Industry News: Nikon Teases Their Full Frame Mirrorless Camera & New Mount

[melgross]

One Camera With All The Most Desirable Features, Made To Rule Them All !!!!

We know what happened the last time that was done.

---

EEEEEEEKKKKKK!!!! Ya got my reference....

ANYWAYS! You're ALLLLL DOOOMMMEEDDDD !!!!

DOOMED I SAY....

See ya'll at Photokina 2018 !!!

DCI 8K MF cameras, DCI 4K 60 fps 10-bit 444/422 small form factor combined video and stills MIRRORLESS and GLOBAL SHUTTER cameras, ILC smartphones...... ooooohhhhhh BABEEEEE....... it's gonna be a VERY GOOD YEAR ..... !!!!!!!!!

Since you claim you’ll be at Photokina this year, why don’t you tell us who you work for so that those of us going there will be able to come to see, and congratulate you.

 

[3kramd5]

The problem with you Harry is that like so many liars, at some point you can't keep all your lies straight.

I don’t think that’s it at all. Rather, he’s writing an ever-changing fiction for fun, and doesn’t mind that people see through it and even parody him.

Case in point:

I have about HAD IT with Canon's slowness

Boy, you and me BOTH.

Is there any way you could shoehorn in a deconvolution routine?

I do research into renewable energy, and am looking into fireflies (they seem like a real life panacea). I’m confident I can cleanly and continuously power a city the size of Beijing harnessing these insects in a humane manner, but just need some imaging. The problem is they ignite so briefly and dimly that capturing the appropriate footage is challenging. I need at least 100kfps, ideally 24k or better resolution.

I have a background (several CENTURIES in aggregate if you consider multitasking) in pure mathematics, electromechanical ENGINEERING, optics, and applied physics, and I dabble in internal medicine.

What I’ve done so far is to design using excel and Visual Basic a 1m macro lens. It has an f/0.3 physical aperture (t-stop of .993). My background is DESIGN, not fabrication, and as you may imagine the design has very precise requirements. Fortunately my brother in law owns a particle accelerator. It’s probably three GENERATIONS beyond the toy CERN has in Geneva (even greater still than the real world difference between an exmor and a canon sensor). It is actually bored around the circumference of the earth (through the CRUST along the equator), so we are able to avoid micro-gravitational effects on particles. It also uses a DYNAMIC 5-D EM field generator (of my own design) to also counteract the effects of the earth’s orbit around the sun AND the solar system’s orbit around the GALAXY center (other galaxies are distant enough, given the r^2 relationship, that their influence is negligible). He uses the accelerator for mundane purposes like collecting Higgs bosons), but in off hours he lets me tinker and I’ve found some really fascinating material which has allowed me to REANIMATE Carl Zeiss and Leonardo da Vinci, and I had them hand build my lens.


Anyway, as you can imagine the elements are very heavy. I use custom superconducting femto actuators and am able to engage the focus system within 3 clock cycles (meaning within 6.67E-10 seconds), but sometimes I miss focus (and trust me reviewing in real time 100,000FPS footage only to find it is out of focus is FRUSTRATING. If you can deconvolve in real time, I think with my electro-optic-mechanical expertise, together with your mastery of marginally related jargon, we might be on track to CLEANLY power the GLOBE for years to come.

---

YUP! I can de-convolve in realtime for re-focusing of imagery (I can spread out over multi-cores and multi-cpus/gpus!). I've been doing that technique for satellite/aerospace imagery for almost two decades now! If I know the lens type and model, the image sensor model and type with its micro-lens and on-sensor DSP characteristics, then YES I can apply computational photography to do a "Virtual Raytrace" to obtain the pixel values THAT WOULD BE THERE had the camera been in actual proper focus. If I had 3D-XYZ positional data of the lens and camera (i.e. taking into account high frequency and low frequency vibrations) I can do EVEN BETTER quality wise!

My friend is also an amateur astronomer and he has a THREE METRE telescope on his Shuswap Lake property (i.e. Canada's largest private 'scope!) with a DEFORMABLE mirror so his imagery is going to be quite a bit better than your ONE METER lens! I suggest a liquid-filled twin-clear-membrane lens that can deform its shape on-the fly using mere air pressure differences on the lens that is sandwiched between two glassed-in helium filled pressure chambers -- we change the pressure in one side or the other and the lens itself DEFORMS to the configuration we like....THAT would aid in proper focus of distant imagery! (please note THAT this is now an OPEN SOURCE GPL3-licenced technique!)

For your EM experiments, I can get you 1000+ of 50 kilowatt lasers and we can do some beam summing within a globular configuration to see if we can compress and then fuse some pellets of Deuterium and Tritium to power your gravitational effects generators!

