Holy crap - Nikon Press Release leak!

Michael Carter

Michael Carter

Veteran
One of my clients is a big global PR firm - found this on her desk during an interview. She said it's legit.

Nikon Imaging
Tokyo, Japan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Nikon today announced the shipping dates for their new 4K cinema camera.


"This will be a game changer for the digital cinema market." said Toshihuri Nakamagi, Vice President of Customer Relations. "We've been sitting on this technology for quite some time, but internal problems have had us continually ignore the cinema market. Sure, we occasionally do clean HDMI or a decent IQ, but we scatter that tech among different camera bodies and focus on stills. But an internal audit pointed out that our market research team had many cases of Changku Wan - literally "thumb in the ass disease". In fact, our R&D team had several instances of "fist in the ass", and one engineer had been trapped up to his elbow for several years."


A regimen of exercise and high-fiber diets has led to the Nikon C-1000, which will include 4k Raw recording to 60 fps, 2.5k Raw up to 120 fps, and a host of other features in a cinema-style form factor. "We're just doing Raw or Prores to SSD, what the hell" Nakamagi added. "SSDs are cheap and the market doesn't want H265 - they're just transcoding anyway. All these years of trying to shoehorn video from 20-plus megapixel sensors - we just engineered a 4k chip to skip all that resizing horsepower waste and still deliver that nice Nikon image, with a global shutter and zero moire, and 14 stops of DR. Ain't no thang, really".


Street price is expected to be just under $3000 US. Canon Imaging was quick to respond, stating that their R&D group had engineered a way to convert focus helicoid grease into an industrial lubricant slippery enough to "pull a firmware engineer's freaking SHOULDER from his ass - we'll have exciting cinema news soon".


The Nikon C-1000 is expected to ship in fall 2015.
 
Can't see why anybody would want to enter the cinema market right now unless they could make a $3,000 camera and retain a very healthy profit margin. Blackmagic is taking away the other players' hope of making a killing on camera markups like they used to.

DSLRs sell for $3,000 because of volume. The cinema market does not come close to this volume of sales and you have to knock it out of the park or it will not be accepted (recent JVC model)...
 
Eh...you suckers can mack on that C-1000 all you want...
I'm putting MY money behind Nikon's new variable speed food processor. It's going to change the restaurant world as we know it.
 
I reckon it will puree as well as slice, dice, 'n' chop... but someone more in the know should be able to verify....
 
A Sony bigwig asserted in a recent interview given to the Imaging Resource's Dave Etchell that A7R MK II has better video than a pro camera. And, if you look at their 15 MPX oversampling of the 4K image, only Red Dragon and F65 - both roughly 6K - are capable of that feature and A7R MK II is a $3,200 camera at retail.

Nikon's lineup runs up to $6,000-$6,500 with D4s, so there is certainly room for a A7R MK II model. IMO, there is no reason for D810 - other than contractual - not to have 4K, even if it's in the s35 crop mode off its 36 MPX sensor.
 
nonsense.

peter from nikonrumors has inside connections. if he didnt get info, it didnt happen.

otoh, im not against nikon investing nore in video. they only woke recently with the D750 and D810
 
rocketman122 said:
nonsense.

peter from nikonrumors has inside connections. if he didnt get info, it didnt happen.

otoh, im not against nikon investing nore in video. they only woke recently with the D750 and D810
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Damn, and I thought I wrote that just like any huge corporation who have engineers with arms stuck in their butts. Where did I fail?

You sir, cannot be fooled - I will have to try harder next time. Drat, foiled again!
 
It's a good point.

Nikon has the capability of building a cinema line, that will 100% be successful and profitable to the company. Why aren't they doing it? It's been so long the market has been opening its arms for a Nikon Cinema line just as it does for a Canon Cinema line and Panasonic and Sony and Blackmagic and even JVC & Samsung are making profit off that market, how could Nikon skip such once-in-a-life time business opportunity?

There must be something, even if it's a silly reason, but anything stopping them from going that obvious route.
 
