mogul wrote:
Why would Nikon put out a mirrorless camera (like Pentax did) with a long flange to accept F lenses? There is no advantage. They will need to put out a whole different lens line (and be way behind Sony). The Nikon 1 is their answer to the Sony E mount and we know how successful that has been. Just wishing for something is not realizing the R&D that goes into Sony's cameras which Nikon can not duplicate.
OK, let's pick this apart one sentence at a time:
"Why would Nikon put out a mirrorless camera (like Pentax did) with a long flange to accept F lenses? There is no advantage."
Well, Nikon has a huge lens base that goes way back to the 1960s or so of F mount lenses that Sony never had. You could get a lot of mirrorless advantages just by swapping out the mirror + OVF and going mirrorless + EVF and Nikon would only need to have PDAF on chip to do this so that their AF lenses would still work as intended. There likely would be many people that would buy this camera, but it could not use any future short flange lens line that Nikon might go to.
"They will need to put out a whole different lens line (and be way behind Sony)"
First Sony is not that far ahead in native EF mount lenses, and second, I suspect Nikon could catch up really fast if they wanted to.
"The Nikon 1 is their answer to the Sony E mount and we know how successful that has been."
The Nikon 1 was definitely NOT Nikon's answer to the E mount and it has been crippled by catering the to the point and shoot crowd as opposed to the more enthusiast crowd and never had any intentions of being any where near a pro-type of system whereas the Sony EF mount has that capability and likely Sony is taking it there.
"Just wishing for something is not realizing the R&D that goes into Sony's cameras which Nikon can not duplicate."
Just what exactly do think Nikon can't duplicate? I think Sony's advantage is in the ability to get the body size down (miniaturization/mass production), but they are far behind Nikon in things like shutters, electronics, lenses/optics, camera software, ergonomics, etc., etc. that make up a camera system.
If Nikon were smart they would have this all figured out - i.e., a full frame mirrorless plan - and are just deciding when/if to pull the trigger on starting a mirrorless camera line.
The right way (according to me) to do it would be to make a new F mount that had a much shorter registration distance (and maybe even larger diameter) and start a new lens lineup, BUT they need to have an adapter that will allow FULL functionality of existing AFS lenses (and maybe D lenses, but I suspect not) that are optimized for PDAF and have PDAF on the sensor. This then keeps their current Nikon folks happy and allows for all the mirrorless advantages both on the body and lens side of things. And more importantly it keeps customers, like me who have already bought m43 and Sony mirrorless systems, from bleeding away.