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First up, Nikon’s first-ever digital medium format camera, which,
if you'll allow a little imaginative license, will be a semi-modular professional
camera with a 36 x 48mm 50 megapixel sensor, ISO 25-800 sensitivity, and
files so huge that the smallest memory card you'll want to consider will
be a 233X UDMA-enabled 32GB card that can barely squeeze 100 aboard images.
Your $9995 will get you a camera with built-in GPS and WAN capability (make
sure your laptop is compatible!), and a 4.3-inch TFT LCD. Sound like
a super-budget-priced Leica S2 or Hasselblad H3DII-50? We can dream,
can't we? The medium format digital arena is a new one for Nikon,
and one that sells in low volumes to highly finicky customers. Do
not be shocked if the company attempts to deliver a knock-out punch to
the competition right out of the gate, while simultaneously making FF (FX)
format cameras like the $8000 Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III suddenly look very,
very, overpriced. Canon is already on a course to do the same thing with
the EOS 5D Mark II and later cameras all by itself. At PhotoPlus
Expo in New York City in October, the buzz was all about the 5D Mark II.
Obviously, 21 megapixels for $3000 is a hot button. The megapixel
horse race is not yet over.
A little background
One good thing that may come from Nikon's 36 x 48mm medium (MX) format
camera may be the abolishment of the term “full frame” as applied to digital
SLR cameras. In the brief history of the digital realm, “full frame”
has become the grand-daddy of all misnomers. Nikon refers to the D3 and
D700 as FX-format cameras (rather than full frame) because “full frame”
is an arbitrary term applied to the 24 x 36mm format, which is itself actually
a double frame size compared to the original 35mm motion picture film's
18 x 24mm frame.
Don’t blame Thomas Edison, et al., who
slit George Eastman’s 70mm film stock down the middle lengthwise, and perforated
both edges with 16 perforations per foot (4 per frame.) The 35mm
“full frame” designation derives from comparison with all the odd-ball
departures we’ve seen through the years, including “half frame” cameras
(from Olympus and others), the Robot line’s 24 x 24mm format, some
24 x 32mm and 24 x 34mm rangefinders from Nikon itself, and Kodak’s ill-fated
Advanced Photo System (APS) film format, which lives on today in formats
called APS-H (from Canon) and APS-C (from virtually everybody else, in
variations with 1.5 to 1.7X “multipliers.)
My hope is that in the near future, at
least in the Nikon world, we’ll have only MX, FX, and DX terms in use to
refer to medium format, full frame, and APS-C digital frame sizes.
What MX entails
As exciting as the Nikon DM1 may seem to those of us who watch the advances
of digital technology with shock and awe, the first Nikon MX-format camera
will have little effect on those of us currently using FX or DX cameras.
Here’s why:
Expense
The Nikon DM1 will be costly. Other cameras in the digital medium
format arena are priced in multiples of $10K. Even with an ultra-low
price, the DM1 will not be something that well-heeled amateurs buy as the
ultimate new toy, unless they are really well-heeled. I know
plenty of amateur D3 owners who buy the 200-400mm VR lens just in case
they need it, but the DM1's price tag will cause a lot of them to think
twice. The fact that a Nikon MX-format camera won't be easy to carry
around your neck as a show-off item will also dull the lustre of this ultimate
toy.
As with the $30,000 digital SLRs I first
used (actually, borrowed from Kodak) in the early 1990’s the DM1 will be
a camera that you need to cost justify. In the early days of digital,
catalog photographers and photojournalists were able to afford pricey cameras
because digital photography gave them something they could use right away
to save money or time. Even an affordable Nikon medium format camera
will likely make sense only for those who need the extra pixels.
Architecture, catalog work, portraiture, and other bastions of medium and
large-format film photography will be the primary arenas for the DM1, just
as existing medium format digital cameras play there today.
