Below is a chronology of the rumors leading up to the official announcement.
The Nikon D3 has been rumored for some time now. You can see the history of the rumors in this post. Updates will appear at the bottom of this page by date until something official comes from Nikon.
POST 3/4/07: Now that Canon has had their fun, rumors abound that Nikon will unveil the new D3 tomorrow, March 5. Jim Seaholm gives the personal account of attending a sales rep seminar in LA on Friday, March 2:
Last night I attended a Nikon sales rep seminar in Los Angeles, where Nikon’s D3 was unveiled to an audience consisting of L.A. area Advanced Systems Dealers and myself.
Courtesy of my cousin, who is a salesperson at a major Los Angeles Nikon retailer, I was able to get credentials and attend the 45 minute meeting with him.
All camera cell phones were checked at the door, as we entered the meeting room. The LA sales rep revealed the D3 which was partially wrapped in black gaffers tape so as to disguise key elements of its appearance. For about 30 minutes, the sales rep talked to the assembled audience about Nikon’s latest offering which is to be unveiled on Monday, March 5th at PMA:
Full Frame (no 1.1 crap) – DX mode at 1.5x – High Speed Crop – VERY fast motor drive (can’t remember the number he quoted, but when he fired it, it sounded at least as fast as my F5 on CH. – 18.7 MP – MSRP $7999 – No H and X models anymore, just the one D3 – D2xs will continue to sell. – Dimensions and weight were mentioned, but I don’t remember the minutae. Suffice to say, the camera looked to be roughly the same size as the D2 series.
The camera was fitted with another new release: an undisguised 50mm 1.2G AF-S lens, which looked to be quite large and sturdy. Also mentioned but not present was a 24-120 2.8G AF-S. The rep said no new DX lenses were forthcoming in the near future.
So there you have it. End of rumors. We’ll all see it undisguised on Monday. So relax, its here.
Regards,
Jim
The original post was over at photo.net, but they removed the text. The 50mm f/1.2 and 24-120 f/2.8 look tasty too! I still consider this a rumor, but we’ll find out tomorrow. If it’s true, I imagine that some Nikon rep is in a little bit of trouble.
UPDATED: This rumor dispelled and more fuel to the fire – click here for more.
UPDATED 5/1/07: Read the History of the Nikon D3.
UPDATED 5/7/07: More rumors of an announcement “around fall” 2007.
UPDATED 5/13/07: More rumors – Summer announcement.
UPDATED 5/30/07: More rumors of a Summer/June Announcement.
UPDATED 6/8/07: Check out the awesome concept renditions of the Nikon D3x. Cnet has joined in the rumor mill, although I don’t really see anything new that we’ve not already reported here. Also, from the DPReview.com forums:
From a very good inside source. I will not elaborate or name the source.
Expect around August this year an upper end Nikon DSLR – probably with a FF sensor.
UPDATE 6/9/07: There has been a rumor explosion since Norm Olsen’s Nikon D3x Concept Rendition went up yesterday. However, all the posts (some from official news sources) are covering the same stuff that’s been on Photography Bay for a while, some of which is as old as early May. Unfortunately, there is nothing new to the rumor explosion that’s happened over the last 36 hours or so. I’d say this trend will continue for the next few days. As always, I’ll keep you posted if something new crops up on the rumor mill.
UPDATE 6/12/07: There’s a great post over at DPReview.com that shows a number of Nikon D3 fake photos. If you think you’ve seen a photo of the real Nikon D3 (including the one at the top of this post), you haven’t. Check out the growing collection of fakes now.
Additionally, Jeffrey Anderson reports on his discussion with a Nikon Rep regarding the announcement from Nikon of a full frame sensor in the next 40 days.
UPDATE 6/13/07: Check out the marginally more reliable rumors of a June 26 announcement for the Nikon D3. If this is legit, expect the rumor mill to really pick up over the next couple weeks.
UPDATE 6/15/07: Yet another DPReview.com forum poster, Robert Daniels, claims to have the official scoop on the Nikon D3:
My friend who is in the Technical services at MGM Studios contacted me today to say that Nikon Rep was in his offices this afternoon showing off the capabilities of the D3 or D3x. He told me in the past about the D2X prior to it coming out also. ALL YOU NAYSAYERS WILL BE EATING HUMBLE PIE ON THIS ONE!!!! (view the thread here)
Seems like more and more of these unofficially official reports are popping up. While that seems to insinuate that there’s something to these rumors, where are the leaked photos? I mean seriously . . . if there were really Nikon D3’s floating around in possession of Nikon Reps, wouldn’t someone have nabbed a cell phone shot at least?
