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| Photo by Joseph Chan |
We’ve known for some time now that Nikon is working on a mirrorless camera—in fact, Nikon confirmed this to DPReview directly. But one question has remained tantalizingly unanswered: will it be a full-frame system, or simply an evolution of the old 1-inch Nikon 1 system?
The answer, at least according to one high-level Nikon director, seems to be what we were all hoping for. The mirrorless camera will be full-frame.
This information came to light in an interview with Tetsuro Goto, Director of Laboratory Research and Development at Nikon Japan, who told Chinese website Xitek that, “full frame is the trend. If Nikon will go mirrorless it must be full frame.” A statement that immediately set the photography world on fire with speculation.
You can read the full translated interview at this link. Most of it focuses on the Nikon Df and other topics, but page 4 of the interview begins to cover new ground including competition from Sony, Fuji, and the like, and the future of Nikon mirrorless. The other, slightly controversial statement shared by Mr. Tetsuro during the interview had to do with Nikon’s market share and penetration vs the competition (translation courtesy of Nikon Rumors):
Nikon customer base is very broad, from novice to enthusiasts to prosumer to professional, that’s Nikon’s advantage. Olympus, Sony and Fujifilm can only cover a small part of that. So far there is no professional using their products. So when they develop products, even like retro style, they only try to meet these people and that’s only what they can do. Their customer base is limited anyway so they have limited view in developing products.
Read the full interview here, and then feel free to go speculation crazy in the comments. We’ll update you as soon as we have something official from our sources at Nikon.
A Nikon representative was not immediately available for comment at the time of publication. We will update this news story as soon as we have an official response from Nikon USA about Mr. Tetsuro Goto’s comments.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)