Is full size DX "Done"?

You're lucky to just have to think about a lens! I want a new rig in Santa's sack! Lets hope his elves are working fast!

Yeah, I think I'm just trying to pretend I'm more disciplined than I am.

In reality I'm looking hard at a FF body purchase (A99) which I'd "justify" by the whole "well DX (APS-C) is slowly dying anyways".

But even though I already think I may buy the body, I'm not planning to house it vs. the A55. (Or is that me just pretending, yet again??? If Ike does house the A99, I just might find a very heavy and convincing little demon on one shoulder whispering sweet equipment nothings into my ear.)

"well DX (APS-C) is slowly dying anyways".

Poppycock! Its just going thru a phase of change....for the better

The difference this time is a lot of folks are changing from DX to FX. I can only assume this will accelerate when the D600 and housings are available. After all, the D600 is really just a FX'd D7000...

 

It's my opinion Nikon is forcing this change on purpose. They have not released a successor to the D300s and as much as I like my D7000, the D300 had a better build and more "professional" features which Nikon has not duplicated in DX. The D400 is still just a rumor and after the D600 is out for a few months, what kind of market would there be for a D400? It would be too confusing for customers to pick between FX and DX where the price point difference is likely only $200-300.

 

Also, the D7000 is due for a refresh too, so I'm thinking Nikon is just going to ditch the D300s replacement entirely. It's my opinion Nikon will come out with a DX mirrorless to compete with Sony/Canon and the "traditional" DX cameras in Nikon's line will simply be sunsetted over the next couple of years.

Thought I'd resurrect this discussion since it's been just over a year from when I first asked the question: is Full Size DX "Done"?

A year later, here's a few things that happened:

- Olympus has further raised the bar in mirrorless with the new EM1

- Nikon has released the D7100 which is a nice incremental upgrade to the D7000

- Nikon kind of boogered up the D600 release by not acknowledging the oil spots on the mirror problem, now we have the D610

- The D800 has been adopted by many former Nikon DX users on Wetpixel

- Nikon shows it does not understand mirrorless by crippling the Nikon 1 in a few important ways.

- And lastly, just like I said a year ago, Nikon will not release a D400 successor to the D300s. The D600 *was* that successor and now it's the D610. Nikon will keep DX around at the low end to generate revenue, but they really want people to spend more money and upgrade to FX. The D7100 will undoubtedly iterate to a D7200 next year, but I predict that camera will not exist in 2 years; something smaller and mirrorless will replace it.

And why after yet another year is it still so hard to put a wifi chip in camera bodies? They are TINY. They can fit one in a $50 last-gen smartphone, but not in a camera body?

Oh, and I'll say the new AW-1 is a "near miss" too. If it had been DX, it might have been really revolutionary. Nikon can fix that if they adopt either Sony's RX100 1" sensor or the new Aptina 1" sensor in the next 6 months which would make the AW-1 a mirrorless contender.

It's still all about lenses though and M43 is kicking butt in that arena.

I don't see any particular sensor size being Dodo-ed in the near future but am curious if mirrors will still be around 10 years from now. I can't see anything attractive in the mirror-pentaprism combination apart from that they were the only game in town for a long time. When mirrorless came around they still had a raison d'etre by being the best game in town for view finder quality and focusing. As of last year, mirrorless started to beat them in autofocus accuracy and speed on static subjects and EVF started to become interesting with focus peaking and other digital overlay tricks, though still inferior in quality and size. With the OM-D EM-1 the EVF is now the same size or larger than FF OVF and image quality from all reports has improved a lot. This camera also gained useful continuous autofocus.

If you have nostalgic or other attachments to (D)SLR technology you can still claim you prefer the OVF image quality and should have little trouble convincing anyone that for serious action photography it remains the system to beat. But if you could plot performance improvement over time for DSLR and mirrorless then I expect it won't take long for the latter to catch up on c-AF as well. By then the main reason to hang on to DSLR is the legacy of high quality lenses. Perhaps we will see transitional Canon/Nikon mirrorless systems that can use DSLR lenses, like the EM-1 can use the four-thirds lenses, but ultimately lenses designed and optimized for mirrorless will cary the day. As for sensor size, there is room for more than one format, as long as the sensor is supported by a good selection of lenses. Right now micro four-thirds is ahead of the pack in the lens department but it will be interesting to see if Sony uses its headstart on FF mirrorless to aggressively build a lens portfolio, using third-party lens manufacturers if needed.

Bart

10-years from now, no one of us knows about the Status of Cameras... and it is useless to speculate about it!

Enjoy your mirrorless, it is not a bad choice! I do prefer dSLRs, due to Performance in still Pictures.

As a macro shooter I am loath to give up my AF-105-VR. From my vererable d-300 what I would like in an upgrade is better autofocus in low light. So far Nikon is saving me a ton of money.

Tom

If you can't take a great picture with a d70 you won't be able to take a great picture with a D610. You will just wind up with more megapixels of bad photos.

If you can't take a great picture with a d70 you won't be able to take a great picture with a D610. You will just wind up with more megapixels of bad photos.

One thing that seems to be pretty clear id that the whole camera market is in a move at the moment.

If the DX plays a role after the market has stabalized depends if the customers (us) are still buying it. If there is a demand then there will be companies serving the need.

The problem I see is the purpose use of the DX system. As I see it there are three main camera purposes depending what you are going to shoot. Purposes in this term are planned, semi-planned and unplanned.

For planned shooting - so you are going to shoot a very specific moment or motive and even travel for the same, if you are pro or amateur, you want to have the best possible picture. For this type of shots, with the FX prices dropping, FullFrame cams, if the budget allows, will be your tool - now and in the future. With or without mirror or what ever other gimmick the vendors come up with is not that important in this term.

For the unplanned shooting in street, capturing the unexpected, users usually want something fitting into the pocket. Traditionally this had been covered by pocket P&S cams. This market is now moving to the smarthpone buisiness. So the P&S cams, even so thrown at high evolution rate into the market (and eating up vast amounts of the vendors development costs) will vanish i think. The same in this term applies to the video digicams sharing the same future I think.

The interesting market so is the semi-planned, travel and vacation market. Cams should be good enough to deliver decent image quality without burden too much when carrying. Being a APS-C terotory in the past m43 and other mirrorless techniques are gaining shares here now. The question is if they can keep up with the demands. The m43 system is stuck on a 16Mpix resultion for now and is there since quite some time. While this is good enough for most use cases the general trend is heading for more. I do not think M43 will be able to go higher then this without revolutionary new technology (Foveon or what ever).

This I see as a chance for the DX system. If the vendors could slim down the size of the cams without changing the flange distance - so the existing lenses COULD be used and then start to slim down the lenses a little (making them DX only) while improving their quatity at the same time (Most DX optics are not just smaller but also lower in quality as their FX brothers) then this system will have a future. If not then FX on the high end and mirrorless on the low will nibble bites off the market until it is vanished.