UPDATE 6/16/07: User 2wheelsup over at Photo Takers Photography Community spoke to a Nikon rep a couple days ago and had this to say:
I asked him if Nikon planned on making any full frame sensors. His reply was “No. Not until we can come up with a costworth way to get light to every pixel placement”. he said something about other full frame digital sensors show the black edges in the corners because they cant get light to them. Which is why they use the 1.5 crop facotor so it essentially cuts it off.
Which begs the question, how much do Nikon reps really know? We’ll see.
6/25/07: Rumors continue to circulate. Thom Hogan has placed another lengthy post on DPReview.com regarding the announcement of the Nikon D3:
With virtually all of Nikon’s pro announcements, there has usually been about a two or three-week early warning due to the press event announcements that go out (kind of difficult to have a major roll-out without inviting the press, and you don’t do that at the last moment if you want 100% attendance of the key influencers). There’s also a longer lead early warning when Nikon Japan does the initial roll-out (in Japan) to the subsidiaries. It appears that the latter has occurred, which is fueling a lot of the speculation, but the former hasn’t, which means it would surprise me if there is an announcement planned in the next couple of weeks, though we’re probably now in the period where each subsidiary is working feverishly on getting roll-out and marketing programs ready. As Jerry Pournelle used to write: Real Soon Now. Read the rest of the post over at DPReview.com. . . .
The “local store/Nikon rep” intel rumors also continue to surface, such as this one from the DPReview.com forums on June 22:
i heard it myself today, from my local authorized nikon dealer, who reported to me that the official nikon sales rep told him that the d3 is coming, and “they’re not using the term ‘full-frame.’ they say it’s a 35mm-sized sensor.”
6/26/07: More rumors trickling in from the purported special NPS meeting in Japan. Get the important details here.
6/27/07: Thom Hogan continues to be a wealth of information with regard to the next Nikon (be it a D3 or whatever). In this forum post he discusses the potential for a modular system on the next Nikon pro body (conclusion? unlikely). Additionally, a couple of new photos of the purported Nikon D3x surfaced today in the DPReview.com forums today really stirred the pot.
7/4/07: There have been rumblings for some time now that the Nikon D3 will be announced in conjunction with Nikon’s 90th Anniversary at the end of July. Uncle Vader offers support for this notion from a purported reputable source:
A source with a proven track record today has contacted our newsdesk with news of what most of the Nikon addicts out there have been waiting for and thats news of the professional range new model nikon D3 range will be announced on the 25th July !
Notably, we should “be ready for 2 new jaw dropping features said to put Nikon way above anything its rivals [Canon] currently offer.” (source)
However, I’m sure if it doesn’t appear this month, someone will step in to vow its announcement for August.
7/17/07: Some speculation on what the rumored “revolutionary” feature of the Nikon D3 could be.
7/19/07: Check out this post for a wink and a nod from Nikon regarding the D3x. Additionally, there are some new rumblings about a Nikon D300 that could be in the mix this fall.
7/30/07: Well, since July 25th has now come and gone, we’ve got a new rumor of a August 15th announcement for the Nikon D3. (See Ken Beatty’s comment below on July 30 @ 9:19 a.m.) Ken, on his site, also predicted some Nikon lens releases for July 25th. We missed those . . . so, here’s hoping you’re right on the Nikon D3 rumor.
7/31/07: A rumored confirmation from a Nikon engineer surfaced yesterday.
8/1/07: More rumors of an August announcement – this time, August 25th is the date.
8/7/07: Rumors are really heating up for the August 23-25 time frame.
8/16/07: An ad for the Nikon D3 has surfaced.
8/17/07: More confirmation on August 24th time frame (. . .with the D300 to boot).
8/22/07: Some more rumored specs on the Nikon D3 (16MP) and D300 (12MP) along with rumors of 5 new pro-level AF-S lenses.
It looks like we may see the Nikon D3 and D300 tomorrow via a leak by Popular Science. Stay tuned for more.
New image of the Nikon D3?
[tags]nikon, d3, d3x, d3h, review, rumors, news, norm olsen, concept, announcement, price, availability[/tags]