To see the RESULTS of your experiments, my codec IS capable of up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 frames per second and BUT THAT is ONLY A LIMIT imposed by the fact that I am using a 64-bit CPU...I MIGHT be able to scrounge up some 128-bit ULTRA-SPARC CPU's we've custom designed at my friend's lab so you can do 2^128 - 1 frames per second! (He has a 7 nm electron beam microcircuit etching machine BUT that takes 22 days to etch a SINGLE 128-bit CPU onto a sapphire substrate so the wait for a CPU/GPU circuit is a bit long for my tastes)
You may JUST HAVE TO DO WITH ONLY 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 frames per second!

AND....YOU WILL ABSOLUTELY NEED an Attosecond-pulsed laser in the X-ray band to really see the imaging results of all that fusion going on!

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE you might need for your experiments?

I MIGHT be able to put your device(s) on our 143,000 lbs (64800 kg) drone!
It flies to near-space at 300,000 ft and can carry over 90,000 lbs of gear!

Would THAT HELP?

Personally I’m still entertained.

(Size Reduction - Quality Reduction Factor ) x Gained Video Channel Capacity = Profit

 

[Mikehit]

---

To put it BLUNTLY and simply...I don't have to care what YOU say or any ANYONE thinks on here any more! The SIMPLE FACT OF THE MATTER...IS......THAT I actually DO KNOW MORE about what's coming down the pipeline THAN YOU DO !!!!!

Why?

Because the company that bought MY codec is making sure it's TELLING ME DIRECTLY what's coming down the pipeline THAT'S WHY! And I ensured my NDA and and sales agreement allows me to do so....AND THE REWARD for that 444/422 codec
is WHY there is a Bell 429 and a Knight XV parked in my hangar....THAT'S WHY!

But...I thought it was your employer who owned the codec and told you you could not release it rights-free because you wrote it on their company time?

---

My employer DOES OWN the codec....but I get a nice chunk of change because I am working on MUCH MORE esoteric projects than a mere 444/422 codec! Ya think they're gonna let me walk to save a few million when $250 million+ projects are in the pipeline that NEED my expertise?

So in other words, that 'nice chunk' of the company income that you get is in itself enough to buy a hummer and a helicopter. Yeah, right.

 

[jd7]

Looks like Nikon went for really small body. I hope Canon doesn't do that.

I'd actually prefer a small body. Considering that there appears to be more than one mirrorless camera coming, I'm really hoping at least one of them is size/weight conscious - different systems for different needs. I definitely agree though that there needs to be a replacement with proper ergonomics for many (probably most) users.

For me though, I'd happily take slower lenses (as long as other performance measures are kept in check - i.e. sharpness and chromatic aberration) to bring the size/weight down and would be willing to lose some ergonomics to achieve that.

This.

Genuine question - if happy with slower aperture lenses, what is the attraction to FF rather than going with a smaller and lighter (and potentially cheaper) APS-C or even micro-4/3 system? If you are happy with slower lenses I am assuming you aren't too worried about shooting in low light and you aren't interested in shallow depth of field, so the benefits of FF for those things are presumably not relevant (are my assumptions wrong?). If my assumptions are correct, what other attraction does FF have? Maybe it provides better results for large prints (because there is that much less enlargement required)?

I am not saying that someone interested in FF shouldn't own any slower aperture lenses, of course, but I'm wondering about the value of a FF system if it is focused on slower aperture lenses.

Fair question, but there are a two answers which jump out for me - high ISO performance and lens options.

To explain my interest a bit: 95% of my photography takes place while camping/hiking. Many of the locations i'm trying to shoot will be a full day of hiking away from a road, if not several days. As a result, I'm carrying camera gear, camping gear, food, and other equipment. From the photography aspect of it, I'm often doing long exposures, landscapes and some night photography. This means I can usually get away with slower lenses, but will need at least one fast lens. I usually want a 16-35, 24-70, 70-200, and a fast 14mm (really only the 14 needs to be fast, and there are relatively small/fast EF lenses available now). An APS C or m4/3 systems won't let me go equivalently wide and fast as a 14mm f/2.8. Also, I am shooting on tripod maybe 95% of the time, so hand holding ergonomics are not my top priority.

Right now, my kit weighs in at just over 15 lbs before filters or any other peripherals, and I use a camera insert to hold everything (minus the tripod) which measures in at 7" by 11" by 11.5", and it is completely full. That's a fair bit of weight and a lot of size for me to carry on long hikes. I think I can shave that down to maybe 12 lbs with some lens changes, but making this smaller or lighter would be better.

For me, the ideal situation would be an m6 sized full frame mirrorless with slow lenses, then adapt one fast lens from EF. I'm not against adapters because otherwise any fast lens will have to build in the lost flange distance to each lens - the over all kit size will get bigger than it currently is. Adapting would let me save that flange distance from every fast lens I'm carrying (if for some reason I need more than the 14). If the camera body and lenses all shrink in size, I can probably get away with a lighter tripod too, further reducing the weight/size.