So, if a camera is too expensive for you
to actually own, how does it benefit you? It's possible that the
Nikon DM1, if priced reasonably enough, will help drive down the cost of
more reasonably-spec'd FX cameras. Research into 36 x 48mm sensors
will also trickle down to FX-sized imagers, too, even though one of the
strengths of medium format are larger, fat pixels and improved dynamic
ranges, a trend that's the opposite of the direction we're seeing in some
DX-format cameras with tighter pixel densities and as many as 15 megapixels
of resolution within those cramped confines.
More prestige for we Nikon photographers
once Nikon enters the MX field? Don't count on it. MX and FX/DX
are two different worlds. While Hasselblad and Leica are still names
to conjure with, Mamiya's reputation today is solely within the confines
of medium format. The company's 24 x 36mm models were so popular
that the last one was introduced nearly 30 years ago. An expensive
Nikon MX camera is not going to do much to increase sales of FX/DX cameras,
or increase the number of non-white lenses you see at news and sports events.
Only innovative FX/DX cameras, like the D3 are going to do that.
Lenses
Naturally, you can forget about using any of your existing lenses.
And don’t count on resurrecting your old Zenza Bronica optics, either.
If you end up migrating to Nikon medium format, you’ll be buying all new
lenses, and the selection is likely to consist of a few choice primes followed
by a trickle of other optics that may emerge as the DM1 gains acceptance
and favor (assuming it does.) And expect these lenses to cost
as much as you’re paying for your FX digital camera today.
If Nikon is planning to introduce the DM1
anytime soon, these new lenses are already in the pipeline.
That actually could account for the perceived dearth of new lenses for
FX/DX digital cameras. With limited resources for designing optics,
it's possible that MX lens design has siphoned off talent that would otherwise
be creating those fast, updated prime lenses many D3 and D700 owners are
screaming for. I personally haven't bought into this theory 100 percent,
because the new 14-24mm f/2.8 and 24-70mm f2.8 zooms, the spiffy fast VR
sports lenses, and one of my favorites -- the 18-105mm VR -- are nothing
to sneeze at. All of us would like more and better Nikkors, and if
designers are working on MX format lenses instead, it does have
an effect on the rest of us.
Accessories
You’ll probably need a lot of new accessories, although there are a
surprising number of existing gadgets for Nikon FX and DX cameras
which should be able to be used with the Nikon DM1. Compact Flash
cards – sure, if they are large enough and fast enough. It's going
to take a long, long time to write 50 megapixel files to a memory card,
regardless of the size of the buffer and efficiency of the digital image
processor. Maybe the new Nikon SB-900 will be compatible, although it's
difficult to picture someone mounting one of these speedlight monsters
on top of an already-huge medium format camera for candid flash photography.
(The DM1 will be used a lot in the studio, using studio flash.) But
it's likely that the existing Nikon remote controls and other accessories
for the 10-pin socket will work. We should see GPS and WAN devices
compatible with MX, FX, and DX cameras. It's even possible that a
beefed up version of the EN-EL4(x) battery and chargers will be shareable.
Size
Leica went for the 35mm/digital SLR form factor with the S2, and the
Nikon DM1 should follow in that mold. However, the camera will be
large. That won’t deter many photographers, and may, in fact, add
some allure to the new medium-format Nikon. When I started working
for a daily newspaper many years ago, I used their Rolleiflex and Mamiya
twin-lens reflex cameras, but couldn’t let go of the SLR layout (even when
using a TLR with a prism finder.) I ended up with a Fujifilm 6x9
“rangefinder” style film camera, and jumped to the Pentax 6 x 7 when it
was introduced. I was happy, but both cameras were huge. The
Nikon DM1 will be built on the same scale.
So don’t expect to use this camera as a
walk-around PJ box, although I am sure there will be hardy souls who will
use this mode in order to gain those extra megapixels. When taken
outside the studio, it will be best used for contemplative photography,
including architecture and landscapes, and will work best on a tripod.
But heck, most of my best FX and DX photos were taken with my Nikons mounted
on a tripod, too, so the change won’t be fundamental.
Next Up
I’ll have more comments on the Nikon DM1 as the weeks past. My
next installment, Part Two, will look at what the Nikon “D3x” will do for
you, and how it will change Nikon photography. |
