TOPIC: NIKON
A rake of new cameras
30th August 2007
The websites of Amateur Photographer and Tech.co.uk are good places to find out what is happening in the world of digital cameras, which is just as well given the recent camera launching frenzy. It all seemed to start off with Canon's EOS D40 and EOS 1Ds Mark III.
Even if the former seemed to be a case of playing catch up, I still think that Canon should have used the opportunity to pull ahead, at least in the megapixel stakes; Sony is working on a 12 megapixel offering and could be about cause of 12 megapixel sensors becoming the norm for consumer digital SLR's like they did with the 10 megapixel level. While I realise that megapixels aren't everything, it has seemed to go like that thus far. Playing catch up doesn't apply to the 1Ds Mark III given its having a monster sensor resolution of 21 megapixels and, needless to say, the improvements to the favoured DSLR of landscape photographers don't stop there.
Nikon were also in the fray with new 12 MP offerings: D300 for the enthusiast and D3 for the professional. The sensor in the latter interestingly features a sensor that sits between full frame and the more usual APS-C sizes. Panasonic has also announced a new DSLR, while a number of manufacturers have new digital compacts on the market too. All the previous makers have something, as does Olympus. It was astonishing to see this all happening at once, yet I suppose that's how it goes. Though IFA has been on over the last week, some launches preceded this; it's usually something big like Photokina that results in this sort of thing...
Update: I have discovered since the Nikon's D3 has a sensor sized in the full frame domain. It might be 36mmx23.9mm rather than 36mmx24mm, but the FX format comes extremely close and the advent of full frame DSLR's being purveyed by a number of manufacturers may be upon us.