Dom Bower Photo Blog: OMG Nikon D700 Replacement!

Monday, 24 January 2011

OMG Nikon D700 Replacement!

Am I the only person who is searching almost daily to find if there has been an announcement from Nikon about the Nikon full frame D700 Replacement?
Every day I click into nikonrumors.com, or dpreview, or popphoto or dphotographer, and get excited when i see there is a new post and then swear at the computer when it is some new announcement of a crappy point and shoot with a million times zoom!

More details after the break

This is what you get from Wikipedia

High-end (Professional) - FX/Full Frame sensor

Nikon D3, August 23, 2007
Nikon D3X, December 1, 2008
Nikon D3S, October 14, 2009

High-end (Prosumer) - FX/Full Frame sensor

Nikon D700, July 1, 2008

High-end (Professional) - DX sensor, high resolution

Nikon D1, June 15, 1999
Nikon D1X, February 5, 2001
Nikon D2X, September 16, 2004
Nikon D2XS, June 1, 2006

High-end (Professional) - DX sensor, high speed

Nikon D1H, February 5, 2001
Nikon D2H, July 22, 2003
Nikon D2HS, February 16, 2005

High-end (Prosumer) - DX sensor

Nikon D100, 21 February 2002
Nikon D200, 1 November 2005
Nikon D300, 23 August 2007^[35]
Nikon D300S, 30 July 2009^[36]

From this you can see that Nikon has pumped out a pro camera (D3) almost yearly

also a prosumer version every 2 years, The Nikon D700 was first out in July 2008. Making it 30 months since as of today since it came out.

The Nikon D700 is an amazing camera its low light abilities and low noise at high ISO is truely astonishing. When I rent it for weddings it still blows me away with how clear the images are at iso 4000. It had the same sensor as the Nikon D3 which has now been trumped by the nikon D3s which is a full stop better in terms of noise and iso! please just shove that sensor into a D700 body that is all that i want, but I know

nikon can do better, Nikon are getting a major bashing from the likes of Canon for having its amazing video abilities even though canon has a massive video and film industry which accidentally the Canon 5D mark 2

has taken a big chunk out of. Nikon has no video industry to its name so it should not be restricted to a single format. Sony is the same, it is a massive player in pro video yet it is shoving pro video ability into its dslrs as well!
If Nikon said that they were never to bring out a new camera I would go out and buy a D700 today as I

know it is awesome, But i know they will and I know that what will come out will be amazing-er so much more amazing that I know that if i had bought the D700 even 6 months before I would feel hard done by.

So what to do?

Well at the moment I have no need to buy a d700, none of my clients are asking for images which I cannot

get with my Nikon d300, But when I do do weddings I am renting the NIkon d700 (its the bomb for weddings) and it has the onboard flash for CLS control. But I know that the D700 Replacement will be totally redrawing bounderies of what will be expected from photographers. Not just photographers expectations (hope you get what i mean in those last sentences)

What amazes me is that Nikon clearly has to make the camera then has to do extensive field testing which means some photographers somewhere are running around with the D700 replacement taking shots, videos, editing image and sending to Nikon but how has it not leaked!!!!!!

What, death penalty does nikon impose on its photographers and technicians who make the sensors and camera so that the secrets never get out? They manage to keep secrets better than the bloody american government. WIKILEAKS and area 51 being an example.
There must be a hacker out there that can break into the Nikon development system and find out the future technologies they are working on. because I can tell you one thing Nikon is not working on the current

sensor or camera but they are working on a generation ahead. Ie when they released the nikon D3 they were already well into their D3s development and contemplating the D4 sensor structure.

Proof of that can be found by example by Canon who have stated that they have made a 120million pixle sensor and also a sensor that is 100 times more sensitive than current sensors
links in the video on youtube

Some old giffers will go on about how in the olden days (10 years ago) that photographers had to make do with a max iso of 800 and use a thing called film.

that is great but today no industry is expecting that, they are expecting much more from their photographers, they are needing images which were impossible 10 years ago and they know that if one photographer cant get it there are 100 behind him(or her) waiting to show off their photography ability and that may be connected to their camera's ability either in iso, or flash technology, or accuracy of focus or speed of shots or what is likely to happen soon is the ability to grab images from video.

Please Nikon give us a little teaser!