Nikon D3 Mania
December 19th, 2007
With so much hype over the Nikon D3, the company has both delivered the goods and done some darn good marketing. It sorely needed it, with Canon dominating the DSLR market in so many niches for so long. What I think Canon might do now.
Nikon is back big time.
With Canon having beat the heck out of Nikon with it's superior equipment, capitalizing on Nikon's creeping product cycle, slow rollouts and supplier reorganizations, Nikonians were flocking to Canon in record numbers. The Canon 5D has been the wedding photographer's camera of choice for it's low noise capability, great colors and relative affordability. There were a few die-hards sticking with Nikon, but I could well guess that the noise from each low-light wedding was nagging them to switch already.
Enter the Nikon D3.
The hype is deafening. Nikon's marketing have put together a nifty strategy to get everyone noticing this new machine, including it's peripherals (new lenses, D300). Ads galore everywhere. A large bunch of name-photographers got to use the camera on their beat and report images back to nikon. Of course, their ego's stoked (the strap sports "D3" in BIG yellow letters, yuck!) and are proclaiming wonders from this equipment on their blogs "My photography will never be the same...".
Were it not for the steep entry price of camera, lenses (all DX-Crop lenses are essentially deemed useless), backup batteries and such, everyone would be begging Nikon to take their cash. Furthermore, the D3 has no built-in flash, so trying to use Nikon's CLS's (Creative Light System) great wireless slave trigger will need to click on an unwieldy hot-shoe flash onto the already-brick-heavy D3. Total weight for such a system is D3: 1.3kg, 24-70/2.8 zoom 0.9 kg, SB600 Flash 0.35kg, total over 2.5 kilos. Freaking Hell!!
Nevertheless, there appears to be a large backlog of orders and Nikon will not be able to produce fast enough (real or imagined, planned or luck), creating more demand for the "scarce" commodity.
I can't imagine Canon's engineers relaxing these days. With rumor of an imminent new "5D Mark II" being announced in the next month, Nikon's baby may well die an untimely death before it could even say "mama". There isn't too much Canon needs to do to revamp the 5d:
- Better low-ISO capability
- accurate-color high-resolution VGA Monitor
- Dual Card slot
are the most urgent requirements, and (gasp!) should the new model be available for the same price as the old, i.e. half the price of the D3, why should any Canonian switch systems? This new entry (or just it's announcement) would stop D3 demand from many professionals in a snap and Nikon would be back in it's old role: playing catch-up.
Somehow sad.