Ebrahim Saadawi said:
... There must be something, even if it's a silly reason, but anything stopping them from going that obvious route.
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Nothing silly. Nikon is making a lot of money off its high end photo line - D720 and up - and is yielding the early entry to the 4K market to one of its main partners - Sony. In exchange, Nikon must be getting a tremendous price break on the latest Sony sensors, which are allowing it to be rated as the top performing stills camera system. I also wouldn't be surprised if Sony likewise agreed to hold off on the zoom lens development, thereby yielding the high end of the stills market back to Nikon. (Canon leads there overall but its technical performance isn't deemed on par)

Sony has mentioned that, after a certain grace period, these agreements lapse* and its frienemies are free to pursue whatever pleases them.

* What Sony said exactly - going from memory - was that they break their technology into three parts - the latest and the advanced, which they keep exclusively for themselves; a selected line that they may consider selling; and the commodity line which is available to everyone. The reality is sort of different. Some of the best and the latest Sony products can be sold to its market competitors but the market competitors such as Nikon also agree to stay from some of the Sony's niches. In other words, it's a (temporary) trade off that allows Sony and occasionally, its competitors to charge above the market prices based on collusion. This type of a collusion is illegal in the US under the anti-trust regulations but is perfectly allowable in Japan itself. In Japan, this type of agreements are deemed to serve as an incentive for an inventor to recoup some of his investment - including but not limited to R&D - before other entrants lower the profits margins to the point of commoditization. Realistically, this lowers the speed at which new products are introduced, as companies have less incentive to rush new products to the markets, and establishes the long standing cartelization of a given industry. While the margins remain high per each model, the number of units sold reflect this overpricing approach and the total sales are far lower than they could be under free market conditions. That negatively effects the cartel members own net profits because the share of the fixed expenses is disproportionately high in relations to the total sales. In the photo/video industry, this often shows on income statements as very high operational profit - Nikon was showing 59%, which is almost unheard of in a developed manufacturing segment - but with a plummeting net income.

Off my personal observation, the market is pretty tight to about $600-$800 range. After that, the cartelization gets stronger and the price hikes seem disproportionate to the increase in quality of the individual product. 4K, being a new kid on the block, shows the greatest latency and protection. This is why it's nice to see A7R MK II and RX10 MK II out because it may indicate that, the stipulations limiting the new entrants are expiring and a $2,000-$5,000 4K portion is becoming a free-for-all.
 
I 100% don't believe that idea that many people seem to mention all the time, that there's an agreement between Sony and Nikon to stay off Video to sell sensors, complete nonsense.

Sony Semiconductors is a free company, that manufactures and sells sensors to absolutely ANYBODY, if you want to buy one, you will buy it. With Nikon, they are a simple high-end client that ''sometimes'' requests a large quantity for select cameras. Nikon also buys for other models from Aptina, from Toshiba, and believe it or not the largest sensor source for Nikon is Nikon itself, which does design and manufacture sensors from the beginning of Digital imaging. They merely test all the available options on the market including their's and choose the best. Even Canon was a Sony Semiconductors client recently buying the 20mp 1" CMOS in the Canon G7x. Apple is a client, Samsung is a client, no conspiracies or arm twisting going on there. Sony does not need to prohibit Nikon from making a cinema camera, and Nikon does not need Sony to agree on such a childish trade. In fact, if such a high-end company like Sony Semiconductors was involved in such ridiculous acts they wouldn't have never been as successful as they are being the most profitable division of Sony Co.

I don't believe it, neither should anybody unless there's evidence that proves it, otherwise it's just a baseless accusation.

Nikon is willignly choosing not to enter the cinema market for a reason, I just don't know what it is.

What are the possible option?

I think, just think, based on a question asked to a Nikon CEO in an interview about why they don't enter the obviously open cinema market, his answer was, Nikon has never been a video camera producer, we are a stills camera company, therefore this would be a major change of path and an entirely new product line we have no past experience in manufaturing.

So they think they can't do it, they want to be a stills only company, maybe.

While Canon entered the Cinema Eos line as they've always been a video camera company.
 
The Japanese cartel system is a well-documented and acknowleged factor that very well could be playing a role in Nikon's near abscence in the video/digital cinema markets imho. I'd go so far as to say Nikon (at least Imaging) is a highly-likely candidate to be absorbed by Sony in the longish term - a la Minolta.

