony made me take a good, hard, long look at Sony again, but I'm disappointed in the 4Kp30 and the fact that even that is only from a significant crop of the sensor (so sad). Hopefully Nikon's next mirrorless will have more resolution and offer 4Kp60 from the full sensor (or almost the full sensor, like the Panasonic S1R does). If so, and if it offers a fully-articulating rear screen and a good viewfinder . . . and maybe a fast UHS-II or SD Express card slot, I might end up skipping the D850 and finally getting a real mirrorless camera (though I guess my Sony A7 was a real mirrorless camera).
Well Sony just placed a shot across Nikon's bow. We'll have to see what Nikon does next, and I hope it's a full broadside attack. Nikon should have launched their full-frame mirrorless attack with five cameras and seven or even ten lenses . . . not this dribbly little, pathetic (though better than Canon's) attempt. This is the company that launched the Nikon 1 system with all those cameras, for God's sake. How they can only make two mirrorless cameras and not even follow up with a third within a year is mindboggling to me. And even a year after the launch of the Z system I see just seven lenses available at B&H. What?!? Well, at least they've actually added some lenses to the system, I guess. I do like that they're keeping their primes small, because if you want big you can just use the adapter to mount the f1.4 lenses from their DSLR line. They really need to release something special like the 50mm f0.95 though. They should make an 85mm f0.95 and a 35mm f0.95 too. They need to give people a reason to buy into their mirrorless system.
Well, hopefully they're wrong about the "two CFexpress cards" in the Z8, but hopefully they're right about it having a 60 MP (or hopefully even higher resolution).
I think Nikon should have stuck with Toshiba, when they got the D5200 sensor produced by Toshiba. If they had kept getting Toshiba to make sensors, they would not have played such a big part in building an enemy/competitor to the degree they've helped build Sony into one of their biggest competitors. I really don't know what they were thinking, after they saw Sony competing with them in 2005 with those 24 MP cameras that cost half what they were trying to sell the D3x for. If they had stopped buying sensors from Sony at that time, they would probably be better off now. They kept feeding a dog that had bitten them. They get what they deserve.
That's four year old data (late 2015)...and may not reflect what Nikon is doing now and will be doing going forward. For me though it really isn't a player as all there cameras seem top notch and an improvement on the past. That's really the important bottom line in my book. What hypothetical manufacture they might have used for a part just seems irrelevant AFAIC
I'd say Sony sees the cost of development as a cost of doing business, while Nikon doesn't want to eat all the cost of development, and therefore lets Sony make that investment. What Nikon needs to do is what Sigma does with their Foveon sensors, and do their own sensor development, with exclusive contracts with the chip fabs, so that their technology is not shared with other camera companies. THEN they would be able to do what Panasonic is doing now (and probably what Canon does, though Canon doesn't seem to be winning any big prizes in image quality).
Really?!? How do you explain all the new Sony customers then? How do you explain the fact that now both Nikon and Canon are making full-frame mirrorless cameras? What's happening is Sony has decided to eat Nikon's lunch for them. Soon they'll be eating Canon's lunch for them too. Panasonic will help make that happen, and in a few years Panasonic will lead the pack, with help from Leica and Sigma, and Panasonic will be followed by Sony, then Canon, then Nikon, and if they're lucky Pentax will still exist. Olympus will keep playing the m4/3 game, but by then there will be some very small full-frame mirrorless bodies and some smaller f2.8 lenses, like the new Sigma 45mm f2.8, and Olympus will have lost some of their customers. Maybe Olympus will choose to follow the pack into the full-frame world, but if they do they'll have a long, hard climb. My guess is Pentax will fail, and Olympus might fail too. Sigma will survive, becuase their camera business is not really a profit center for them anyway, and their lenses are profitable already. Panasonic, Sony, Canon, and Nikon will be the big players, and Fuji will still hang in there, in their niches, not really dependent on others, just like Hasselblad and Leica don't really depend on others either. If Pentax can make the mirrorless transition with medium format, they might survive, but with Fuji competing against them I doubt it. Ricoh will just shut down Pentax, or they'll sell the off to a Chinese manufacturing company, like what's happened with Hasselblad.