Alternatively, an m6 size full-frame camera (even with an adapter) would make a great backup camera for hiking (in case one body dies). I could carry two of those and still have less weight than my 5D IV.

Again, this is my use case and it does not likely fit the vast majority of buyers. I'm not saying Canon needs to do this or they're doomed, I'm saying that a kit that lets me do this with less weight/size would be very attractive, and there are compromises that can be made to achieve it.

That is certainly a fair load of camera gear you are carrying for that sort of hiking. When I do multi-day hikes and I have to carry everything (food, tent, etc) with me, I usually just put my 6D + 24-70/4 IS on a Black Rapid Sport strap and leave it at that!

In terms of what you are saying about a FF system focused on slower aperture lenses, I gather that (at least) one of my assumptions was wrong and shooting in low light is important to you (perhaps shallow depth of field as well?) ... and therefore you want faster aperture lenses as part of the system, it's just that much of the time you are happy to use a slower aperture lens so you would be happy to accept the inconvenience of an adapter on the occasions you want to use a faster aperture lens.

You never know, Canon might just deliver what you are after. There has to be a real possibility Canon will introduce a new mount and run two FF mounts for quite a while, ie two lines of FF cameras. A mirrorless thin mount line of cameras that has native lenses and can use EF lenses with an adapter, and an EF line of cameras which could include DSLR and mirrorless models (but either way are larger than the thin mount models) and which use EF lenses natively. I guess it probably depends on whether Canon sees a big enough market for thin mount FF to make it worth running two mounts. It will be interesting to see what happens. (My personal preference at this point is for Canon to stick to just EF for FF, but you never know maybe something will come along which changes my mind.)

 

[Neutral]

Interesting article from Fujifilm regarding design approach for new G mount for GFX 50s MF MILC:
https://fujifilm-x.com/x-stories/gfx-technologies-2/
Like their approach to the design of new mount.
One of the things that captured my eye was approach to placing sensor protection cover glass and also focus on production tolerances. From pictures it looks as mount and sensor form one sigle unit where tolerances are reduced just to few microns. This is very impresive engineering.
Reading their technology articles aroung GFX design found that I am getting more and more interested in their second generation of GFX with new 100mpx sensor.
This might be really amazing camera.

 

[Neutral]

Interesting article from Fujifilm regarding design approach for new G mount for GFX 50s MF MILC:
https://fujifilm-x.com/x-stories/gfx-technologies-2/
Like their approach to the design of new mount.
One of the things that captured my eye was approach to placing sensor protection cover glass and also focus on production tolerances. From pictures it looks as mount and sensor form one sigle unit where tolerances are reduced just to few microns. This is very impresive engineering.
Reading their technology articles aroung GFX design found that I am getting more and more interested in their second generation of GFX with new 100mpx sensor.
This might be really amazing camera.

Something that I really like about Fuji approch is that by placing separate sensor protection glass at some distance from sensor they solved one of the very irritating problems of mirrorles cameras which is that sensor is not well protected from dust and gather dust very easily and cleaning sensor after that is kind of headache. I hate this with Sony cameras, always changing lenses only at home in clean air.
But Fuji in GFX just put separate protection filter in front of sensor, just as one is used in front of lens and this eliminates all the headaches related to the sensor dust issues. Sensor is always clean and user just need to remove dust from sensor protection filter which is absolutely safe, no risk of doing any harm to sensor.
As result user do not need to worried about changing lens in dusty environment as dust could be safely removed when needed. This was my dream for a long time.This is big advantage of Fuji design, very professional and very clever approach taking care of camera users.
I wish that this would be part of any mirrorles system from any manufacture, including Canon, unless Fuji has patented this solution.

 

[stevelee]

Even more sophisticated would be if they put in some kind of mechanism to move the sensor protecting glass out of the light path when you take a picture.

 

[snoke]

Even more sophisticated would be if they put in some kind of mechanism to move the sensor protecting glass out of the light path when you take a picture.

No. Glass move make internal wind vortice move dust. Make dust on sensor.

 

[zim]

Even more sophisticated would be if they put in some kind of mechanism to move the sensor protecting glass out of the light path when you take a picture.

wot, like a mirror! ;D

 

[Ozarker]

Even more sophisticated would be if they put in some kind of mechanism to move the sensor protecting glass out of the light path when you take a picture.

No. Glass move make internal wind vortice move dust. Make dust on sensor.

True. One of those vortices destroyed the trailer park in my camera. Can't have one without the other. Laws of physics.

 

[stevelee]

Even more sophisticated would be if they put in some kind of mechanism to move the sensor protecting glass out of the light path when you take a picture.

wot, like a mirror! ;D

Yeah, great idea! We should patent that. The photographer could actually see the view through the lens rather than just seeing another copy of live view.