New DRF's via rumour mill

NIKON KIU said:
Gaby,
what if they produce such a camera?
will you sell your Leicas and leave the Dark side?
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First of all, the Dark Side is spelled "Hasselblad XPan".

Second of all, I will not sell my Leicas over another brand.

If Nikon produces a full-frame digital rangefinder, it better be an M-mount rangefinder because I'm not going to begin adopting lenses which turn the "wrong way" :D

And last but not least, they better sell it for no more than $2000, as many M8 bashers have complained about the $4000+ price. And it should be forever decreasing in price, to be in line with their impeccable economics philosophy.

I *could* listen to a loaner offer, though. :eek:
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
A lot of people will believe in anything without proof.

Bigfoot, the Earth is Flat, Intelligent Design, the infallibility of government's handling of your privacy, Josh Groban is a singer... oh, so many items, so little time.

:eek:

I will reconfirm my lack of confirmation announcing my run for President. Or not. Maybe.
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True, but have you heard about the black American Express card http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_Card?

Maybe this endless rumuors will spawn the real thing!
 
ampguy said:
I think one solution for a DRF sensor is to use 2 APS-C sensors, rotated. You then get the coverage (and a bit more) of FF, can leverage existing peripherals and firmware, just need to add some plug-in values for vignetting with very wide lenses, or let uses do it in photoshop from the raw data depending on their lens and correction wanted on the edges. You can also get 2 half frame images per click, if you're running low on batteries or want to save file space, and not need to crop in photoshop later.
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The newly announced 50 M-pixel Kodak and 60 M-pixel Dalsa chips are both 6 micron in pixel size and large enough to more than cover two full-frame 24 x 36mm format. That would make a 24 M-pixel full-frame feasible.

There is enough bit-depth in either chip to waste 1 bit for equalizing the vignetting...I won't worry about that too much.

Since Leica already has a relationship with Kodak in using a special 10 M-pixel chip in the M8; and Zeiss long has a relationship with Dalsa in using their chips for professional products there is no reason why a 24 x 36mm full frame, or even larger rangefinder cannot be built.

[Eat your hearts out...the Z(I (Zeiss/Intergraph) Digital Mapping Camera (DMC) is a 112 M-pixel composite of 12 micron Dalsa chips. Yes, the image format size is 14cm x 96cm...but costs $1.5 million! :D]

The firmware for a single chip small format camera is really child's play in the scheme of things.

Also, for Nikon to transplant the current full frame D3 chip (or the rumored 24 M-pixel D3X chip) into a range finder body is perfectly doable, "Exceed" firmware and all.

The real question is: why didn't they? :(

I personally would commit to buy a 24 M-pixel ZM-Digital even at 3X the current ZM price...it is really just prepaying film/processing cost upfront.
 
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"Also, for Nikon to transplant the current full frame D3 chip (or the rumored 24 M-pixel D3X chip) into a range finder body is perfectly doable"

Why do you think it is perfectly doable? Do you have some basis to believe this? It takes more than faith to make all this stuff possible, despite what the Invisible Pink Unicorn may have told you. ;)
 
Ray Nalley said:
It takes more than faith to make all this stuff possible, despite what the Invisible Pink Unicorn may have told you. ;)
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Dear Ray,

Whadday mean! Elitist! The opinion of an Invisible Pink Unicorn Believer is EVERY BIT as valid as the opinion of someone who actually has the faintest idea of what he is talking about, and can recite Snell's Law from memory!

Cheers,

R.
 
Seriously people,
you all don't think Nikon is going to Photokina with just the D700 and a couple of 13 and 14 Megapixel digicams? Do you?

Ready for the D3x?

the Digital RF camera will be the icing on the cake.

Kiu
 
Ray Nalley said:
"Also, for Nikon to transplant the current full frame D3 chip (or the rumored 24 M-pixel D3X chip) into a range finder body is perfectly doable"

Why do you think it is perfectly doable? Do you have some basis to believe this? It takes more than faith to make all this stuff possible, despite what the Invisible Pink Unicorn may have told you. ;)
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I don't buy wishful thinking.

Long graduated from 9"x9" format aerial film cameras (yes, 9 inches x 9 inches), I had actually lay my hands on the Z(I DMC, also Vexcel UCD (86 M-pixel composite) and UCX (136 M-pixel composite), Leica ADS (12,000 pixel aerial scanner, by Leica Geosystems in Switzerland, not Solms; used to be called Wild-Heerbrugg), fondled a Spectral Instrument 111 M-pixel chip, heard of a Fairchild 82 M-pixel chip...

The basis of my belief in Nikon is simple:
  1. Excuses abound (even from Zeiss) that no suitable chip is available. Nikon D3 uses one such chip and believed to be made by Sony, a Zeiss business partner:rolleyes:.
  2. Camera firmware, in a chip or otherwise output the capture imagery onto a memory card. Nikon has done that too:D.
  3. Building rangefinder cameras is old hat, Nikon did that 40 years ago...and released the millennium editions recently. So was making lenses for them:(.
So why is it now not doable? Forgotten how?
 
Ray Nalley said:
Aside from Leica revealing the "RFF Commemorative" M8, I predict it's going to be a pretty boring Photokina for RF fans.
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Dear Ray,

If you don't care about lenses, you could be right.

But there are going to be some lens landmarks. At least one is not just improved, but never-done-before.

Cheers,

R.
 
Frankie said:
The basis of my belief in Nikon is simple:
  1. Excuses abound (even from Zeiss) that no suitable chip is available. Nikon D3 uses one such chip and believed to be made by Sony, a Zeiss business partner:rolleyes:.
  2. Camera firmware, in a chip or otherwise output the capture imagery onto a memory card. Nikon has done that too:D.
  3. Building rangefinder cameras is old hat, Nikon did that 40 years ago...and released the millennium editions recently. So was making lenses for them:(.
So why is it now not doable? Forgotten how?
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Same here. Just wondering what they will do about focus control and RF exactly .....

Rumours are we'll know more on Aug 27.

Roland.
 
ferider said:
Same here. Just wondering what they will do about focus control and RF exactly .....

Rumours are we'll know more on Aug 27.

Roland.
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My belief that Nikon has the wherewithal to do it is not rumors I have heard nor wishful thinking, rather tried-and-true solutions that Nikon could learn from and do even better. Considering:
  1. The late Contax G2 rangefinder camera (I owned one) had auto focus (via an internal motor) or manual focus (via a wheel in front, just like the Nikon SP or S3, I also owned one...said to have been a Contax copy.)
  2. The Contax G2 has a lens coupled zoom viewfinder, albeit only .52 magnification at 50mm focal length (too small for me) so that it can accommodate 21mm lens (a trade-off perhaps).
The G2 even had a 35~70mm zoom lens offering, so what else has not been tried?
 
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