Nikon's prospects are not encouraging being so heavily dependent on dslr sales, and their poor adaption to smartphones eating their low-end. Add to that the oncoming freight train of MILC cameras that will inevitably swallow their high-end. The A7RII really settles the issue for me.

I wish it were not true. I have used virtually only Nikon cameras (in 35mm and digital at least) for a bit over 20 years. I was on the edge of rationalizing a D810 purchase - currently using a D800E as my main stills camera.

It just would make no sense to me now - whatsoever...even if I was only a stills shooter. I had planned on keeping my D800E anyways, it will remain an excellent camera for many years to come. I am now planning to just transition to Sony long-term. My large selection of Nikon glass is perfectly suitable on a Sony camera for a large percentage of what I do. I would also getting the added benefit of IBIS from AIS Nikon primes I still love, something Nikon will never offer - or offer too late.

For me, the situation is pretty sad. I kind of feel like I'm ending a beloved marriage in a lot of ways, as silly as I know that is. Cameras are tools that have done a lot for me, so I guess it's understandable.

I do think Nikon has a FF mirrorless in the works, and everything tells me it will be woefully inadequate. It will be like the Df, where you scratch your head and just look down at the table for a second; wonder how they could have thought this product served a real need (other than liberating cash from folks with large amounts of expendable income).

Unlike the OP's satirical press release, I think a more likely Nikon play is to have a MF digital stills camera. Maybe they could bring more innovation in AF, even video to that space; along with being more competitive on price, comparatively.
 
I thought to add: for those who don't know Nikon has made MF and LF glass in the past (Nikon's fantastic 4x5 LF lenses were what originally won my brand loyalty). And who has a lovely 50mp CMOS MF sensor for you to utlize (even better than your engineers can): Sony.
For Nikon's high-end -- the only likely prospect for future imaging profitability short of a major shift in direction -- all roads lead to Sony.
 
Ebrahim Saadawi said:
I 100% don't believe that idea that many people seem to mention all the time, that there's an agreement between Sony and Nikon to stay off Video to sell sensors, complete nonsense. ...

I don't believe it, neither should anybody unless there's evidence that proves it, otherwise it's just a baseless accusation. .
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I can't prove corruption in Russia either. But it can be accepted on face value just the same.


hojomo said:
The Japanese cartel system is a well-documented and acknowleged factor that very well could be playing a role in Nikon's near abscence in the video/digital cinema markets imho...
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The keiretsu system is ... well, systematic. Here's a 1992 article from Harvard Business Review. (free for up to 4 reads per person, I think)

https://hbr.org/1992/07/capitalism-in-japan-cartels-and-keiretsu/ar/4
 
Funny, I have a super 8 camera that - far as I have found - is the best bang-for-the-buck, great features, great IQ, top-choice for a non-cinema-pro 8mm camera for its era - it's a Nikon. (I understand there were some "pro" super 8's back in the day…)

OK, they've never made "video cameras", but they've done motion (film) and they're doing video now.

I assume it's all about risk, stockholders, etc… they **should** be able to do an amazing cinema camera (though we've never seen raw or even 10-bit from them, motion-wise). I imagine they don't want to dump the R&D into what may be a fringe market to them.
 
The ongoing story is, Nikon at the 70's did try the move we are all talking about now. They gathered a small crew of three teams, one for the production of a video camera, one for a deck/tape take system and one for glass that will be used on the odd-sized format (To Nikon, 35mm).

It's said the company just didn't have enough experience or power to build a video camera so their first product was a Nikon S100. A Home Video/film camera, problem is it weighed 6 Kilograms, a handheld small home camera, and at the end the camera just didn't sell and was a huge failure that led to a big financial loss and lay off of the team. They made a few attempts to just try to improve but the attempts were are met with failure. So a long time ago, they stopped and realized, we can't make motion cameras.

In a late interview with the Nikon executive this idea seemed to be his head, he kept assuring that Nikon is a stills camera company and has no experience in making video/cinema cameras/camcorders.

Their history is most likely (in my opinion, it's the reason I believe) the reason they stayed away from making cinema Nikons now, it's a hard reason and based on facts that can very easily result on their current position on making video cameras, not the other Sony conspiracy which we don't have any clue about.
 
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