Reader Comment: Big DSLR Price Cuts, Why?
Related: Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPhone and iPad, Dan M, EVF, iOS, Nikon, Nikon D810, Nikon DSLR, reader comment, Sony, Sony A7R, Sony A7R II, Sony A7R III, Sony mirrorless
See also Sony A7R II: Field Usage.
Dan M writes:
So do you think the second price drop for the Nikon D810 means they’re clearing inventory in advance of something to be announced? What, usual pattern is an announcement about 4 months in advance of the earliest arrivals.
Maybe you should see the doctor about some sedatives to have on the shelf should the announcement not include an EVF. There have been a variety of announcements from different companies in the past two years that were news on account of what was not in the new cameras, especially Leica, but I don’t think anything would be more glaring than a D900 with no EVF. The A7RII has to be a wake-up call.
DIGLLOYD: Nikon badly needs a D900 with EVF and 42 or 50 megapixels or so (and 4K video ideally). What is taking so long?
The Nikon D810 is now $500 off. The Nikon D750 is $400 off and there are bundles up to $1100 off. Plus 2% rewards and expedited shipping and extras!
Why the price cuts? The camera market is saturated with users bored out of their minds at five million pounds of DSLR inventory still being shoveled out by the container-shit load*. The only excitement in the market at present is the Sony A7R II—innovation at Canon and Nikon has been dead in its tracks for five years or more. Megapixels and a few more fps do not count folks. Live View was the only significant innovation in years from CaNikon. Well, the wheel was a nice invention too, but time moves on. So that could easily explain the price cuts. I am less hopeful on a D900 for this year at least.
The Nikon D810 is still my venerable workhorse camera, but how would iPhone users feel if 5 years went by and the iPhone 3 were still the current model? The path is trivially easy to closing the gap for CaNikon: add an EVF option, get to 50+ megapixels with high performance CDAF, keep all the good buttons and such. For bonus points, offer a more compact model without an optical viewfinder, which makes 90% of users happier and cuts the cost and size and weight. How much thought is required for that? Not much and it’s not innovation but it would be welcomed.
Funny. Sony could hire me to bitch and moan until they got a design right that would beat the crap out of CaNikon (figuratively speaking). Whatever. That horse can’t even be led to a dry creek.
The (almost) missing part of the equation is lenses, and there I think the only company doing interesting work is Zeiss. And indeed, lenses are the future (and perhaps massively parallel CPUs, in camera, for all sorts of goodies). But lenses rule are still the lovely Real Deal. I love the month of October, such lovely weather**, suitable for many temperaments too.
* Container-ship load. Gosh, I must have hit the wrong key.
** My non-sequiturs are only seemingly so.
Sony A7R II + Zeiss Milvus 50mm f/1.4 @ 35mm
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