Nikon says “It’s time to get excited”

A bunch of Nikon manager got interviewed at Dpreview. At first they start with a rather optimistic statement:

Nikon is recovering, and at a fast pace. We were recently able to bring the Z 5 to market as well as two extremely important lenses, the 14-24mm F2.8 and the 50mm F1.2, while the 70-200mm has also come to market. Furthermore, the Z 7II and Z 6II will be joining the lineup soon. These, as well as other items, will be shipping to our customers and retailers, and we are confident that their performance will drive additional customers to Nikon.

I am not so sure their optimism is well placed. So far sales number are pretty bad even compared with the Canon-Sony competition. Anyway, they promise the Nikon Z7II and Z6II will fix many of the shortcomings of the first generation cameras:

On October 14th, you’ll see that these new cameras have addressed several points with hardware updates, that cannot be resolved with firmware alone. The next chapter is very exciting for us, because of the breadth of the lenses now available, and we have listened to the market and customers extensively.

There is than a lot of talk about the lens design with the large Z-mount and so forth. Nikon doesn’t really disclose any detail about future products. But they currently risk to be completely overwhelmed by the current Canon and Sony battle. Nikon has to give us some new exciting high cameras with 8K or 100MP sensor to draw the attention of the public.

New OM Digital company will focus on “high end MFT cameras” production

There is a lot of confusion on what’s going to happen with the new OM Digital company that acquired the Olympus camera business. Photolari had a chat with Olympus Europe manager Albert Marti. Here are some key takeaways:

  • OM Digital will still use the “Olympus” name
  • He confirms to Photolari the commitment to the medium and high range. It is not clear if that means forgetting about the Pen range – focused on simpler models, except the Pen-F – and raising the bar in the field of video, as has been hinted at on occasion.
  • The purchase includes the Olympus factories as well as its repair centers, including the technical service in Coimbra (Portugal) that deals with a large part of the products in Europe.

Honestly I have a hard time believing something good will come out of this project…