What the Nikon Df could have been...

Bille

Well-known
Local time
5:38 PM
Joined
Nov 27, 2012
Messages
821
wcftox.jpg
 
What... A Leica?

I would rather have those setting all to hand rather than tapping on a glass screen or tiny buttons.

Mind you, I haven't owned a digital camera for 5 years.
 
Ergonomically you should ditch the speeddial, the traditional AF SLR interface is much better. I know a lot of folks like it, but that is just nostalgia, it could clean up the top plate completely.
 
No. Look at what other FF cameras manufacturers can do. The only thing which has to make the body fatter is the mirror box, which is on Bille's sketch already.

The lens-mount-to-sensor distance is fixed by the F mount standard, which means that the mirror box adds nothing to the thichness of the DF over the film cameras it apes. Now, instead of just the thickness of film + pressure plate determining how much further back the camera must extend, you have the sensor + sensor mount + everything else, which necessarily adds thickness (which is why the digital Leica M bodies are thicker than their film counterparts).

The decluttered sketch is just a pipe dream,
 
I personally would prefer it with the ISO and compensation dial as well. I use that quite regularly and it's always a pain to dig up in a menu.

It's rather shocking how every digital step forwards also seems to mean a step backwards in usability.

I love cameras like my digital Fuji X100S, but you always end up hunting around for a certain setting. You end up scrolling past hundreds of settings like what crop you want on your end result jpg...

The funny thing is... I also own a Nikon F5. According to some, the best Nikon ever made. If you look at reviews written when it was introduced, you'll actually find some people complaining about how 'difficult it is to use with all those functions'. Frankly, today I find it refreshing to use a camera with so "little features" compared to most digitals. I'd almost call the F5 simple and easy to use compared to a modern digital SLR.
 
Was it only me who noticed the Av on the shutter speed dial? That's Canon-speak for A mode.

Lemme guess... a Canon fanboy made this to dump on Nikon 🙄
 
Bille's design, which I really like, made me realise that the thing that bugged me the most in the DF was the bulk and slimming it down made it hugely more attractive to me.
I'd still probably keep the ISO dial, just make it smaller, and merge the EV comp dial with the shutter speed dial a la Contax G1 (with apologies for my lame photoshop skills)

i-9hS7zBV-X2.jpg


ANd of course no locking pins.
Finally, I'd keep the top LCD because I'd lose the rear one 😀
but thats a whole different discussion.
 
The body would still have had to be fatter, to accommodate the sensor and its supporting hardware. That top plate would still have looked like a bodge.

I think that you could thin the body by having a deeper mirror box. Certainly the "sensor plane" needs to be deeper into the body than in a film slr, but nothing says the body either side of the mirror box needs to be set where it is.
 
Bille's design, which I really like, made me realise that the thing that bugged me the most in the DF was the bulk and slimming it down made it hugely more attractive to me.
I'd still probably keep the ISO dial, just make it smaller, and merge the EV comp dial with the shutter speed dial a la Contax G1 (with apologies for my lame photoshop skills)

i-9hS7zBV-X2.jpg


ANd of course no locking pins.
Finally, I'd keep the top LCD because I'd lose the rear one 😀
but thats a whole different discussion.

now THAT is the perfect top plate.
 
Back
Top Bottom