It looks like Nikon’s compact mirrorless camera has leaked its lens mount and sensor mount onto the web. Based on this image, it’s clearly not an F-mount camera – so you won’t be using existing Nikon lenses on this camera (without an adapter, that is). Additionally, the sensor looks smaller than APS-C format.
Some members of the Xitek forum (where the image leaked) claim that this is a compact camera image sensor like the Pentax Q system. That would put it in the 1/2.3″ or 1/2.5″ range, which would likely result in a camera that few take seriously.
However, eagle-eyed commenters over at Nikon Rumors examined the screw head diameter in comparison to the sensor size and estimate that the sensor is around a 2.7x or 2.8x crop factor. This would mean that it is still smaller than the Micro Four Thirds sensors, but larger significantly larger than your typical compact camera.
The above image somewhat corroborates the design implicated by previous Nikon patent applications.
Is this the kind of compact, interchangeable lens camera you’ve been looking for? Or is a sensor this small still out of the question for you?
[Xitek via Nikon Rumors]
Possibly. The thing that keeps micro four thirds back in terms of higher ISO & DR is not so much the smaller sensor size as Panasonics, lacklustre performance compared to Sony. Considering that m43 sensor is 1.5 times smaller than APS-C and 6 times larger than the 1/1.7 sensor used in some premium compacts it performance should be closer to APS-C than it is.
So a 1″ sensor in a Nikon camera could leapfrog over Panasonics M43 sensor despite being smaller.
At base ISO the m43 sensors are quite good enough as they are so the new system just needs to have better SNR at ISO 1600 and above and more dynamic range throughout the ISO range.
The other major issue is lenses. A new system will take time (years) to develope. The ability to use F mount lenses with full functionality (metering, AF & VR) via an adaptor will mitigate this a little, but the real advantage of these systems is smaller lighter lenses. Nikon will be playing catch-up here for several years.
I think the real question is should folks like Nikon and/or Canon even bother to play catch-up? I’d love to see less money burned on R&D for products like this and more spent on getting down the cost of mass producing full-sized sensors so we can get dSLRs back on parity with SLRs.
C’est vraiment dommage de se cantonner à d’aussi petit capteurs. Il faudrait que Nikon s’inspire aussi du passé des photographes qui possédaient un réflex 24/36 mais bien souvent un poket équipé du même film 35mm. Ajourd’hui, alors que l’APS-c est acheté, assimilé par beaucoup, Nikon ne propose pas d’appareil poket de ce format et nous noie dans des formats petits qui ne nous apportent pas la qualité que nous apprécions. Le P7000 n’est pas vraiment un appareil de poche et le P300 qui n’a de surcroît pas de format raw ne permet pas d’obtenir de résultats convenables ni de flou auquel nous prenons plaisir afin de mettre en valeur certaines de nos images.
Je crois que Nikon devrait revoir ses têtes pensantes afin de nous offrir un genre de Sony NX3 ou NX5 en même temps que de réactualiser NX2 complètement dépassé pour les raws par son équivalent de chez Adobe. Espérons que Nikon rime avec raison.
Why should Nikon bother with this market? Maybe it’s looking at marketing data like this:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0708/07080302cipashiph1.asp
Miki,
I hope Nikon aren’t using data from 2007 to make decisions in 2011.